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The 'Metaverse', a term coined in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, is a space in which humans can participate in a shared virtual universe. The Metaverse is the idea that there will be an interoperable virtual-reality in which humans will become avatars. The Metaverse is the new internet, an unfolding past the flat World Wide Web we've come to know. It will connect people all over the world, create a plane for building and engaging-in activities, and unleash the collective imagination and creative might of communities across the globe.
The Metaverse can be experienced in full Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, on the web — or anywhere in between. Unlike games or applications you may have come to experience to date, the Metaverse is persistent — that is, the Metaverse continues to exist, evolve, and grow even when you’re offline.
Critically, the Metaverse is a platform that is not tied to one app or a single place. Persistence, shared standards, and interoperability will allow you to visit your virtual office in the morning for work, pop-over to a virtual Paris to catch some live music for lunch, jump through a portal to your personal private island to catch up with your friends, and take a helicopter to the pilot lounge where you can find new friends to queue for the galactic battlefield.
‘Metaverse’ can sometimes be an overloaded term—referring both to the total collection of all digital worlds and games—while also referring to the individual worlds themselves. For instance, all of the platforms listed here on WeMeta comprise the Metaverse, while an individual game such as Decentraland, may also call itself a Metaverse.
You may already be familiar with certain implementations of the Metaverse such as World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Roblox, the Sims, or Minecraft. While these Metaverses have been enormously successful, there is a rising generation of new Metaverses with a deeper emphasis on ownership, decentralization, and player-run economies & communities. These ‘open’ Metaverses include, among others, Decentraland, Sandbox, Somnium Space, and Cryptovoxels.