People love to speculate — occasionally, cough, in the pages of this newsletter — about the metaverse. They ponder what it’ll be like, why people will use it, and how it will be governed, all in some far-off ethereal future. But actually there’s already a metaverse, and already quite a few people socializing, shopping and creating in virtual spaces like Meta’s Horizon Worlds and Decentraland. What they’re experiencing, why they’re there in the first place and how they want it to evolve are all pretty powerful indicators of what might happen as the landscape develops. Protocol Labs, an open-source Web3 research lab that’s developed decentralized alternatives to foundational internet technologies like HTTP and cloud storage, decided to find out what their experience is like. For its report, which is shared exclusively with DFD, it surveyed nearly 100 users of the Web3 metaverse — that is, worlds that use NFTs and other kinds of blockchain-based protocols — and conducted in-depth interviews with 16 of them. These are people who are all in on these emerging technologies — the kind of people who get more excited by the idea of a “tokenized” economy, or an NFT property deed. Even for this curious vanguard, Protocol finds that there are still just as many significant barriers to adoption as there are novel thrills. “Decentraland was quite clunky and I was using it on my computer,” one respondent told the researchers. “I felt like I was in a game… If this is the metaverse, this isn’t new.” Three big takeaways from the report, which you can read in full here: The kids aren’t buying yet. As we’ve covered repeatedly in DFD, if the metaverse vision of a fully embodied 3D internet is ever to supplant our current 2D one, it’s likely to be the next generation that drives adoption, having grown up with a technology most people today find disorienting at best and nausea-inducing at worst. One problem for the decentralized vision of the metaverse in that scenario: Worlds like Decentraland are, for now, largely child-free. “...I’ve tried to get [my kids] into the [web3] metaverse,” one respondent said. “I think they’re shy about the social atmosphere. I mean, it’s a bunch of older people, maybe 25-40, and they’re 12 and 13. That’s a little weird to them.” (More than two-thirds of respondents to the survey were between the ages of 25 and 44.) Compared to the platforms that Protocol cites as “Web2” metaverses like Minecraft or VRChat, the entire premise of Web3 must seem decidedly foreign. Interoperability? Portable digital “wearables”? NFT property? That might be fine for digital entrepreneurs and technologists, but the next generation of “virtual natives” wants to play actually, uh, entertaining games — something Web3 platforms decidedly lack at the moment. But that’s not all necessarily bad news for this particular vision of the metaverse, because on the other hand… People actually want to own digital goods. The people who are invested in digital ownership are very invested in it. It’s why they’re there in the first place — “When you say metaverse, it’s not only about the VR component, but it’s also about being able to own your content, your scores, your identity,” one respondent said. These people are the true idealists, who see even in the dystopia of a “Ready Player One” or “Snow Crash” a kernel of promise for a digital world that truly provides equal (or superior) opportunity to the real one. Survey respondents listed decentralization and “creating/building within the metaverse” as its top draws, and cite positively their experiences with hybrid creative/economic pursuits like Christie’s auctions and displaying their own art. They’re somewhat more skeptical, or ambivalent, about ensuring via blockchain that their digital goods are actually “portable”: As one respondent said, “It’s not a deal breaker.” “No thank you” to crypto gaming. For a while it seemed like “play-to-earn” gaming could be the metaverse’s killer app, with the popularity of games like Axie Infinity exploding. That was before a high-profile string of crypto heists, one of the most notorious of which targeted Axie itself. That might have been enough to drive wary users away, but there’s something else dragging down the popularity of these games, which in theory are meant to instantiate the core Web3 concept of digital ownership: They simply aren’t very fun. “In Decentraland they have the Ice poker, you have to really grind to do it. And that’s one thing I hate about games is the grind aspect of it,” one respondent said. “I have real life stuff to do, and I cannot spend six hours a day sitting at a computer and trying to even come close to what I’ll make doing other things.” Only 12 percent of the respondents said they “regularly use” play-to-earn games. And furthermore, somewhat surprisingly, only 42 percent of these tech-enthusiastic respondents identified themselves as “gamers” at all, mostly citing the above respondent’s decline in free time. Ultimately what Web3 enthusiasts want out of their digital worlds isn’t that different from the average web user: They want it to be sociable, secure, and to empower or enrich their lives in some way that isn’t accessible to them offline. What is different, however, is that they want personal autonomy within that system, and to have metaverse platforms that are designed to center the user and their rights — not unlike current conversations in Washington and Silicon Valley around social media and AI, which makes reports like this one from Protocol worth paying attention to.
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