By Kim Callaghan for Award Pool. Full article available at www.awardpool.com.
Metaverse. Sounds a little sci-fi, right? The term was coined by an American author, Neal Stephenson, in his dystopian sci-fi novel, Snow Crash. So yes, it’s a bit sci-fi, but it’s also become a part of today’s reality. Parts of the metaverse are already in operation and the creation of a complete, universal, cross-platform metaverse is coming.
So what is it? The metaverse is the universe that’s inside of video games, the internet and smartphones. It comes from meta, which means ‘beyond’ and verse, which refers to the universe. It includes the digital things that people wear, see and use, including digitized versions of real-life places, buildings, roads and more.
Right now, the metaverse exists within certain games and apps and includes only the contents within those specific platforms. But the idea is that eventually, the metaverse will grow to include cross-platform data so that people can travel between games, platforms and websites. With a universal metaverse, when users travel between metaverse locations or apps, they maintain their virtual belongings, visuals, and any other data they include as part of the metaverse.
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Kimberly Callaghan 