We were invited on Thursday, September 29th Welcome to the Metaverse: digital fun and virtual strategy Organized by MISOM: Milan School of Management, in the Computer Science Department of the University of Milan.
Round table, moderated by Luca Tremolada (writer of innovation and technology for Il Sole 24 ore and founder of Info Data), who looked at the metaverse focusing, above all in the first part, on gaming, Without the appearance of almost omnipresent optimism at any cost. In recent years, major companies and brands have become increasingly interested in the gaming world and this is certainly not surprising, especially after the staggering numbers recorded during the pandemic.
Welcome to the Metaverse was a conference packed with food for thought and almost made anyone who’s played video games for two decades smile: It seems like a lot of the press just found out about the metaverse with Meta, but in the world of video games, particularly in the sub-genre of MMORPGs, this is such a familiar and ingrained concept that it’s seen as a mere formality. Of course, from the point of view of pure business, business meetings or smart work, the metaverse as understood in the past period can also be something new and not many have seen it, but gamers have already immersed themselves in it in ’98 with latest onlinewhich by the way were interactions with the world and with other players that some products don’t have today.
There wasn’t even talk of VR helmets or experiencing them firsthand at the time and years forward, not even in other newer “metaverses” like Ragnarok, Lineage or World of Warcraft, to name a few of the most famous, but already with Roblox Something has moved.
Major brands are looking at this world with increasing interest, beyond the cooperation with esports teams that we have countless examples for years. The problem, if we can call it that, is that Export in Italy has not yet taken root as a businessBut in the east, professional League of Legends and Dota2 players are seen as equal to soccer players.
In 2020, the epidemic arrived, and industries had to inevitably collide with the virtual world: Nintendo I realized that entire multinational corporations started creating real branded islands when they were just released animal crossing And the antennas are finally straightened.
Metaverse: Choices and Critical Issues
Companies have begun to seriously study the metaverse and the gaming world, especially in terms of engagement strategies. We are talking about 3.4 billion players in the worldmany with interesting buying power, this is a community that definitely cannot be missed.
Consumer analysis, creating engaging virtual events and finding the right language to engage with these potential customers will be among the focal points of the future business. The numbers it spreads each year iidea In the video game market trend, moreover, it is certainly not new and, above all, it is certainly not a penny.
Despite this, there is still more than a critical look at this world and the intervention of Fabio Mosca, co-founder of Another factgives a very striking example of this, saying that when they introduce themselves to a potential client as a video game company that creates “serious” virtual reality applications, most of the time they decide to run away.
companies like Real Mutual InsuranceInstead, in the meantime, they are setting up a veritable internal laboratory to study these realities and understand engagement options; To this must be added the massive investments made by multinational companies such as Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon in this direction, with the expectation Over the next ten years, the turnover was about $1.4 trillion.
In short, there is a lot of optimism in the air, however Critical issues remainThere has already been talk of obvious infrastructure problems in Italy when it comes to metaverses Between insufficient connections and the need for computers and virtual reality devices from a specific range for you to access them easily.
During the ISSM roundtable, the discussion was expanded a bit, to include issues that concern everyone to a certain extent beyond geographical affiliation, but in some way we can relate to those we already know well: one of the factors that Still making most people turn up their nose is the same graphic metaverses that have been created in recent years to do business, It’s still patched and doesn’t do much to allow for real immersion. It is also easily connected to equipment and infrastructure: the higher the definition, the more polygons required, the greater the power of the peripheral must be to be able to access it without latency, let alone connections. It’s no coincidence that both Roblox and Decentraland place real stakes on the number of polygons available for building.
Graphics are still inconsistent, access fees are required due to equipment and infrastructure aside, and it doesn’t take long to figure out the next sticking point: participation. Events in Centraland are practically deserted, little interaction with the surrounding world except for a few QR codes linked to pages and videos, unbearable lag and load times make it clear There is still a way to go.