The Metaverse – the start, the present and the future.

The metaverse is no new concept to the world. In fact the term “metaverse” originally appeared in a 1992 science fiction novel called “Snow Crash”. In the novel, the Metaverse is considered a successor to the internet.

In our current times, the metaverse has become a popular term because of the development of Web 3.0 technologies and a certain company, Facebook, renaming themselves as Meta.

With Meta being at the forefront of social media and having scale and a large number of users, its influence on pushing the metaverse forward has been a huge contributing factor to popularising the concept through different industries. Now we see corporations building their own roadmap to the metaverse.

If we look back, companies have had access to technologies to create metaverses for the last 20 years. The gaming industry has been leading the way and developing the foundations for all of this. For example the game, Second Life, released in 2003 gave users the ability to:

• Create a customisable avatar
• Communicate via text or voice
• Make in-app purchases for assets
• Hold meetings and events in different virtual environments

Essentially these are characteristics that would be found in a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game. Over the past 2 decades there have been a plethora of MMO games. One of the main ones which brought the MMO genre into the main stream was World of Warcraft.  More recently there is VRChat. Ultimately, VR chat accommodates for all requirements for a metaverse environment. It runs on various multiple platforms too.

So why the push for the metaverse now?

Well, there are few reasons. The world became more disconnected due to the Covid pandemic and it was mandatory to work from home for almost all employees. Post-pandemic most companies have continued allowing employees to work from home in a hybrid model. A metaverse will allow individuals to collaborate more effectively in a work environment while still being in the comfort of their own home.

Since Meta’s push to create its own metaverse, media coverage on the metaverse has exploded. This resulted in major awareness throughout various industries and organisations are exploring how to exploit the technology.

Is the metaverse the future?

The metaverse will not replace our current conventional systems. It’ll exist alongside our current methods of working and evolve them. In a positive manner, it may augment us and allow us to experience things we may not have the fortune of being able to do. For example, a person that’s unable to walk could go surfing with friends off the coast of Hawaii while sitting in their home in the Shetland Islands of Scotland.

Then on the other end of the spectrum, there is the fear that the metaverse may disconnect humans even more than what technology has done so far. Through technology humanity has never been so connected, yet also so disconnected.

The metaverse allows people to be who they want to be and experience other worldly scenarios that aren’t possible in our current reality. Having a cup of tea on Mars while watching the sun rise doesn’t sound like a bad idea?

Where does CGI fit in with all this?

We have an abundance of intelligent minds, capabilities and infrastructure under our roof. Our Meta Hub demo is an example of how we collaborate and onboard new employees with CGI who are geographically spread around the UK.

With the power of creativity and imaginative design, the potential is limitless. We’re able to provide solutions that can unite with consumers and create opportunities like never before. So if you would like to find out more or have a general discussion on the metaverse potential at your organisation, we’d love to chat to you.