I love that his default mode seems to be thinking about big picture and strategy. What we see are brands taking a…. (One way I try to think about these three areas is via the Book of Genesis – first, “God” must create the underlying universe (“concurrency infrastructure”), then s/he must define its laws of physics and rules (“standards and protocols”), then s/he must fill it with life (“content”) that’s worthwhile, evolves, and iterates against selection pressures. He’s the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor, and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. Still, it’s often impossible to predict how they’ll fall into place, which features matter more or less, what sort of governance models or competitive dynamics will drive them, or what new experiences will be produced. I never published the audio one I wrote last year. Teenagers in the 1970s to 2010s would come home and spend three hours talking on the phone. Read his latest on the past and future of Nintendo and you’ll see why. Similarly, it’s unusual for IP owners to allow their characters and stories to be intermingled with other IP. Companies are already using game engine software to do things like produce film and television, design airports and plan commercial infrastructure. The “Streaming Wars” have only just begun, yet the first streaming video took place more than 25 years ago. It also operates the most used operating system on earth (Android), as well as the most open of the major consumer computing platforms. All digital content should be living, after all. In addition, the company is not just the market leader in indexing both the digital and physical world (nearly 10,000 employees contribute to its mapping initiatives), but it is also the most successful digital software and services company outside of China. And the more valuable and interoperable the Metaverse is, the harder it will be to establish industry-wide consensus around topics such as data security, data persistence, forward compatible code evolution, and transactions. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of those in the technology community have imagined a future state of, if not quasi-successor to, the Internet – called the “Metaverse”. Here’s a look at Ball’s musings on what the Metaverse really is, why it matters, what it’s going to take to build, who’s trying to build it, and what that means for your business. As these large companies continue to scale, go digital, and integrate into greater technology and introduce social commerce functions, there’s more opportunity for major interconnectivity and interoperability. The similarly named Singularity6 is building a virtual world that, unlike Fortnite, is intended to develop into a Metaverse from day one. Ball was born in Liverpool. What is the internet? But if the goal of a Unity acquisition is to ensure a foundational role in the new Internet, an acquirer instead has an incentive to keep the engine open/available across platforms, and the price can easily become irrelevant. In ideal circumstances, the “Mayor” (i.e. Although some games with highest concurrencies have existed for more than twenty years, such as Second Life or Warcraft, they essentially spoofed the experience by “sharding” and splitting users into different “worlds” and servers. This can be as small as digital outfits (“skins”) or dances (“emotes”). Sitting at a keyboard, locked in position for hours and focusing on a fixed screen is a recipe for a range of physical complaints, from sore necks to … In addition, most (though not all) Unity-powered games are relatively simple mobile titles rather than those likely to serve as gateways to the Metaverse. Ultimately, you’ll find many of the same items in the offices of Big Tech CEOs. However, these are not sufficient attributes for the Metaverse. Matthew Ball is the managing partner of Epyllion Industries, which operates a venture and corporate advisory arm, as well as a pre-seed/seed venture fund. Apple is unlikely to drive or operate the underlying Metaverse. The Metaverse isn’t about scaling what we have, it’s about connecting everything we have together. -Metaverse Masterclass: Matthew Ball Interview. What’s more, these “games” are even more reliant on user-generated content and user-led experiences — there is no underlying game-like goal such as “winning” or “surviving” in Minecraft, the “game” is creation (which isn’t to say that users haven’t created many “games” with game-like goals). Its Metaverse-oriented assets are also growing rapidly and now include patents for semiconductor and brain-to-machine computing interfaces. This Protocol piece instead centers on another important "game," Roblox. But in general, Ball said, the Metaverse we think will be a persistent, synchronous, live, living universe that affords each of us an individual sense of presence, a sense of … As such, lines are being blurred between our virtual experiences and what we do in those experiences. An astounding 11MM people experienced the event in real time. Consider, for example, “Gold Farming”. Thus, the questions are ones of who and why and to which ends. Imagine if instead of being designed by nonprofits and technologists looking to share research files and messages, it was designed to sell ads or collect user data for profits. You may opt-out by, Storytelling and expertise from marketers, America's Top Givers: The 25 Most Philanthropic Billionaires, EY & Citi On The Importance Of Resilience And Innovation, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change, conversation with Zefr and Brand Storytelling. However, such examples have rapidly expanded since. But what’s important is to recognize the Metaverse isn’t a game, a piece of hardware, or an online experience. Gaming has gotten to such an advanced level when it comes to simulation and visualization that it is paving the way for the Metaverse. This concept was then used to formulate the idea of “hypertext” (a term coined two decades later), which in turn guided the development of the World Wide Web (developed another two decades later). The challenge was timing and how to package such a service (it took another 10 years for Hollywood to accept all of their channels, genres and content needs to be collapsed into a single app/brand). CHAPTER 3: HOW DOES ONE SIMPLY BUILD A METAVERSE? However, it’s not yet clear what role Unity will have in driving the Metaverse. Similarly, a car designed for Rocket League (or even for Porsche’s website) could be brought over to work in Roblox. There may not be 100 players, but it’s still a battle royale. A number of companies are working hard to solve this problem, such as the aptly named Improbable. & Into the Metaverse Digital Only: January 26 – 28, 2021 Join today’s leaders in games for two days of content and networking surrounding the hottest topics, from major IDFA changes to the imminent arrival of the metaverse. But Fortnite as a social network and impossible-to-ignore cultural phenomenon, Ball says, provides Epic Games a key advantage for leading in the Metaverse race. And if today’s Internet dystopia scares you, the Metaverse … And while this “labor” is typically menial, repetitive, and limited to a few applications, the diversity and value of this “work” will grow as the Metaverse itself does. All digital content should be living, after all. As a result, most of the Internet’s underlying systems are oriented around one server talking to one other server or an end-user device. It’s a difficult question to answer. ‎Show Invest Like the Best, Ep Matt Ball - The Future of Media: Movies, the Metaverse, and More - 2020年8月4日 Matthew Ball (@ballmatthew). However, Epic Games Founder/CEO Tim Sweeney has been vocal about the fact that today’s standard 30% commissions for digital content sales (e.g. If it was a “fast-twitch” game such as Rocket League or Call of Duty, these slowdowns would have been unplayable. Not only will the Metaverse grow the pie by too much, big transitions tend to disrupt when they’re hard to see and incumbents are slow to respond or capital constrained. It may very well be similar in the Metaverse, although one of the theories on the Metaverse is that there will be a unified identity, which is why companies like Apple and Epic Games are fighting for control of being the de facto identity federator. It’s also available free to any engine, any platform, and any game. Over time, the sophistication of Epic’s gaming engine has grown so significant it now powers a variety of traditional media experiences. This will be enormously difficult and take decades. Valve’s Steam is orders larger than the Epic Games Store in terms of users, revenue, and playtime. Tencent owns that on-ramp, and the titles that will keep people engaged and immersed in early versions of the Metaverse. And while Microsoft clearly foresaw mobile, it misread the role of the operating system and too much of the hardware, hence the rise of iOS and Android globally (and Microsoft’s shift from the OS layer to the app/services one). He is also a Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Senior Advisor to Telefilm Canada and contributor to The Economist. My guest today, Matthew Ball, is a long time coming. Take posture, for example. In fact, most of the FAAMG companies seem to believe that glasses will be a key gateway into our digital future and are collectively investing billions into the form factor. Matthew Ball’s articles about video gaming and the broader media landscape are required reading for anyone interested in the industry. This model continues today. Under the Metaverse, would-be laborers who choose to live outside cities will be able to participate in the “high value” economy via virtual labor. But in its full vision, the Metaverse becomes the gateway to most digital experiences, a key component of all physical ones, and the next great labor platform. Fulfilled by Amazon, Amazon Channels), is building what they hope will be the first major gaming/rendering engine purpose-designed for the cloud computing era, reportedly working on AR glasses, and is the leader in in-home/office digital assistants. It doesn’t have a store, a user account system, or a real direct-to-consumer experience. He openly implores Google and Apple, which generate several thousand times the revenue of Epic’s fledgling store, to match Epic’s rates. The Internet is a wide set of protocols, technology, tubes and languages, plus access devices and content and communication experiences atop them. And for that matter, all of the prerequisites for building Facebook existed pre-Y2K, but Facebook didn't come along until 2005 – and even then, it was an accident. In addition to operating Fortnite — which was in theory a side project — Epic Games also owns the second largest independent gaming engine, Unreal. However, the most well-worn is likely to be a copy of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which first described and essentially coined the terms “Metaverse” and “Avatar”. In addition, the Metaverse will need altogether new rules for censorship, control of communications, regulatory enforcement, tax reporting, the prevention of online radicalization, and many more challenges that we’re still struggling with today. While science fiction may have us inclined to assume that one dominant company will usher us all into the Metaverse, that's not likely, as it is not the way we operate today. It will have a fully functioning economy and span the physical and digital worlds. Other companies, such as Genvid (a portfolio company), are building SDKs that allow anyone to build server-rendered experiences that millions can participate in together using livestreams with light client-side interactivity. ‎Show Invest Like the Best, Ep Matt Ball - The Future of Media: Movies, the Metaverse, and More - 2020年8月4日 He’s the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor, and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. Its players aren’t logging in to “play”, per se, but to be with their virtual and real-world friends. (16:20) Matthew Ball updates our understanding of the metaverse. Matthew Ball talks about games as the “on-ramp” experience for the Metaverse, the thing that will get early adopters to try it out. It’s taken 40 years for technology to advance towards hosting these millions of people but for the shared, synchronous experience that Ball talks of, we now need to look to the cloud. Fortnite began as a game, but it quickly evolved into a social square. The Metaverse is substantively different from today’s Internet/mobile models, architecture, and priorities. In addition, the company is investing heavily into AR devices and “connective tissue” that will aid the Metaverse (e.g. And so, it’s helpful to return to the (lengthy) creation of the World Wide Web. Matthew Ball (MB): I’m Matthew Ball, I’m a venture investor. We [won’t] share it, sell it, or broker access to it for advertising like so many other companies do.”. This sort of thing hasn’t really happened before. But unlike SimCity, there will be many mayors, not one — and their desires and incentives will often conflict. Even though the company is enormously valuable, any would-be acquirer has to keep Unity fully platform-agnostic in order to preserve its market share, developer support, and influence (e.g. From 2016-2018, he served as the global Head of Strategy for Amazon Studios, and prior to that was a … “Virtual reality” – VR is a way to experience a virtual world or space. He's the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios, an investor, and probably my favorite business essayist writing today. Even if the Metaverse falls short of the fantastical visions captured by science fiction authors, it is likely to produce trillions in value as a new computing platform or content medium. © 2021 Forbes Media LLC. Columbia Venture Community is pleased to invite you to a virtual panel on the Metaverse, the next stage of the internet (and a key investment focus of Big Tech and beyond), with Matthew Ball and Jacob Navok. Technology frequently produces surprises that nobody predicts. We don’t know exactly what the Metaverse will need, let alone which existing standards will transfer over, how, to what effects, when, or through which applications and groups. These experiences work because of persistent connections that update each other in real-time and with a degree of accuracy that other programs don’t generally need. A “digital and virtual economy” – These, too, already exist. To this end, Epic acquired the company Twinmotion in April of last year. And if the Metaverse does indeed serve as a functional “successor” to the web — only this time with even greater reach, time spent, and more commercial activity — there’s likely to be even more economic upside. By Jordan Kelley, Content Director, BrandStorytelling.tv. Disney’s The Mandalorian was shot and fully rendered in Unreal, with director Jon Favreau able to literally enter its digital sets to frame a shot and position characters. In addition, these companies are incredibly resistant to cross-integrating their systems or sharing their data. This has included the universe of the game Borderlands, Batman’s hometown of Gotham, and the old west. Although the full vision for the Metaverse remains hard to define, seemingly fantastical, and decades away, the pieces have started to feel very real. It’s “the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants,” according to Matthew Ball, venture capitalist and former head of strategy at Amazon Studios. Advancements in personal computing, technology, new media, and gaming lend themselves to the first signs of what is referred to as the “Metaverse”, an often imagined but rarely well-defined ideal of a technological future that will do for society what the internet did for the 21st century. To this end, the Metaverse has become the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants. Over time, each option is likely to become more capable, easier to use and integrated. 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