What Keeps Gaming Growing in Metaverse?

By making VR gaming more immersive, interactive, and real, Metaverse has aided in making it a disruptive concept

Metaverse, the unbeatable AR/VR frontier for anything from meeting new people to selling goods, no wonder it is playing the diligent host for the gaming industry. Right from the early immersive 2D games like Minecraft and Second Life, Metaverse has constantly incorporated all the elements of gaming. Elements like 3D avatars, world-building, and observation which essentially belong to gameplay have been integrated into Metaverse. With multiverse companies like Meta Platforms, Unity and Epic Games depending heavily on immersive technologies, gaming has become an inevitable strategy for these companies. As per a recent survey, 'Global Virtual Reality In Gaming Market(2021 to 2026) – Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts', around 59% of industry experts opined that gaming would dominate VR investments for the next few years, while 64% responded that gaming had the highest potential for VR compared to other use cases.

Metaverse Gaming – The road map

Metaverse being a unified and interoperable virtual space, users can interact with one another in a three-dimensional space in real-time, with the help of human-computer interfaces and the rise of spatial communication platforms. These technologies will aid in making VR gaming more immersive, interactive, and real. VR gameplays currently are available only as applications that can be installed on individual devices and accessed through VR gear and mobile phones. However, the Metaverse a concept conceived in the fiction novel Snow Crash, takes it to the next level, with the interoperable game, spaces, and apps connected into a single environment. Users will be able to navigate seamlessly among different immersive spaces, without having to switch between headsets and port non-fungible tokens, data, and avatars.

Ways Metaverse plays host to games

• Games as platforms: At gaming platforms users can develop creative content, build sub-games and expand virtual worlds, to take up transactions in that virtual world.
• Social gaming: Now that multi-player virtual environments are possible, users can invite real-world friends to interact with other players setting up a community sort of environment, giving way for engaging in other non-gaming activities. For example, Fortnite, Roblox, Decentraland, and The Sandbox offer socializing spaces and opportunities to compete in gaming.
• Earn while you play

This is one factor, the popularity of the Metaverse platform hinges on heavily. Apart from using it to tell stories by following certain rules, the users can earn money by selling digital assets from hit titles to other users in exchange for cryptocurrencies.

• Asset portability

Carrying gaming assets like clothing, weapons, or enhancements from one game to the other is very much possible in a Metaverse. Thanks to Metaverse interoperability.

• Mixed Reality experiences

The virtual reality though seems like providing a real-life experience, it is the combination of AR and MR that delivers the organic experience. At Metaverse, transit from one world to another, for example, from group text in AR to an MR board game to a full-fledged VR world is smooth.

• Development of Gaming Technologies

With Metaverse gaming almost taking the centre stage, it has attracted significant investments from VC firms, tech giants, etc. As serious gaming rose to meteoric heights, gaming companies are set to build infrastructure for the Metaverse. Decentraland, Sandbox, Epic Games, Meta Platforms, and Improbable are some of the key players in Metaverse gaming.

 What are the major concerns?

Just like VR and video games have to face legal and ethical issues, Metaverse too has to address its own set of concerns. Being an open forum and avatar-oriented, Metaverse can make it difficult to differentiate children's activity from that of an adult. Unless the games include age-appropriate experiences with controls, Metaverse will prove to be a negative influence on the community. When it comes to NFT ownership, there are no set laws. As a result, NFTs won inside a game may not be universally portable. The platforms are yet to define the scope of ownership rights, for the users can manage, trade, and profit from NFTs. Although standards are set high, there is a lot of work to be done on the infrastructural front. Tech giants and patent holders from different countries must come together to work towards a system of Metaverse standards.