Update, July 22: Bumped up for weekend reading/conversation!
In his book The Metaverse, Matthew Ball touches on Second Life and even speaks with the late, beloved CEO Ebbe Altberg about the dangers of breaking user-generated content through platform updates.
During our Q&A this week we had a chance to chat about what Second Life can teach new metaverse platforms.
“We're discovering so many things about virtual societies and communities, there's so many emergent behaviors, and many of them have been discovered or surfaced before," Matt tells me. "Second Life is such a great example. I was telling you the other day when I was asked that question, Is Second Life over or underrated?
"I think it's underrated, because we and I for a long time underappreciated how many behaviors evolved that actually can’t really happen elsewhere that teach us a lot about what to build, what not to do, and how to speak to users upon which you rely on for an economy and user-generated content. Learning that history is important.”
As to the future, much more of our conversation below: Advice for getting started in metaverse development, the important metaverse news announcements that have come out since his book was published -- and what he'd say about government regulation of the Metaverse, if someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren asked:
Wagner James Au (asking for reader Zack Day): As someone just getting into software development, I am curious to know what kind of skills a person should develop if they wanted to make things or test ideas in the metaverse?
Matthew Ball: Unity has several-fold the number of developers [than Unreal]. It's easier, lighter, faster to build on, and deploys to more devices. It's easier to hire other people and find people that you can work with, and that's a compelling proposition.
I'm really excited about Unreal, but I’m mostly excited about what Tim Sweeney has teased, which is Unreal Editor editing in Fortnite Creative. So you have that no code platform, but then you’ll have the ability to supplement it with code injections and customizations. Just like when you go to WordPress, you can drag and drop, or in Squarespace you can use a template, but if you want to do light customizations that doesn't require extraordinary sophistication and learning, you can.
And that's gonna mean that for someone trying to learn first, you're accessing a major platform, you're using one of the most powerful customization toolkits in the world, and you can onboard or learn in stages.
Matthew Ball speaking in the metaverse platform Breakroom in 2021
WJA: What have been the biggest Metaverse news announcements since you submitted your book that fits your thesis or challenges it most?
MB: I don’t believe that the crypto crash proves or disproves the relevance of blockchain as yet. But I do think that it shows how far and impractical and unscalable applications, the narrative and market value have become.
I mentioned earlier that it was about promise and hype, not proven experiences. And so having that context rather than speculating about it -- I write in the book about how wide that difference is and that a crash is likely -- that context helps to color what was speculative with practiced reality.
I talked about in the book how hard the XR hardware problem is, and we've seen further evidence of Microsoft's struggles to get HoloLens into shippable, even enterprise devices. And Mark Zuckerberg said in 2015 that mixed reality headsets would replace the smartphone by the end of that decade, that time has come and gone. And we've seen that Facebook has pushed out the first consumer release of their AR devices until the back half of this decade. So that helps to provide more context as to the timeline.
Beyond that, my goal was not to really encapsulate a specific time or moment or dependency, but how I thought the Metaverse would unfold in the coming years and technologies upon which it relied, and the theses around that. And so I think it holds up as a result.
The only other thing that I would mention is Unity and Roblox have seen precipitous drops in their stock prices, not yet any [loss of users]. And so that provides additional context, at least to who is likely to be pioneers in the future and where the profits are.
For example, the sell-off in Unity and the acquisition of Iron Source seems based on the fear that the game engine itself is not a lucrative part of the value chain. And that's not altogether dissimilar from Epic; Unreal’s not a profitable business, it’s not particularly large; almost all of their revenue and profits comes from content and distribution. And so I do think that taking a look at the last six months starts to provides more context.
WJA: You touched on government regulation in the book, I would love to get down to specifics -- for example, what if Elizabeth Warren or another tech savvy politician asked you for some policy recommendations to implement as soon as possible. What would you suggest?
MB: If you look at what exists today, that’s the easiest starting point. The EU is obviously focusing a lot on the unbundling of hardware operating systems and payments and software distribution. That’s the Epic versus Apple lawsuit. I'm a firm believer that we need to unbundle app distribution from payments and both from an operating system.
We're seeing that Elizabeth Warren is, again like the EU, focused on port standardization to USB-C -- let's go to a common standard, not a proprietary one.
If that’s important, then the portability of core user data, your social graph is even more important; your search history. The feedback loops to a digital ecosystem as more people join and more usage is accrued are only going to grow. And so I think that's key.
And the other one to take a look at is where we want to define rights to virtual investments or property in the quote unquote Metaverse, and I don't mean crypto assets. What I mean is when a developer licenses Unreal or Unity, when they invest tens of millions of dollars in a system built on those engines, what rights do they have versus the tech vendor?
I write in the book about how Tim Sweeney has changed the Unreal Engine licensing agreements in two ways: Number one is they can never retroactively change the licensing terms for a build. They of course can come out with Unreal Editor 6 and it can be different from 5.2, but they can’t change 5.2.
He's also said that if they ever have a dispute with a license -- [Third party UE developers] haven't paid, or perhaps they're arguing that the technology is being used out of Terms of Service -- they need to go to the court and get an injunction to shut them down. And that's a reflection of, you're asking people to invest their livelihood, millions potentially and years, building in virtual space. Not online asking a [real life] tenant to move into a rental space to build a storefront; landlords don't have the right to just lock you out, to take your things, to delete your stuff.
And so I think it's important for governments to take a look at and say what is to the right of the platform versus what is actually just a virtual version of a real world problem that we’ve already adjudicated. And so I admire Tim for voluntarily giving up rights that everyone thinks should be kept forever.
And in a sense saying, the best form of decentralization is democracy.
Matthew Ball's The Metaverse: And How it Will Revolutionize Everything is now available in bookshelves and online. (Get it on Amazon here, on Apple Books here, or on Bookshop.org here, which contributes a cut to indy bookstores.)
I can see a future version of Steam evolving into something like this. Instead of looking at a long list of games in the Steam store.
Posted by: auto clicker | Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 09:10 AM
I read (a digital copy of) the book this weekend. I guess, what it made clear to me is that "the Metaverse" is just a buzzword describing a set of important and not so important concepts and technologies.
The important concepts include interoperable networks, virtual worlds, real-time rendered 3D graphics, synchronous online experiences, continuity of data, computer-mediated sense of presence, etc.
Other important concepts are immersive technologies (e.g. virtual and augmented reality) and user-generated content - even if they are not mentioned in Ball's definition of the Metaverse.
The one concept in Ball's definition of the Metaverse that I have strong doubts about is the possibility that thousands (an "effectively unlimited number") of users interact with each other synchronously. I think that a dynamically changing set of no more than a few hundred users will be enough for practically all applications. Yes, there will be "broadcasting" of individual avatars to millions of users, but that doesn't mean that a thousand users can interact with each other at the same time. (And broadcasting of avatars to many thousands of users is already well established technology in AltSpaceVR, Rec Room, and probably several other metaverse apps.) So, I doubt that we need technology for an "effectively unlimited number of users" to interact synchronously with each other. Therefore, I doubt that any definition of the Metaverse that requires this kind of technology is very useful.
On the other hand, if "the Metaverse" just describes a loose set of important concepts and technologies and you attribute all applications and effects of those concepts and technologies to "the Metaverse", then, of course, "the Metaverse" will change a lot (but not revolutionize everything). It's like "the Information Age": just a label that you stick on a set of concepts and technologies. In other words: it's a buzzword.
Well, to end on a positive note: another thing that the book has achieved for me is to clarify a potential relation between "the Metaverse" and "metaverse apps". Consider this: is it possible that Ball's definition of the Metaverse is fulfilled by a network of (more or less) interoperable metaverse apps? I think it is. Which would mean that a single Metaverse could exist in the form of multiple interoperable metaverse apps. At last, the dichotomy between the Metaverse and many metaverse apps has been resolved!
Posted by: Martin K. | Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 11:26 AM
Second Life is a fully fledged Metaverse, the only real one, because there is nothing missing, a Metaverse where all you wonder about and talk about has already happened and is fully answered, since 2003, it just doesn't use the silly VR goggles... SL is indeed a very mature and organically developed Metaverse, with a complex thriving economy and all sorts of activities, from entertainment to science, education and arts, even jobs, therefore being the only available long run "proof of concept" for how everything works on a present and future VR Metaverse - what people want and don't want, what they create and sell and buy, how they socialize, roleplay, work, have families and live, etc... But beaware, Blockchain and Crypto have nothing to do with the Metaverse, absolutely nothing... Saying the Metaverse needs crypto is like saying the Internet of today can't survive without Hotmail, contrary to what all Youtube Ponzy Crypto scamners want you to think, by sticking together the trendy words Blockchain and Metaverse... The Metaverse needs a very stable value coin, like SL has (Lindens), a coin that works like a FIAT... No one will rent a house, create products, pay and sell for services and buy stuff (like it happens on SL) when things have speculative weekly fluctuating values and the dress you sell gives you 50$ income on Monday and only 0,1$ on Sunday, or the land you rented to run your home or venue costs 20$ on January than 200$ on April... Crypto Metaverse is just - NOT GONA HAPPEN... Only speculators, AND NOT real creators and consumers, want to engage on a Crypto Metaverse, just dreaming with flipping revenues and that is not the population of a Metaverse, is a ponzy scam hive, pure and simple... Wakeup People...
Posted by: Loff Auer | Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 08:18 AM
To the person who said "Wakeup People" You are certainly speaking like a hardcore Second Lifer, but I think you have lost the plot. Second Life is no longer anything special, its shelf life is diminishing more and more each year due to it not attracting many new users, it's dated, especially where graphics are concerned, shadows are unrealistic, there is nothing that truly represents reflections, on top of that Linden Labs extort its users especially where land prices are concerned. The Linden fluctuates in value like any other virtual currency despite what you are implying and on top of that, there are fluctuating exchange rates for non US users.
You say there is nothing missing, but I would argue users are missing, progress is missing. Save a few bells and whistles here and there, it hasn't changed or advanced much in the 13 years I've been a member. Us Second Life users have merely become institutionalised, most not leaving due to the value of the inventory they would leave behind and can't take to the likes of Open Sim.
I give it another 10 years tops before it is gone and that will fly by, things always do, because the focus has become entirely on profit, when once upon a time, it was about advancing the technology. The Lab is fooling itself, if it thinks it can continue this way and never go under.
Posted by: That Geezer From The Pub | Saturday, July 30, 2022 at 11:23 AM