Game Nugget Meta universe: Large-scale scenes may not need to be 2030

Wen Xu Xinyi Wu Kezhong

"Everything can meta-universe". In 2021, the concept of a metacosm is sweeping the globe. In March of that year, Roblox, an online creative sandbox game platform known as the "first share of the meta-universe", landed on the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, the concept of meta-universe has become a hot spot chased by the capital market.

Recently, Giant Network said on the investor interactive platform that the metacosm is generally considered to be the form of the next generation of the Internet. It attaches great importance to the metaverse trend and the opportunities it brings to the game industry, and identifies metaverse games as one of the directions of long-term layout. In fact, in addition to giant networks, major game manufacturers including Tencent Games, Mihayou, and Lilith have already been gearing up and grabbing the layout of the meta-universe.

Industry insiders told the "China Business Daily" reporter that the game is called the entrance to the meta-universe, which is the underlying logic of its construction of the virtual world. At this stage, the game is one of the paths to the metaverse gate. However, it is not easy to create a real meta-universe, and many problems such as business ecology and underlying technical support still need to be solved urgently.

Game manufacturers grab the beach layout

In March 2021, Roblox rose sharply on the first day of listing on the New York Stock Exchange. As of Dec. 30, the company's stock price had risen nearly 40 percent. Roblox is a UGC authoring platform where developers can create and publish games on the programming platform they build, which is considered to be the beginning of the metaverse.

Since then, domestic game manufacturers have also announced their involvement in the meta-universe.

Less than three months before Roblox went public, 300052. SZ) posted on its official WeChat public account that it will launch a virtual and realistic fantasy linkage simulation business meta-universe game "Brew master". After the news was disclosed, the stock price of Zhongqingbao rose sharply, and in the six consecutive trading days from September 7 to September 16, the cumulative increase of Zhongqingbao's stock price was as high as 143.9%.

Similar to Zhongqingbao, Tom Cat (300459. SZ) announced its march into the metaverse at about the same time. On September 8, 2021, Tom Cat said on the interactive platform that the company's existing products have a huge user base and a user base for meta-universe product development. At the same time, the company also actively explores the technical reserves of meta-universe product development. In addition, the company is firmly optimistic about the development direction of the meta-universe, and has set up a special working group in the direction of the meta-universe to coordinate the domestic and foreign R&D teams to carry out concept development and project establishment for specific categories of products.

Tom Cat once told reporters that it continues to explore the development and application of new technologies such as VR, artificial intelligence, and brain-computer interfaces, and in April it determined to give users greater sociality, autonomy and explore innovative research and development directions for future-oriented game products in the virtual scene of the game.

Guohai Securities Research Report pointed out that from January to October 2021, Tencent participated in at least 30 investments in meta-universe-related fields, including big data, AI, simulation software and hardware, etc.; ByteDance also made at least 10 investments in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, chips, AR/VR and other fields from January 2020 to September 2021, including the "Chinese version of Roblox" "Restart the World" parent company code Qiankun and VR manufacturer Pico. In addition, Alibaba, Baidu, NetEase, Lilith, Mihayou, etc. also have their own research and development and investment plans.

Although major game manufacturers have rushed to the beach layout, it seems that it is not easy to create a real meta-universe. Industry insiders told reporters that there are many commercial problems to be solved in building a meta-universe ecology, for example, in terms of games, the traditional game sharing model may need to be adjusted, and a new ecosystem is also needed to support VR, AR and other technologies. In the view of this person, these technical problems may take time to slowly solve.

For companies developing meta-universe products at this stage, Shenyang, executive director of the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University, suggested that the purpose of application should not be too much at the beginning, and a function should be maximized first, making it a just need in everyone's life. He also said that a technological change requires huge investment, and he hopes that different manufacturers can participate in it.

Core technical support is required

Shenyang told reporters that events such as roblox listing are opportunities that promote the metacosmity out of the circle, and behind these explosive events, technology, capital, and users' desire for new things has long been surging: "There will be new concepts in the Internet industry every few years, but from short videos to now, there have been many years without new things in the middle." ”

Shenyang told reporters that XR (referring to VR/AR/MR and other related technologies, is the next generation of experience revolution and the advancement of computing platforms), digital twins and blockchain are the most core technologies in the metaverse, and there will be a substantial improvement in quantity and quality in the future, and artificial intelligence and big data are the supporting technologies of the metacosm. "It turns out that we don't know why we put the real world into the virtual world through digital twins, but with the concept of the metaverse, the ultimate form of the Internet that can be seen by humans has emerged."

In Shenyang's view, the development of the metaverse will be divided into different stages, including the quasi-metaverse without XR support but with open attributes, the low-grade metacosm built on the basis of AR/VR, the high-end metacosm with multiple sensory dimensions such as touch, and even the advanced metacosm applied to the brain-computer interface, and the ultimate metacosm to achieve digital immortality. At present, many quasi-meta-universe systems can be seen on mobile phones, such as Roblox and Soul.

Shenyang said that the ideal meta-universe product sometimes has unlimited requirements for computing power: "A hyper-realistic virtual person, when walking, its 100,000 hairs, each one must calculate how the light changes, how the fluttering traces change, and the requirements for computing power and data are very high." ”

A communication industry analyst told reporters that the current 5G network base station has been built a lot, but the network performance is gradually improving, it is expected that by 2025 the ability to support AR/VR technology will be further improved, so she believes that by 2025 can achieve small-scale meta-universe scenes, large-scale meta-universe scenarios will wait until 2030.

Beware of hype "cutting leeks"

In addition, when the metaverse products are not yet mature, the phenomenon of speculating on metacosmic digital assets has quietly emerged.

In mid-December 2021, the virtual real estate project in The Rainbow Universe was sold on a third-party platform, with a price of hundreds of thousands of yuan. It is reported that the rainbow universe is the world show (600556. SH) developed a "metaverse app". As of December 31, 2021, the reporter saw in some group chats that there is still information about the virtual real estate and props of the rainbow universe that is constantly being sold and purchased, but the transaction price has plunged. In a rainbow universe trading QQ group, some netizens asked: "Garden house with number, 350 yuan someone or not?" Then someone replied: "Ask 150 yuan someone either?" "I want 50 yuan." Selling netizens said: "No one collects it, hoarding, there is nothing to be anxious about." ”

On December 30, Tianxiaxiu told reporters that the company does not support users to trade digital collections on third-party trading platforms, and at this stage only supports test users to give and share digital collections to friends in the rainbow universe under the condition of meeting the conditions of real-name authentication, 18 years old and holding the collection for a certain period of time (180 days). For the above-mentioned resale of virtual real estate, the company said that it has repeatedly reminded users through user instructions, communication communities and other channels not to trade and speculate on the digital collections, props, accounts, etc. of the rainbow universe it owns on the third-party trading platform, and beware of being deceived or causing losses such as account theft. The company also said that it has repeatedly raised the threshold for the gift of digital collections, focused on monitoring violations of laws and regulations involving private transactions, speculation, fraud, etc., and restricted and prohibited logins for relevant illegal accounts.

Tianxia Show told reporters that its development of Rainbow Universe aims to provide content creators with self-presentation and fan interaction platform, which can allow them to interact without time and space restrictions, and the product is currently in the user testing stage, and is still in the continuous optimization stage, and the number of scheduled tests has reached 200,000.

According to the company, the virtual real estate is one of the various digital collections that have been issued in the rainbow universe, which are currently free to test users through official activities, and the biggest role is to display the user's digital collection, which is the user's "base camp" in the rainbow universe, and is also the basic unit for users to interact with the scene.

The "2020-2021 Meta-Universe Development Research Report" released by the Shenyang team pointed out that there are 10 major risks in the development of the meta-universe industry, such as capital manipulation, computing pressure, and addiction, one of which is an economic risk. The report points out that although the monetary system and economic system in the metaverse are not completely linked to the real economy, to a certain extent, the linkage with the real economy can be achieved through virtual currency. When virtual currencies in the metacosmic world fluctuate greatly in value relative to real currencies (fiat currencies), economic risks are transmitted from the virtual world to the real world. To a certain extent, the metacosm also provides a more hidden manipulation space for the financial harvesting behavior of giant capital, and financial supervision needs to be expanded from the real world to the virtual world.

The relevant article of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology pointed out that to promote the healthy development of the meta-universe, we should take the initiative to take advantage of the situation. The article suggests that around the key areas and links such as the social rules, standard system, behavior ethics, legal norms, intellectual property protection, privacy protection, and financial supervision of the metaverse, organize relevant research institutions to strengthen basic theoretical research, and study and formulate policy tools and management means in advance for the potential risk impact that the development of metasymonic applications may bring, so as to enhance the ability to resist risk impacts and take the initiative to govern.