- Joe Tidy
- BBC Internet reporter
Image source,Linden Lab
Metaverse attracted global technology giants to join the game, and it also allowed me to turn back the clock and look back at the future of the Internet.
My first experience similar to the meta-universe was the virtual online world “Second Life”, which has been more than 10 years away.
The term meta-universe first appeared in a science fiction novel “Snow Crash” in the 1990s. The book described meta-universe as the successor of virtual reality to the Internet, and people spend a lot of time in virtual environments.
Second Life reached its peak in the 2000s, with millions of users, and players living around the clock on the virtual network also attracted a lot of attention and reports.
In recent years, Second Life has rarely appeared in the media. I thought this virtual world game had disappeared, but it did not.
After more than 10 years, this virtual world still attracts loyal players who claim to be “residents” to log in to experience the possible future of the meta-universe.
Under such circumstances, I also returned to Second Life.
As far as vision is concerned, Second Life is not particularly good. It is more inclined to the blocky, pixelated composition of Roblox (machine brick), without the immersive visual environment of computer games.
But the difference is that, just like Mark Zuckerberg’s conception of the metaverse, Second Life is not a game. There are no game tasks or challenges, and there is no storyline. It is just an online living space.
Meet Rei
In Second Life, I met a resident, Rei, whose avatars met in a seaside world. This environment was designed to mimic a small Scottish fishing village in the 1960s.
He told me that he had been in Second Life for about four months. At the beginning, it was because of his curiosity about the “meta universe”, so he went to Second Life to see what happened.
Image source,Linden Lab
I met a resident Rei in Second Life
Rei doesn’t quite agree with Zuckerberg’s vision of the meta universe.
He said, “They want to control everything, but I think it should be the users and it should be completely open.”
Zuckerberg recently changed the name of Facebook to “Meta”, and he also tried to reassure the outside world. He said, “This future does not belong to any company, it will be built by all of us.”
Other large companies, including Microsoft, American video game development company Epic Games, Rob Lex, and even sporting goods company Nike, have announced plans to enter or develop the meta-universe.
Anya Kanevsky, the vice president of Linden Lab, which launched Second Life, is also worried about Metaverse becoming the exclusive business of these large companies, like many others.
Second Life has been online since 2003. Since then, many large technology companies have begun to talk about the possibilities of the virtual world.
Image source,Linden Lab
In Second Life, you can also find a lot of adult-scale content
Kanevsky said, “I am a little worried that the current discussion seems to be going in the direction of anti-utopia.”
“Large companies entering the meta-universe are a bit like announcing to people that some people will come in to set the rules of the game and host events, while others are just consumers.”
Second Life is a bit like Robus, the latter is a platform on which users develop and invite other users to join the game, but the number of Second Life users is far less than Robus.
Robles’ number of players at the same time is estimated to be around 5.5 million, while Second Life is only 90,000.
Zuckerberg said that he also hopes that his Metaverse can have many users, but he does not have any residents yet, but he promised to hire 10,000 employees across Europe to develop Metaverse.
Some people say that the problem is not to give users more control, but that users should build the meta-universe themselves.
John Carmack, the chief technology officer of Oculus VR headset company under Facebook, said that building a meta-universe with great fanfare “is not the best way to develop a meta-universe.”
The technology news site Ars Technica quoted him as saying, “I don’t believe that any single application can take over everything. I don’t believe that any single company can build the meta-universe alone or dominate all decisions.”
Second life is a good reference.
At its peak, Second Life was also criticized by many outsiders, including the Ponzi scheme through its game currency, and even the violation of underage children.
Even during my short visit this week, I saw the content management problems encountered by Second Life. If Metaverse is to enter the mainstream, similar problems must be solved.
If you search for “pornography” or “drugs” and other activities or places on Second Life, you can’t find any results, but if you search for “sex”, you can go to a virtual strip club and watch virtual strips with virtual currency .
Kanevsky said, “The way to manage the virtual world is very complicated. Some of them can be managed automatically, but many of them must be operated manually. Here it is not just choosing your own dress and beautiful avatar.”
Back to Second Life, I asked Rei one last question: Why does he keep coming back here?
He said, “I like to dream with my eyes.”