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Before beginning, it bears worth defining just what we mean when by “metaverses” and how these metaverses are developing.
Steven Spielberg’s 2018 sci-fi film ‹Ready Player One› helps clarify this point. In the film, the protagonist Wade Watts lives in a real, physical slum; yet he spends his time immersed in a virtual reality (VR) video game named Oasis. In the game, Watts can be or do whatever he wants — and he chooses the life of a promising explorer named Parzival. Yet Oasis isn’t totally separate from the real world: It ties into the physical world’s economy, allowing players to earn both a living and profits in a totally virtual space.
It’s been three years since the release of ‹Ready Player One›, yet there’s still no virtual game of Oasis’s caliber.

It’s difficult to predict when such a metaverse will be created, especially when we consider such worlds to be bubbles. Metaverses are often compared to bubbles since the technologies they depend on — VR and augmented reality (AR) — are still largely beyond our reach. Yet there may come a day when society faces a FullDive metaverse, a spectacle that contains the consciousness, though not the body. Until that day comes, players’ only recourse is to enter virtual worlds using mobile devices, computers, or gaming consoles.
To better understand today’s metaverse games, it’s useful to think of them as games with social characteristics. We already have such social games — meaning we already have metaverses.

In March 2021, the game ‹Roblox› received much attention as a metaverse as it went public on the New York Stock Exchange. Though the game’s visual graphics were nothing groundbreaking, the value of the company behind the game was almost $37 billion.
In the United States alone, more than 50% of kids under 16 signed up for the game. On average, they spent 156 minutes playing the game a day, which was more time than they spent on Facebook or YouTube. .
The company’s profits for the first quarter were $652.3 million, showing the game’s strong position as a metaverse..
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Meanwhile, in 2020, Travis Scott made $20 million for appearing five times in Epic Games’s‹Fortnite› video game. During the game’s “Party Royale” mode, the rapper established a demilitarized zone where users could congregate safely, which is the opposite of the game’s “Battle Royale” mode, where all players fight until there’s a single survivor. Similarly, LG Electronics promoted its OLED TVs by making OLED Island in‹Animal Crossing: New Horizons›. The Metropolitan Museum of Art even distributed QR codes for users to download and exhibit art from the museum in the game..
Social games are at the heart of today’s early-stage metaverse games. Since such games contain alternate societies that reflect the physical world, everyday cultural technologies appear in them just as they do in our real lives.

If games have their own virtual worlds, why aren’t any of them called metaverses? This is perhaps because three key components constitute a true metaverse.
The first component concerns freedom. In a metaverse, a user creates an avatar whose appearance can resemble them, though it doesn’t have to. Through this avatar, the player lives freely in the metaverse. Some metaverse games have missions — others don’t. Whether the player undertakes missions is entirely up to them. In a metaverse game, the player does whatever they want, whether that be fishing all day, traveling, constructing buildings, buying land, or conducting business.
The second element is socialization. In a metaverse, players must build social relationships. Users talk to one another, but if they can’t properly chat, they at least need some alternate form of communication — like emojis or avatar movements. For a game to be considered a metaverse, users shouldn’t introduce themselves to others in-game as themselves — they should introduce themselves as their avatars.

Third: monetization. In this context, monetization refers to a game’s ability to generate profit for providers, companies, and players. For example, ‹Roblox› and ‹ZEPETO› give all users the tools to make new avatar skins (costumes) and create new playable maps — and they can all reap profits. Through this side of the metaverse, some players are said to ‘commute’ to a world in a game.
Such a game already exists to some degree. In Linden Lab’s ‹Second Life›, players have the chance to live a second life, just as the title indicates. The game possesses all three factors: Game money can be changed into real currency and players can profit from virtual work at another player’s store in-game.

So why did ‹Second Life› disappear? First, there’s the spatial limitation that PC-based games have. Such games only allow players to connect from a PC. Other popular games allow players to connect via multiple devices — including mobile devices, computers, and consoles. ‹Second Life› failed to adapt to the mobile game revolution following the advent of the iPhone and also failed to beat Facebook and Twitter when it came to socialization. Second, the game offered limited content. While freedom is a prerequisite to any metaverse, it doesn’t preclude the game from featuring actual content — this is true for all metaverse games.

What comes after ‹ZEPETO› and ‹Roblox›? Digital realities born from VR and AR technologies?

Facebook’s ‹Oculus Quest 2› VR headset already demonstrates the new possibilities for metaverses, allowing players to connect to a virtual world using the headset without the help of a computer or smartphone. Using the ‹Oculus Quest 2›, players can play anywhere and partake in music, boxing, ping-pong, tennis, and other games — they can even have meetings.
VR controllers are still required to control movements in any virtual world. As soon as VR technology makes smart gloves or suits available, players will be able to experience more realistic VR experiences. A real metaverse will come into being when such a virtual world can host millions of users. ‹Facebook Horizon› is already working on just that kind of a virtual world.

So, is a metaverse merely a dream? Or is it the future? The answer is clear: Metaverses are the future — and they’re worlds that will yield real, bountiful opportunities. Whatever form they take, whether a social game or VR, metaverses will need the designers, constructors, and financial experts of the physical world to create digital content. Metaverses are already approaching: Are you ready?