TAKEAWAYS:
- New UBC paper compares the development of the metaverse with the creation of the Las Vegas strip
- There’s fierce competition between tech companies over who will rule the metaverse and what it will look like
- Like today’s metaverse, the Las Vegas strip wasn’t a single interconnected space; rather, it was made up of distinct and separate resorts
- The key to a successful metaverse is gathering people in the same space at the same time
- Challenges include everything from network issues to copyright to the need for cooperation between proto-metaverses
- Competitors would be wise to work together, which was key to Las Vegas’ success
- Within a decade, far more of online life will likely happen in 3D virtual spaces
Technology leaders around the globe are scrambling to build the next frontier of life online: a so-called “metaverse” where users can work, play and interact in an immersive 3D environment.
But the metaverse comes with profound economic and social implications, and there is little consensus on what it should look like or how to get there. What’s more, there is fierce competition to own the rights and determine the interface, because the moneymaking potential is boundless.
Now a new paper from the UBC Sauder School of Business is providing practical insights for today’s metaverse architects by comparing its creation with the development of one of the world’s most unconventional cities: Las Vegas.
“It made an interesting analogy, because Las Vegas was constructed where there was no particular rhyme or reason for there to be a city, and yet it became a go-to destination — much like the metaverse seeks to become the place you go to have fun,” says UBC Sauder Assistant Professor Dr. David Clough, who co-authored the paper with Dr. Andy Wu of Harvard University.
Like today’s nascent metaverse, in its infancy the Las Vegas strip wasn’t a single interconnected space; in fact, it was a set of resorts that were distinct and separate — not places where customers would walk from one to the next.
“All of the infrastructure that ended up connecting the resorts was largely sponsored and paid for by the resorts themselves. These were fierce competitors trying to get market share from each other,” says Dr. Clough. “Then they all realized that interconnecting would create more collective value than if they tried to go it alone.”
The authors were especially interested in the social side of the fledgling metaverse, and on the connections it can potentially create as people navigate the online space. In Las Vegas, people might go to a conference to make business connections or to a nightclub to make social connections, says Dr. Clough, and metaverse designers are striving to do the same: create an environment where people are serendipitously meeting strangers and interacting.
They would be wise to borrow from the linear geometry of the Las Vegas Strip to focus interactions, explains the paper, and use virtual festivals, conventions and other events to gather users at the same time and place.
“You want a certain critical mass of people in a given space,” says Dr. Clough, who says many early metaverse spaces haven’t worked because users don’t gather and they feel vacant. “It’s all about trying to create a vibrant experience, and once there’s a critical threshold of socially vibrant activity, it can be self-sustaining.”
The challenges of creating the metaverse are significant, and include everything from online networks that don’t allow for seamless interactions to the legal complexities that come with using copyrighted characters in virtual worlds.
But the biggest challenge is the need for cooperation and coordination among rival “proto-metaverses” — virtual spaces such as Fortnite, Second Life and Meta Horizon Worlds — that could in theory amalgamate into a single metaverse.
And just as Las Vegas resorts cooperate with direct competitors to establish shared resources and governance, proto-metaverses can draft agreements on shared technology and leadership.
Dr. Clough says to this day, Vegas businesses jointly finance the construction of bridges and other links that connect customers to their competitors because they understand it makes good business sense.
“They would likely create more value if they found ways to interconnect,” says Dr. Clough, who started playing Fortnite during the pandemic, and came up with the idea for the paper with Dr. Wu while attending a conference in Las Vegas. “At first they might need to do that through bilateral agreements, maybe between Roblox and Fortnite, or between Fortnite and Meta Horizon Worlds — and then they might gradually accumulate into a dominant metaverse.”
The paper, titled Metaverse Management as Urban Planning: Lessons from Paradise (Nevada), is the first of its kind to take a page from real-world urban design and closely link it with the creation of the metaverse.
Dr. Clough hopes that, like the internet, the metaverse will remain relatively open and unconstrained rather than a “walled garden” created by a dominant company.
If everything lines up, our online life will become more and more three-dimensional, more immersive and more engaging, says Dr. Clough, with even broader and richer access to information and other people than we have today.
“It might not be in a year or two, but looking 10 or 15 years down the line, I think we can expect a lot more of our virtual activity to happen in these 3D virtual spaces,” he says.
“The vision of the metaverse that's existed in science fiction novels has already captured people’s imaginations — and there are enough supporters and enthusiasts that some versions of the metaverse are destined to become reality sooner rather than later.”
Interview language(s): English
