2.1 Project Background
Stephenson minted a word "metaverse” to depict a virtual world of well-functioning or even a more sophisticated social-economic system where human beings are enabled to live a brand-new life in the extensive online virtual world via digital avatars by which the metaverse-esque experiences and actions are parallel to the reality, just like the "Oasis" in sci-fi adventurous movie “Ready Player One”.
Metaverse-related markets and products are intruding the traditional Internet entertainment reals with the increasing popularity within tech giants and video-game conglomerates now. Not only the chip giant Nvidia announced the layout of the metaverse track, but Facebook changed its name last week to Meta Platforms Inc to signal its focus on the metaverse, which it thinks will be the successor to the mobile internet. Video game platform Roblox Corporation envisions the metaverse as a place where “people can come together within millions of 3D experiences to learn, work, play, create and socialize”, and MetaApp, a domestic sandbox platform developer, also announced a billion-dollar "the largest single funding for the domestic metaverse industry". Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, a vocal critic of big platforms like Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, has argued the metaverse will need to be a participatory, common space. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd is the world’s largest video gaming firm by revenue and has stakes in major game studios like Epic Games and Activision Blizzard. The South China Morning Post reported this year that Tencent has registered many metaverse-related trademarks. In addition, domestic and foreign VR and AR companies have released new products and new strategies, announcing the layout of new technologies such as bare hand control and brain-brain-machine interface.
These trends suggest that the metaverse is the future of the digital world, the "end of the digital world," the embodiment of online social life, a shared virtual space based on our real world, replicated digitally. The metaverse allows us to fantasize, enrich, refine real-life scenarios, and even transform from ordinary people to demigods through a myriad of possibilities.
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