Metaverse already mobilizes the luxury industry, big techs and startups; understand

Metaverse, the word of the moment in technology, will not be restricted to large companies in the sector. Interest in the term exploded after Facebook, Inc. changed the name to Meta, in late October, but the concept is already embedded in the gaming market and attracts attention from the luxury industry and startups.

The metaverse and NFTs (crypto-actives category) could generate up to US$50 billion (R$277 billion) of revenue in the luxury market by 2030 — assuming that they consolidate as trends — according to a Morgan Stanley report.

In 2021, startups related to the area have already raised nearly US$ 10.4 billion (BRL 55.8 billion) from venture capital funds, according to Crunchbase, an American site specializing in investments. There are new funds on the market that specialize only in companies of this type, which combine virtual and augmented reality and provide customers with 3D and immersive experiences in digital environments.

The idea of ​​metaverse is old in the technical community and in science fiction, but the appropriation of the term by Facebook alerted competitors who were already groping this terrain. The announcement also highlighted the company’s long-term commitment, which does not intend to remain just a representative of social networks and their almost insoluble problems.

The metaverse relies on virtual or augmented reality, but it goes beyond that. It is the digital environment in which people, represented by avatars, interact with each other or with objects. An example: when putting on glasses, each member of a Zoom meeting is transported to a digital room identical to a physical room where they can look around and direct the speech to colleagues, also emulated by avatars.

This is the idealization of what the market should develop, but these experiments are incipient. Overall, so far, it’s more of a mirage than a practical achievement (much like “smart cities” or the idea of ​​”shared economy”, other terms sold by Silicon Valley).

There are examples of immersive digital environments in gaming platforms like Fortnite, Roblox and Naver’s Zepeto, as well as other initiatives coming from big techs.

Two days after Facebook embraced the metaverse in its new brand, Microsoft announced that it will link to Teams (its video conferencing platform) a program for collective virtual experiences, called Mesh. The idea is to make online meetings more interactive — though they are expected to decline as the pandemic subsides.

The Teams metaverse will not need a headset or special glasses. Basically, the person can appear in the video or put an animated version of themselves to talk to. The voice will be adapted to the character using artificial intelligence.

Although it seems unhelpful, it is one of Microsoft’s first commercial stages in creating work environments tied to the idea of ​​metaverse. Like Facebook, the company is betting that online interaction needs to gain new layers and generate new types of experiences.

According to Morgan Stanley, the metaverse will allow luxury brands to broaden their audience and consumer audience from potential ads and partnerships on platforms such as Roblox, whose average age is 13 years old.

Analysts are betting that demand for virtual representations, such as Gucci’s gaming bags, for example, could grow. Disney has also decided to tie the metaverse to its strategy, communicating to investors that it hopes to connect its consumers through “Disney’s own metaverse.” Louis Vuitton has launched a game to celebrate its birthday featuring avatars and branded cards in NFT.

“It’s possible to engulf a lot of what we have in the physical world in ten years: a concert of 1 billion people connected, a football game, where with a pair of glasses you choose where you want to watch, without the limits of camera position , as well as cultural and educational activities,” says Christian Perrone, director of law and gov tech at ITS-Rio.

While new technologies excite consumers, experts point to the maintenance of already harmful patterns, such as the industry oligopolies of search engines and social networks.

“There are a series of rights and discussions that will be amplified when it comes to metaverse. Imagine content moderation. How will an account be suspended? The implications will be much greater”, says Caio Machado, director of the Vero Institute and Oxford researcher.

The metaverse is located in the literature in the so-called web 3.0. Overall, 1.0 was marked by the connection between people and information and 2.0 by interpersonal interaction via social networks.

For Machado, “the metaverse is to the social network as the iPhone is to the snake’s Nokia”. This means that if Nokia only sent messages, the iPhone combined a map, GPS, calculator and phone. The consequence was that people went from 15 minutes a day on the phone to four hours.

“If today the average is about four hours for social networks, the trend in the metaverse is that people live almost entirely on the internet”, he says. In this logic, business models may not be well defined yet, but keeping people connected so far has paid off.