Metaverse is a word that everyone in the gaming industry knows, even if they don’t fully understand what it means. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, changed the name of the social media company to Meta Platforms in 2021. He also said that the company would now focus on making a working metaverse.
But, it’s interesting to note that the term has been used for decades and is much closer to becoming a reality than you might think. In this article, we’ll talk about what the Metaverse is, how it came to be, and how it has affected the gaming industry and how it will continue to do so.
What exactly is the Metaverse?
The word “metaverse” was first used in Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel Snow Crash, published in 1992, before the Internet was even around. Stephenson made the word by putting “meta,” which means “beyond,” and “universe” together. So, in a literal sense, the Metaverse is a universe other than our own.
In real life, we’re talking about a fully immersive Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality network of online worlds where participants (or “players”) can socialize with each other, play hyper-realistic games, attend virtual events, and shop in online marketplaces, all from the comfort of their own homes.
Does the gaming industry already have a Metaverse?
Since Zuckerberg’s announcement last year, most of us have come to think of the Metaverse in terms of Meta Platforms. This is because COVID-19 predicted a big change in how people interact with each other, with only online platforms. In reality, though, the gaming industry has been driving the search for the “metaverse” for a long time, not social media.
Roblox, Fortnite, Runescape, Minecraft
Simply put, a Metaverse is an online community where people are represented by avatars they choose and can interact with the avatars of other people in a way that feels very real.
When you think about the Metaverse game development services in this way, it’s clear that games and online gaming platforms like Roblox, Runescape, Fortnite, and Minecraft have been building their own online worlds for years, making the Metaverse bigger in the process.
Think about the game Fortnite. Fortnite started out as a Battle Royale game with not a lot of depth. Today, though, it’s a full-fledged online world where players can customize their avatars with skins, tools, and weapons that they win or buy in-game.
They chat with the avatars of other players and can now even buy tickets to virtual events, like Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert in 2020, which they can attend virtually.
Roblox, Runescape, and Minecraft all have Metaverse worlds that are like each other. On these platforms, there are a lot of ways to make things, change characters, and talk to other people online.
The developers of these games are already making money off of their Metaverse potential, which we’ll talk about in the next section. They do this through brand collaboration.
Even though the gaming industry is already leading the way in the Metaverse, it is also being fundamentally changed by the very thing it is leading the way in.
Three ways the Metaverse will change how games are made in the future
The gaming industry is already changing as it moves toward a fully immersive, fully interactive online universe with endless possibilities, not just for games but also for shopping, socializing, and more.
Here are the top three ways the Metaverse will change the future of the gaming industry and marketing to gamers who have a lot of influence.
Currency vs. Economy
There have been in-game economies for a long time. RPGs, for example, usually have a market system where players can buy and sell virtual goods in exchange for virtual currency or other goods. This can be done both online and offline.
Immersion in these economies has only gotten better, and in open-world online games like Runescape, players trade with each other for virtual cash, goods, and other things. They can even put their virtual money in in-game banks or in things they think will go up in value.
Also, it is very common for game engineers to make economies in games that depend on money from the real world. Take Star Wars Battlefront II, which has caused a lot of trouble. When this game came out, players were upset right away because almost everything fun in the game was locked behind a paywall.
The way that cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are used in the online worlds of the gaming industry is one way that the Metaverse changes how these things work. In a P2E (Play-to-Earn) gaming model, players would earn cryptocurrencies by interacting with the game’s online world. They could then use these cryptocurrencies to invest in in-game NFTs, monetize them through smart contracts, or sell them on an open market for real-world payout.
In essence, the Metaverse will make it possible to create a fully-functioning meta-economy in which gamers could really make more money in the real world, or they could lose it all.
A Revolution in Marketing
There has already been a digital marketing revolution in the Metaverses of platforms like Fortnite and Roblux.
As part of a partnership between Gucci and Fortnite in 2021, the luxury designer brand released a virtual NFT handbag in the game. It sold for a whopping $4,115 in crypto, which is $800 more than the physical version of the same bag.
Marvel and Disney have also teamed up with Fortnite to make in-game skins for characters like Spiderman.
These examples show that the Metaverse is about to open up a whole new universe of brand-collaboration opportunities, especially with brands that aren’t usually associated with gaming, for digital marketers whose specialty is the gaming industry.
As a last thought…
The Metaverse already exists, and the gaming industry is at the forefront of coming up with new ways to use it as a digital marketing tool. Over time, it will be interesting to see how non-gaming entities like Meta Platforms fit into the gamer-heavy Metaverse of today (2022). For both content creators and digital marketers, it’s clear that the Metaverse will change the way we make money for good.
