0/ I have been thinking a lot about metaverses lately. Part of this is driven by the amount of time my kids spend in them while the other is driven by the number of them being created at the moment. I think metaverses are going to be huge.
1/ When I was growing up I spent a lot of time reading superhero comics. It was a sort of fantasy and a way to “live” in an alternate world. I loved it and spent countless hours a week with comics.
2/ Growing up this journey evolved into spending time on videos games (mostly first shooter and fantasy titles) even while I was working. This was my getaway, a way to relieve myself of the stresses of work. That’s partly what got me through 18 hard core years at GS.
3/ Today, my kids go through the same, spending their early years in Minecraft and then graduating to Fortnite. I am sure their experience is a lot more immersive than mine was. Even when they have a physical play date with their friends they just sit around and play Fortnite.
4/ This experience will become even more immersive in the years to come with the substantial capital that is going into creating these alternate worlds (Epic Games raised $1B recently to build its version of a metaverse) coupled with the advent of NFTs and advances in AI and VR.
5/ Also as games like Axie Infinity have demonstrated, there is now a way for average gamers to generate a modest income playing these games, making this an even more compelling proposition. In poorer parts of the world, this income is more than modest. These are pull factors.
6/ In the meantime, the experience of living in the real physical world seems to be degrading with overpopulation, global warming, environmental pollution, traffic congestion in major cities, increased occurrence of pandemics etc
7/ Compounding the issue for young people in general, fewer job opportunities and unaffordable housing make their lives tougher than what their parents lived through. These are push factors that will make the virtual world a more appealing alternative for the younger generation.
8/ Furthermore with everything going digital and the youth being more digitally savvy, idea of living a significant part of our lives in an alternate world is not too radical. Remember “Ready Player One”?
9/ if these metaverses are going to be where we and future generations are going to be spending time, then it’s probably where e-Commerce, social media etc are eventually going to have to migrate to. Amazon and Facebook be warned...
10/ If metaverses are to flourish, they have to be interoperable. I imagine spending half a day wandering around Decentraland and then when I get bored, I can step into a portal and be teleported to some other virtual world.
11/ This is equivalent to the real world experience of travelling to different countries/cities, but better. In this context, people might choose to have residences in different virtual worlds of their liking.
12/ When people are spending more time in these alternate worlds, they will probably care less about which country they belong to in the real world (as long as the WiFi connections are good).
13/ This will have wide ranging political, social and economic implications. It will render many existing institutions irrelevant and will challenge pre-existing norms and ideas that have been passed down for generations.
14/ one thing is certain. Change will come and it will come quickly. The ones most able to adapt to this new world will be the ones most likely to prosper.
15/ This is also how the wealth transfer will happen as the less tech savvy boomers are naturally at a disadvantage vs digital natives. This is already playing out with crypto, but it is only the first step in this massive generational wealth transfer.
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