LVInsights AMA: Gaming in the metaverse

The first AMA session under LVInsights got off to a great start. Sameer Pitalwalla and Arvind Neelakantan did a deep dive into the metaverse. Here are the highlights. Watch the full session in the video recording below. 

Online games are constantly evolving. Soon, we will see the gaming segment in a new avatar in the Metaverse. The question is how will the metaverse evolve the gaming segment? 

We took a deep-dive to understand the topic in our recently-held LVInsights AMA session with two top experts in their field in gaming – Sameer Pitalwalla, Head of gaming, APAC, Google Cloud, and Arvind Neelakantan, Head, Technology, EPIC Games. They decoded how the metaverse is understood as a successor to the mobile internet and gaming segment. 

According to Sameer, “In a country like India, which is a mobile-led market, it counts about 75% to 80% of the total spent in terms of gaming currently. Not only that, about two decades ago three out of 10 internet users watched videos online, but now pretty much all 10 out of 10 internet users watch video in terms of a total active internet based compared to the total active video viewers.”

Arvind added that gaming is on a similar trajectory “where pretty much every user of the internet will be playing some form of 3D entertainment, which most likely will be a game. Hence the metaverse will not fundamentally replace the internet, instead it will build upon it and relatively transform it.” 

Here are some of the key highlights from the session: 

‍

‍

‍

• The metaverse is understood as a sort of a successor to the mobile internet. This is because the metaverse will not fundamentally replace the internet, instead build upon it and relatively transform it, the way mobile internet was established on top of the internet itself in the 1990s. Mobile internet did not change the underlying architecture of the internet, we still use TCP IP, HTTP. Metaverse will be transformative as it advances and alters the role that computers and the internet play in our lives. 

• Arvind also pointed out that metaverse iterates further on top of the internet by placing someone in a virtual 3D or embodied version of the internet on an unending basis. We will be constantly within the internet rather than accessing it. In fact, we will be within the billions of internet interconnected computers around us in the metaverse.

• While metaverse sounds very interesting for the gaming segment, Arvind pointed out that persistence, interoperability, scaling, concurrency, these are all challenges that are being solved for the metaverse. We will play games in the metaverse and those games may have user caps and resets, but those games are in the metaverse and not the metaverse itself.

• Sameer decoded the layers of the metaverse:

Infrastructure - underpinning the hardware, the metal that runs and power gets generated for every pixel and voxel that you see on screens. 

Human Interface is the way that we all end up experiencing the metaverse. 

Decentralization which is computing at the edge, which is again, something that we will be seeing more and more of in 5G. 

Spatial computing used to produce many of the world's leading games, movies, and virtual experiences. 

Creator economy- design tools, assets markets, workflow, & commerce.

Discovery- Ad networks, social curation, ratings, stores, and agents.

‍Experience- Ad networks, escorts theater, and shopping. 

At the end of session, Arvind pointed out that interportibility is still a long way to go for the gaming and metaverse experience. He also also pointed out that interportibility can help in talking to each other.

Sameer added, “The word metaverse seems to be more of a jumbled word. The fact is whenever there is a hype cycle people tend to throw everything in a bucket. We will see a lot of Web 3.0 companies in the metaverse soon.”

The way ahead is to stay abreast of the times and embrace new trends in gaming fueled by the most recent innovation. 

Watch the LVInsights AMA on Gaming In Metaverse here: