A major topic that has been raised amid discussions about the metaverse has been the concept of walled gardens, whereby major companies such as Meta will build siloed virtual worlds that will be closed off to other metaverse ecosystems.
This has been a concern for many who envision an open and interoperable metaverse — as complicated as that goal may be to achieve. In a panel discussion at the recent GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 event, representatives from both established gaming companies and Web3 startups discussed the feasibility of an open metaverse.
Moderator Luke Alvarez, Managing General Partner at Hiro Capital, questioned to what extent Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) is an open metaverse, as the company’s CEO Tim Sweeney has previously stated that the major players are competing with each other to get to one billion users, at which point they would be the presumed the leader in the space and able to set the standards.
Marc Petit, General Manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games, explained that Epic Games’ goal is not to be the leader of a siloed universe, but to set standards of openness for other metaverse companies. “When we think about Epic setting the standards, it’s about setting open and fair standards,” he said.
“We’ve had a very very public fight against walled gardens…when we look at metaverse platforms, we want them to be privacy friendly, we want them to be child friendly, we want them to be consumer friendly. So when Tim says wants to be the first to set those standards, these are the kinds of moral and ethical standards I think we want to incarnate.”
While Epic’s model is still centralized and not fully open, there may not be a way around this — at least for now. Fellow panelist Kuleen Nimkar, from blockchain company Solana Labs, explained: “The technology to make me feel like I'm in a digital universe, I think almost inevitably has to be centralized to some degree because it's really advanced technology that you can't really work in a blockchain environment. But every other component around it probably can live on chain.”
One of these components that will be essential to the metaverse is the ownership of digital items. Nimkar added that one of the main benefits of blockchain and Web3 technology is the ability to own items and contribute to systems “without someone in the middle being able to decide which pieces of content can be contributed and which pieces of content can be consumed.” Currently, for example, Fortnite can make certain skins available to players for a season, after which they expire and can no longer be used — players lack ultimate control over their in-game items.
When it comes to the ability for players to own items like skins and transfer them from game to game, Petit explained that while this is something that Epic is working towards, it presents many challenges. “The way you implement that, you need an economy,” he said. “What happens when you want to use a Fortnite skin in Call of Duty? There has to be an economical model where the creator gets properly compensated, the platform gets properly compensated…how do you reward Call of Duty for the fun it brings and how do you reward Fortnite for the creativity of the skin? That’s the issue. It’s a game design issue and an economical issue.”
Nimkar added that blockchain games have the potential to encourage interoperability between metaverse worlds, but that there isn’t yet enough demand for it. “The quality of blockchain games or crypto games, first of all, needs to catch up to, call it Web 2.0 games or the rest of the gaming world. Once that happens, and there's enough of a player base there — we have Fortnite level player bases in blockchain games — I think then interoperability will prop up naturally,” he said.
In another session during the event, Jason Rubin, VP of Metaverse Content at Meta, noted that Meta is also looking to build an open metaverse, although given Meta’s track record (as Facebook), many people are understandably skeptical.
“We think the perfect situation is that you can jump into any space with any identity system,” he said. “And then, as you decide to move between identity systems, you don’t have to lose the friends you’re with or the group of people you’re with and reorganize — that you can move freely between those systems.”
It remains to be seen how these companies will ultimately continue to roll out their versions of the metaverse and to what extent well they will achieve the goal of interoperability and openness — after all, the metaverse as a whole can only be so open if various worlds and experiences are still owned and operated by competing companies.
However, the idea of interoperability, at the very least, seems to be a vision shared by bigger companies and startups alike. The main obstacles will be around the technology needed to make it happen, which will hopefully be solved in time and with a few more billion dollars’ worth of investment in the space.