Get in the Game

Chapter 10Life in the Screen: Metaverse and Future Directions

Popular culture has depicted a fairly uniform picture of the future of technology, particularly as it pertains to gaming. We imagine (often dystopian) societies where fully interactive and immersive virtual worlds have in some cases not only become the norm, but a necessary retreat from the everyday. Works such as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or Ernest Klein's Ready Player One paint the picture of a world where the better part of human interactivity exists not just online, but in virtual worlds of our own creation. The similarity of these visions are a reflection of the fact that the human mind tends to drift towards the possibilities of quite literally being within games—either as a fantasy or nightmare (depending on your POV) made manifest.

When we think about future directions for the gaming industry, and how businesses and brands may play into that future, it is not only impossible to address this future without mentioning the budding concept of the metaverse, but it is also helpful to frame the discussion in a way such that we think about the future of all game‐adjacent technologies through this same lens. As of the time of writing this book, the conversation around the concept of the metaverse has become a near‐deafening one catalyzed in part by Facebook renaming to “Meta” as a serious signal of intent towards building this future vision.¹ As both a company that has deeply shaped the modern internet and how ...