Venture capitalist and former Amazon executive Matthew Ball wrote this year “just as it was hard to envision in 1982 what the Internet of 2020 would be, we don’t really know how to describe the metaverse”. The Metaverse will likely find and change the leading identity providers at a flash point in time. More broadly, the Metaverse stands to alter how we allocate and monetize modern resources. In this excellent analysis by Matthew Ball, he identifies “core attributes” of what a MV would look like, and what it … These include everything from consumer-recognizable .GIFs filetypes to the websocket protocol that underlies almost every form of real-time communication between a browser and other servers on the internet. However, they did not do so together. While this lacks several of the key attributes of the Metaverse today, such as individual “presence”, it begins amassing enormous volumes of “players” into fully shared virtual environments that aren’t currently possible via cloud or locally-rendered gaming. It owns several of the most popular, long-running multiplayer games (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, DotA). The value destroyed by such a decision and the premium required to buy Unity is likely to make such a move prohibitive. This is like saying is ‘World of Warcraft’, the iPhone, or Google is the Internet. Appropriately, he starts by putting all of it in context, reminding us of the memex-hypertext-web evolution, which took decades to come to fruition. CHAPTER 2: WHY DOES THE METAVERSE MATTER? Just making a mall capable of fitting a hundred thousand people or a hundred shops doesn’t mean it attracts a single consumer or brand. And you’ll recognize each one. Inspiration for several characteristics of the Metaverse was taken from Matthew Ball's article: The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fornite. Fortnite is too valuable a platform. Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not explicitly declared his intent to develop and own the Metaverse, his obsession with it seems fairly clear. This doesn’t mean turning Unity into a proprietary engine can’t be strategically smart. And while the web today is built on open standards, much of it is closed and proprietary. Microsoft is a good example. Because there’s one thing that can be said for sure about the future: it’s on its way. The major tech companies don’t just want to lead the Metaverse, they want to own and define it. The Internet came from public research universities and US government programs. There are billions of people on today’s Facebook, for example, but each user shares an individual connection with the Facebook server, not with any other user. 3 episodes totalling 3 hours, 45 minutes. While each of these analogies is likely to be a part of the Metaverse, they aren’t actually the Metaverse. This is why it’s so important to Sweeney for his company to lead early efforts to establish the Metaverse — he fears who might instead. Individual games such as World of Warcraft have long had functioning economies where real people trade virtual goods for real money, or perform virtual tasks in exchange for real money. The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite | Matthew Ball; Metaverse is the alternate digital realities where people work, play, and socialize. and Matthew Ball, interactive media investor and startup advisor. You can literally wear a Marvel character’s costume inside Gotham City, while interacting with those wearing legally licensed NFL uniforms. Pioneers in virtual worlds met up at GamesBeat 2020 to talk about the promise of the Metaverse and what it will take to get there. But it’s particularly rare to see it crossed over in an experience they don’t control editorially, let alone one based around unpredictability (not even the creative team behind Fortnite knows what it will do in 2021) and with such a wide range of IP. According to Epic Games Founder/CEO Tim Sweeney, this means that there are now three ways to create in Unreal: the standard “coding” engine itself, the more simplified and “visual” Twinmotion, and Fortnite Creative Mode for those with no experience in programming and design. It also operates the most used operating system on earth (Android), as well as the most open of the major consumer computing platforms. That kind of cultural power suggests the awesome potential of “Fortnite” to become something much larger than it is, like a metaverse, says Matthew Ball, a digital-media analyst. There will still be a large role for open-source projects with non-corporate ethos — and they will attract some of the most interesting creative talent in the Metaverse — but there are only a few likely leaders in the early Metaverse. And while something that sounds straight out of science fiction may leave you thinking that it has no bearing on today’s world, think again. Any thoughts, comments, disagreements, additions, ideas - please email me at mb at matthewball dot vc and I will make updates. Similarly, it’s unusual for IP owners to allow their characters and stories to be intermingled with other IP. They pose a grave threat to our democracy.” As “founder and controlling shareholder of Epic”, Sweeney “would never allow” Epic to “share user data…with any other company. Offer unprecedented interoperability of data, digital items/assets, content, and so on across each of these experiences – your “Counter-Strike” gun skin, for example, could also be used to decorate a gun in Fortnite, or be gifted to a friend on/through Facebook. My guest today, Matthew Ball, is a long time coming. Valve doesn’t offer server infrastructure, but its Steamworks solution gives developers match-making and account services for free — but only for the Steam Store, Valve’s core business. Companies are already using game engine software to do things like produce film and television, design airports and plan commercial infrastructure. This model continues today. The Internet today is a product of a relatively messy process in which the open (mostly academic) internet developed in parallel with closed (mostly consumer-oriented) services that often looked to “rebuild” or “reset” open standards and protocols. The same can be said for defining the Metaverse. As a former Amazon Studios executive and current venture capitalist, Matthew Ball is well versed on interactive media, including gaming and streaming video. But Fortnite has become so popular and so unique that most counterparties have no choice but to participate – in fact, they’re probably desperate to integrate into the “game” – just as P&G can’t say “eh, Facebook isn’t for us”. Past Beach Reads have gone in-depth on the metaverse, largely thanks to the work of Matthew Ball. From 2016-2018, he served as the global Head of Strategy for Amazon Studios, and prior to that was a Director at The Chernin Group’s Otter Media. Two months later, he was even more explicit: “The amount of power possessed by Google and Facebook. Not long after in-game trade economies emerged, many “players” – often employed by a larger company and typically in lower-income countries — would spend a workday collecting digital resources for sale inside or outside the game. True, it operates the second largest computing platform of the modern era (and by far the most valuable one), as well as the largest game stores on the planet (which also means it pays more to developers than anyone else on earth). Matthew Ball - The Future of Media: Movies, the Metaverse, and More Matthew Ball is the Managing Partner of Epyllion Industries and the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios. He’s the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor, and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. In fact, Fortnite’s Creative Mode, already feels like a proto-Metaverse. This would have practical value but is probably unlikely as each of the leaders in the “Metaverse era” will still want their own identity systems. 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