The metaverse gaming market was valued at $36 billion last year, and it is expected to grow at a 38.5% CAGR till 2030. At this rate, it could expand nearly tenfold to cross $350 billion. Metaverse in gaming is like getting that all-important joker in your rummy hand. No wonder it is seen as a game changer for the gaming industry.
Less than two decades ago, a rummy cash game could be played only in familiar surroundings with familiar people. Thanks to online games, a game of rummy can now be played remotely from anywhere and with anyone from across the country. Courtesy of the metaverse, we could be playing face-to-face again, albeit virtually. But the attraction of the metaverse doesn’t end with the opportunity to meander around in a meta-universe.
Gaming and Its Foray into Metaverse
From its arcade game and console game origins in the 1980s, the next big thing for gaming was 3D graphics in the 1990s. By the next decade, smartphone-based gaming was already becoming a phenomenon. However, mobile gaming truly became a disruption with its fast inroads into developing countries. Countries like China, India and Brazil account for huge download numbers today, as well as an overwhelming number of active gamers.
Metaverse was coined as a virtual reality-based immersive experience by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Metaverse today has emerged out of that novel into the real world. Or is it the virtual world? Or the virtual world inside our real world – whichever way you choose to put it.
Metaverse services have made it possible to create a three-dimensional immersive ecosystem. You can access a metaverse and enjoy the virtual concert of your favourite artist or work in your virtual office. You can attend virtual classrooms and play games too.
With gaming, the metaverse creates vivid and immersive digital worlds where a gamer can enjoy the atmospheric aspect of gaming to the fullest. The physical constraints of remote gaming cease to exist here, with your Virtual Reality (VR) headsets giving you interconnected gaming entertainment. The player-to-player communication in metaverse gaming is spontaneous and highly accessible.
For gaming platforms and developers, metaverse promises to be a splendid opportunity to steer gaming in a new direction. Subscriptions, in-app sales, digital asset sales – there are a lot of different ways gaming companies can be creative and profitable too.
How Metaverse is Reshaping Gaming
Reshaping is perhaps the apt word to describe the influence of the metaverse on the gaming industry. It is taking the revenue model of the typical gaming platform and catapulting it to the stratosphere. Take monetisation for instance. Regular fantasy games, poker and rummy platforms are monetising through memberships, hosting charges, in-app purchases, premium subscriptions, etc. Metaverse gaming is following the same route. However, the metaverse adds a new dimension to it.
Metaverse offers in-game items or assets like virtual land and apparel in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). It is leveraging the play-to-earn gaming model and utilising blockchain technology to reward gamers with real-world income. Players can become creators in the metaverse. Metaverse gaming provides the players with the tools to improvise and customise gaming content and create in-game items and avatars as well.
Metaverse gaming is offering unmatched interoperability. Your virtual assets earned in one game are usable across multiple games and platforms. For gamers, gaming in the metaverse is like gaming in a parallel universe. Metaverse is also unmatched when it comes to communications. Gamers can interact with each other virtually, collaborate and share experiences. There is a strong community bonding ecosystem inside those VR headsets of yours!
The Gaming Experience
For all the fancy technologies metaverse offers, what is it that you want first and foremost as a gamer? An unbeatable gaming experience, right? Metaverse uses virtual reality and augmented reality technologies that play with your perception of reality, giving you a highly immersive gaming experience. Your virtual reality rummy cash game would be filled with familiar faces around you.
The use of artificial intelligence helps metaverse gaming to create a dynamic and engaging gaming environment. AI is used to generate procedural content and create intelligent Non-Player Characters (NPCs) that enhance your gaming experience even further.
Enjoying it so far? The good news, this experience is scalable too. Metaverse gaming uses cloud technology which adds flexibility and scalability to its infrastructure. Numerous vast virtual reality worlds with many more millions of gamers can be conveniently accommodated into its folds.
A Look at the Future
As the metaverse continues its delightful duet with gaming, we can expect a heightened level of engagement and a collective environment. To gauge the magnitude of this evolution, we need to look at the potential influence of the metaverse in our everyday lives as well. From entertainment to education, shopping to business, the metaverse can prove to be the next big frontier ahead of us. And we are just witnessing the start of the gold rush.
