Metaverse Games Can’t Define Themselves – It’s a Big Problem

It’s been over a year now since the concept of the metaverse became one of the tech buzzwords. The first time we heard about the metaverse from Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was in October 2021. He changed his company name to Meta and promised to build a new virtual world in which we could work and play.

Nobody expects Meta’s plans to come true overnight, of course, and it has made great strides with VR technology (virtual reality) and its flagship experience, Horizon Worlds. However, in the last year, huge amounts of money have poured in to finance metaverse projects. In particular, we’ve seen many games released (or reconverted) as metaverse games.

While metaverse games have seen some success, it’s fair to say that the initial enthusiasm has dampened somewhat. Now the critics have spoken more clearly. It’s true that some of these true metaverse games are still years away, but there’s still the feeling that we don’t know in which direction they’re headed. In a sense, there is a problem with the definition: what is the metaverse game?

A simple answer is that metaversal games and VR games are the same thing. As stated, Facebook/Meta is at the forefront of VR hardware with their Meta Quest VR headset. However, VR games can – and have existed before – exist independently of the metaverse concept. Are the metaverse and VR synonymous? This is a fundamental question, and not everyone agrees on the answer.

Usage examples for metaverse games – easy to see

Targeting metaverse and VR use cases is very easy. Today, for example, it is possible to enter a casino from your smartphone or PC and play live roulette with a real dealer. Tomorrow, could you use VR to sit on a virtual stage with other players? Probably. However, at what point do you go from a VR casino experience to a metaverse?

Those who defend the metaverse claim that the difference between VR and the metaverse is that the latter offers a more complete experience. It is about your digital/virtual identity becoming permanent, and being able to travel to different places with you. For example, you can use an avatar that can appear in different games and platforms. If we use the casino example above: your avatar could play roulette in different casinos, then the same avatar could be used in a video game or even in a job interview.

Problems defining the metaverse

Although there is also a problem, and that is that many of the current games that pretend to be metaverse games do not seem so at all. If you now google the term “best metaverse games”, you are likely to find lists of blockchain-based games like Axie Infinity. This title has been around for several years now, and it is a game based on NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and cryptocurrencies. It has some of the features rejected by supporters of the metaverse, such as decentralization. However, the experience is quite disappointing. To be honest, Axie Infinity, like many of these games, is really boring.

On the other hand, this highlights another problem. Part of the metaverse principles follow the concept of decentralization – not having a central owner of the games or the platform – but this is opposed to a metaverse built by meta, as well as by other game companies such as Niantic. Again, we have this big problem of not being able to define what the metaverse represents.

Ultimately, we will probably have to wait several years to find out the direction of these projects. However, in our opinion, many games and platforms are labeling themselves with the term metaverse because it is fashionable – or profitable – to do so. We may see a future with many metaverses, or we may see a future with none.