Interconnected Realities

2The Social Metaverse

• Purpose: Meeting other people in digital environments for socializing, education, and enjoying shared activities
• Problems Solved: Transcends the limits of physical location, allows you to display the identity and join the community of your choice, and wear great clothes
• Key Access Method: Consumer VR headsets, PCs, smartphones
• Contribution to the Wider Metaverse: Meaningful connection to others, proving the need for “rules of engagement” to discourage bad behavior, the ability to create new worlds as well as preserving those that might be lost

There are two main categories of digital experience that are most closely associated with the broad term “Metaverse” today: virtual reality (VR) social Metaverse spaces such as VRChat and Horizon Worlds, and PC‐based Web3 Metaverse spaces like Decentraland and The Sandbox. (I'm going to discuss these separately, because, as we shall see, they are indeed very separate from each other.) But they're not the only Metaverse categories in town. There are the gaming Metaverses¹ growing in worlds like Fortnite and Roblox, and purpose‐built Metaverses like the ones created by apps in the areas of wellness, service provision, and social good. Then we have the whole separate category of Metaverses created for corporate use. These bear a relation to the general Metaverse not unlike the relationship between corporate Intranets and the global Internet – separate, but vital for the provision of key services to the companies ...