Global visions for a metaverse

Abstract

There is a growing effort to locate metaverse developments within the purview of platform research. However, the majority of English-language studies take Horizon Worlds, Meta's US-centric prototype of a metaverse, as the starting point. This critical reflection argues that since the fate of the metaverse is far from settled, and its building blocks exist in a colorful array of global visions, we need to divorce discourses of the metaverse from Meta's hype cycle and multiply our frames of reference by engaging with international developments. In turn, this article proceeds by scoping out metaverse visions emanating from different parts of the world and drawing out common themes as entry points for future research. This article contributes to a re-orientation of metaverse studies toward critical and embodied global perspectives of socio-cultural production, while simultaneously reconsidering the very notion of the metaverse as a platform.

Introduction

There is a growing effort to locate metaverse developments within the purview of platform research (Egliston and Carter, 2022; Foxman, 2021). However, the majority of English-language studies take Horizon Worlds, Meta's US-centric prototype of a metaverse, as the starting point. This critical reflection argues that since the fate of the metaverse is far from settled, and its building blocks exist in a colorful array of global visions, we need to divorce discourses of the metaverse from Meta's hype cycle and multiply our frames of reference by engaging with international developments. In turn, this article proceeds by scoping out metaverse visions that emanate from different parts of the world and drawing out common themes as entry points for future research. This article contributes to a re-orientation of metaverse studies toward critical and embodied global perspectives of socio-cultural production (Davis and Xiao, 2021; Waisbord and Mellado, 2014), while simultaneously reconsidering the very notion of the metaverse as a platform.

Visions for a metaverse

The metaverse refers to visions of an embodied cyberspace (Ravenscraft, 2022) that allows us to live various aspects of our lives – socializing, working, shopping, etc. – in virtual places. As such, the metaverse is a space for cultural production and consumption and the ways in which we envision building it may significantly impact these practices. While the concept of the metaverse is not new (Chesher, 1994), it has been reinvigorated in popular and social-scientific discourses by recent parallel advances in the assemblage of metaverse-enabling technologies like the launch of consumer virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) gear, decentralized payment and asset-tracking systems like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and artificial intelligence (AI) software. Of course, Facebook's 2021 rebrand to Meta and its investments and PR campaigns have also had an immense impact on the public perception of the metaverse and its successes and failures – often at the expense of other, global visions.

Building a metaverse and its related assemblage of technologies is a national-level priority field of research in many parts of the world, bolstered by the dedication of significant state resources and expenditures (Girginova et al., 2023). These efforts are often part of a larger vision for a country's socio-economic development, like China's Virtual Reality and Industry Application Integration Development Action Plan (2022–2026), which also includes building a metaverse and incentives for its cultural producers (Huld, 2022). There are plenty of other examples, too. Sharjahverse, a photorealistic replica of all 2,500 sq. km of Sharjah, UAE, is one of the first government-backed metaverse cities that will allow for various kinds of social, cultural, and commercial activity. Seoul Metaverse in South Korea is an administrative ecosystem that supports civic activities for nationals of the capital but is poised to expand to foreigners and investors. While both metaverses are part of broader, government-backed initiatives, they have different goals. The former aims primarily to showcase the city of Sharjah to the outside world, thus fulfilling marketing and tourism functions to bolster a changing economy. The latter, much like Japan's Edogawa Ward metaverse for Tokyo, mainly aims to alleviate local pressures from an ageing population by providing access to administrative services for those with diminished physical capabilities.

There are also numerous smaller-scale, independent, and artistic renditions of the metaverse, which often purposefully forgo direct economic functions. For example, TOGUNA WORLD is an African-inspired metaverse; a multimodal experience designed to freeze the present and to instigate pre-colonial reflections of the past and collaborative, postcolonial visions of the future. Furthermore, there have been numerous global calls for metaverses that have not materialized. For instance, Barbados, a country emmeshed in the Caribbean's burgeoning cryptocurrency scene, planned to launch virtual, sovereign metaverse embassies in 2021 – an announcement made around the same time as the country ceased ties with Queen Elizabeth II as its symbolic head of state. Similarly, Tuvalu, one of the world's smallest countries, announced in 2022 that it will become the first to virtually replicate itself in the metaverse in an effort to preserve its culture and history amidst the impending global threat of rising sea levels.

Lessons from the metaverse(s)

First, one of the key themes emerging from the global visions of the metaverse – regardless of size or stage of advancement – is that they are often tied to broader initiatives for economic and social development (Slaughter, 2009). Discourses frequently share a desire for a global re-orientation of power including financial and political autonomy, as well as shifts away from some traditional institutions like international banks or colonial monarchies (Ashraf, 2022; Roitman, 2023). Looking across our global examples reveals a meta-imaginary of locally grounded desires for socio-political independence and efficacy via the employment of metaverse-related technologies. For example, Tuvalu's proposed self-replication is a call for cultural preservation through metaverse production. While this article does not support an uncritical celebration of the emancipatory power of metaverse technologies, it does note an important global inversion and resistance emerging to the rhetoric emanating from large US corporations that instead, tend to frame metaverse exploits within the old tropes of colonizing new frontiers and thus, extending the old-world status quo (Harley, 2022). Furthermore, as opposed to the US-centric view of using the assemblage of metaverse technologies to conquer new terrains of virtual space, global visions often call on the metaverse as a tool that can impact existing physical places and practices.

Second, global renditions of the metaverse present a technologically and temporally uneven terrain. Varying assemblages and synergies between technologies ¹ including blockchain, VR, AR, AI, and game engines, are built on top of existing internet infrastructures. In turn, the degree of use of each of these technologies, combined with the socio-political context of use, informs the cultural production and consumption parameters associated with particular metaverse experiences. Furthermore, different visions for the metaverse strategically operate within different temporalities: for example, TOGUNA WORLD directs users’ attention to the past and future by abstracting the present moment, whereas Japan's Edogawa Ward metaverse is focused on synchronous interactions and services in the present. Subsequently, instead of starting with Meta's all-encompassing vision of the metaverse as a single, often atemporal technology and as the benchmark for success, we ought to consider other temporal visions and combinations of technological metaverse assemblages in their own right. Indeed, the tactical construction and experience of time in the metaverse is one area ripe for exploration from the perspective of critical cultural production and consumption (Coleman, 2020). Local operationalizations of metaverse time may be read as a productive alternative or even as an act of opposition to Silicon Valley-imposed temporal regimes that, in the context of the metaverse, privilege specific (a)temporalities and practices.

Third, while it may be tempting to dismiss statements like those from Barbados or Tuvalu as pure marketing, or as broader signals for the failure of the metaverse, it might be wiser to pay attention for at least a couple of reasons. Examining these claims through the prism of local social imaginaries (Mansell, 2012; Taylor, 2004) can elucidate the culturally specific production of metaverse visions and the varying self-understandings of the assemblage of metaverse technologies that become constitutive of its development and use. Further, given that the metaverse exists globally in various stages of development, and its image often takes a more central place in society than its apparatus (Golding, 2019), focusing precisely on these visions might prove to be one of the most productive ways to capture important developments at present. Of course, there are many sources that may supplement and triangulate various visions, including plans for the development of metaverse-related technologies from various international trade bodies and standardizing organizations.

The metaverse as a platform?

It is possible to see how various visions for the metaverse overlap with and push at the boundaries of current social, cultural, and economic functions of platforms. One fruitful way to conceptualize this relationship while simultaneously accounting for the diversity of global metaverse visions would be to plot examples of the metaverse along a spectrum. On the one end of this spectrum would be instances of a metaverse that function much like a platform; that is, they provide a digital architecture that serves the dual markets of both end users and sellers, and facilitate and govern interactions via data collection, processing, and monetization (Poell et al., 2021; Van Dijck et al., 2018). For example, Meta's well-documented Horizon Worlds functions on principles of centralization and, much like the Apple store, presents users with a relatively closed ecosystem of proprietary VR software and hardware, and a market of metaverse applications (Egliston and Carter 2022). The Spanish fashion powerhouse Zara and the French icon Christian Dior also have their respective metaverses, which are built using the Korean gaming app Zepeto that runs on the US-based Unity game engine. Both of these metaverse instances reinforce the traditional concept of platforms (in this case Zepeto and Unity both being the platforms) and contribute to the rapid expansion of game engines as brokers that govern interactions between end users and sellers in many contexts beyond gaming (Jungherr and Schlarb, 2022).

On the other end of the spectrum, however, would be metaverse visions that potentially disrupt the status quo of platforms. For instance, Sharjahverse is a partnership between Sharjah's Trade and Tourism Development Authority and Multiverse Labs. The latter functions based on principles of decentralization using blockchain technologies, a bespoke token economy, and AI software. It allows for the interoperability between metaverses while giving users ownership of their virtual assets. Decentraland is another example of a more radical vision of a metaverse. It was created by two Argentinians and uses the Unity game engine but, as the name suggests, is built upon principles of decentralized ownership and thus presents a significant departure from traditional platform economics.

Of course, in between the two extremes on the metaverse–platform continuum lie many points and variations. Furthermore, the metaverse–platform continuum needs to extend beyond top-down visions and technical arrangements into actual user practices, which subsequently (re)shape technological architecture and functionality. While much-needed studies are just beginning to emerge on how people around the world build or use the present-day metaverse and its assemblage of technologies in bottom-up ways, some important cultural differences surrounding production and consumption have already surfaced. For instance, research reveals that in Japan, the prevailing cultural sense around VR and metaverse use is about creating an enclosure from the outside world as opposed to the US-centric view of creating a gateway to the outside or ‘other’ world (Roquet, 2022).

Lastly, there is an important differentiating point to note about data in traditional platforms and the metaverse: while social media platforms are notorious for the amounts of data they track, metaverse experiences accessed through VR gear are siphoning off substantially more of our information (Egliston and Carter, 2021). Research shows that 10 minutes of VR use results in around a million data points about one's body and surroundings (Bailenson, 2018). Indeed, while consumption of and interaction with all media requires some degree of physicality from those interacting with the medium, embodiment via movement, avatars, and a sense of physical immersion in a virtual space are some of the defining characteristics of the metaverse experience (Ravenscraft, 2022). In turn, considering questions of how one embodies – or not – the metaverse, and how to best capture and analyze that information can make for rich explorations of contextualized experience. Additionally, while we ourselves put out much of the information like photographs and text about us on social media platforms, data from our bodies and surroundings are given off involuntarily through VR use. The types of possible combinations and ethical and regulatory implications from physical data like our height, movement, balance, or facial twitches are vast and have the potential to significantly impact our economy of data in the context of platforms and beyond.

Conclusion: toward critical and embodied global studies of the metaverse

This critical reflection sought to do two things: first, to multiply our frames of reference beyond a US-centric metaverse by exploring a number of other visions emanating from different parts of the world. Second, this piece proposed several points of entry for future inquiry based on the common themes emerging from the admittedly limited for practical reasons scoping of global metaverse visions. As such, this reflection itself traverses a number of intellectual geographies, including platform and metaverse studies coupled with the cross-disciplinary rally of critical global communication and media studies. Furthermore, it contributes to efforts to diversify communication and platform studies beyond Western and, specifically, American settings (Curran and Park, 2000; Davis and Xiao, 2021; Waisbord and Mellado, 2014) by examining how concepts like the metaverse are not static categories and are locally unsettled along specific temporal, technological, and socio-cultural fault lines.

Locating nascent global metaverse research efforts within the purview of platform studies is one strategy to better conceptualize the former, while pushing at the boundaries of the latter. It is also an opportunity to move our epistemological foci beyond the much-contested a priori global North/South analytical distinctions and toward a comparison of specific practices and features across regions. On the one end of the spectrum, global developments of the metaverse may feed into existing platforms and further solidify their operational logics. Or, on the other end of the spectrum, the concept of the metaverse could challenge the business models and very modus operandi of platforms, with important broader ramifications for socio-economic and political structures across financial, entertainment, and labor systems to name but a few. Furthermore, on a larger scale, contextualizing regional metaverse visions and developments sensitizes us to rapidly developing and shifting locales of power at various scales. It allows us to trace how metaverse visions like Barbados’ call for sovereign metaverse embassies in the wake of a distancing from the British monarchy use media to contribute toward broader efforts under way for an unsettling or re-orientation of global loci of power.

Lastly, much as the etymology of the word ‘global’ conjures up references to earth, holism, clay, glue, and the body, we might ask what are the various assemblages of technologies and practices that strategically mold together to make up different instances of the metaverse? To what avail and for whom? Further, how might taking an embodied perspective that grounds metaverse practices and technologies in specific places and bodies enrich our understanding of what is at stake with future visions of the metaverse? As the history of communication and media studies shows, the idea of ‘the global’ has been a fundamental and provocative tension for the development and adoption of technologies and cultural practices, as well as for scholarship (Girginova et al., forthcoming; Kraidy, 2006). Thus, finding ways to pivot our metaverse research strategies toward critical global and embodied developments is imperative, not only for advancing scholarship but also for equipping us with nuanced tools to understand and intervene in the socio-technical processes rapidly under way.