Essentially, Metaverse is an ancient word that was proposed by science fiction writer Neo Stevenson in his book "Avalanche" as early as 1992, describing humans having a virtual identity of their own in a world called Metaverse and interacting in this world.

text | Reliable 2D, Author | Soda

2021, Metaverse (Chinese name: Metaverse) was hyped in the Internet industry.

In essence, Metaverse is an ancient word that was proposed by science fiction writer Neo Stevenson in the book "Avalanche" as early as 1992, describing humans having a virtual identity of their own in a world called Metaverse and interacting in this world.

Based on this concept alone, whether it is IM tools such as ICQ and 163 chat room in the early years, or later MMORPGs such as "Stone Age" and "Legend", this science fiction vision has been realized. Through these "Metaverse infrastructure", the Internet is widely used because it is connected to real life through virtual connection. After all, the "on the Internet, you never know whether a person or a dog is sitting opposite the screen" is too attractive to most users.

Today, it has been 27 years since China joined the Internet family. Why has the words Metaverse and Metaverse been re-inflated, becoming a hot concept in the gaming circle, and even becoming a hot commodity in the investment field? So much so that game companies that do not make such products this year are called old antiques, and capital that does not invest in the concept of Metaverse is regarded as fools. It seems that if you don’t “strengthen Metaverse”, you will be immediately abandoned by the times.

on one side are countless "meta-universe people" who emerged from nowhere, and on the other side is the absurd and sad "meta-universe frenzy" sweeping the current game industry. Such a magical phenomenon is really worth reflecting on.

Many gamers can’t help but want to ask: Is the game not fun? What exactly did we do wrong?

Metaverse financing is a mess. If an institution doesn’t invest, it’s a fool, but if it’s a lunatic? After Roblox, known as the "first stock in the American children's metaverse", went public, domestic investment institutions began to look for products that match Roblox and quickly injected capital, revitalizing many silent projects and setting off a round of investment frenzy of Roblox-like products.

On March 24, according to the "A certain enterprise information query platform", the company code behind the domestic Roblox-like product "REWORLD" has undergone major personnel changes, and Yan Su, vice president of byteDance , became one of the directors of html.

However, compared with Roblox, the gap in "Restart World" is still very obvious. As a game platform mainly based on third-party creations, there are only 5 games in the recommended area of ​​the official website of "Restart World". Reliable 2D (ID:kpACGN) observed on weekday afternoons that the "most popular" "My Island" has a maximum number of online users, while "Real Essence Master" has no one online. The total number of online users of these five official websites is only 128. The financial report shows that Roblox, on the other side of the ocean, has reached 42.1 million daily active players in the first quarter of 2021.

Although "Restart the World" still has a long way to go before the "Chinese version of Roblox", at least it already has game products that can actually run. What is even more outrageous than "Restart the World" is that there are many companies in the industry that have not made public demos and have obtained a lot of financing using the concept of Metaverse or metaverse.

For example, there is a product called MetaApp in China, which is determined to create a Roblox of all ages. In March, it claimed to have activated a total of 200 million users, and obtained a total of US$100 million in Series C financing led by SIG Haina Asia Capital, followed by Chuangshi Partner CCV and Yunjiu Capital. Reliable 2D (ID:kpACGN) visited the official website of MetaApp and found that although this is a website with Chinese and English bilingualism, it seems to be very global, with everything from the sea to the universe in the promotional video, but after searching through the entire website, there is no download address for MetaApp, and even real screenshots can't be found.

In the social media link below the official website of MetaApp, Reliable Two-dimensional (ID:kpACGN) found a document mounted on other platforms. The document introduces MetaApp's product - 233 Paradise , an Android game platform with more than 200 million registered users. In other words, MetaApp's 200 million users are just data from an Android gaming platform. This data does not come from its Metaverse product itself, and MetaApp's Metaverse product is still in the "currently doing" stage.

In addition, there is also a social product Soul that is preparing to go public in the United States. In its prospectus, it describes the company's mission as follows: "Our mission is to build a 'Soul'cial metaverse", that is, "we want to build a social metaverse linked to Soul". "sublimates" its matching dating into "metaverse social", and Some people even interpreted Tencent 's holdings in Soul as "Tencent's heavy position in the Metaverse full-true Internet after investing in Epic and Roblox."

Not only does celebrity products rely on the "meta universe" to eat meat, but many small products also drink soup with the "meta universe". In the first half of 2021, investment managers and analysts of all sizes all made up for the Metaverse and Metaverse concepts, as if they wanted to invest in all related projects.

. A certain capital investment manager Dafei, who mainly invests in , mainly in , and Reliable Second Dimension said that he watched a game project a while ago, which was introduced as a "social sandbox virtual world". He also claimed to be a "editor". When the demo came out, he found out that this was just a dress-up game. However, the capital behind such a "metaverse project" Dafei was not invested: "The day after I finished watching it, it was snatched away by other institutions."

is in the context of snatching Metaverse related projects in China, practitioners who do not take advantage of this popularity seem embarrassing.

An investment manager told Reliable Second Dimension that his institution did not pay attention to Metaverse, and was laughed at by the game company as "the only capital I have seen this year that does not talk about the metaverse"; some entrepreneurial game companies also complained about Reliable Second Dimension, and that they were only doing an MMORPG (multi-player online role-playing) project, but FA has come to the door many times to ask for modification of the project introduction, and even said, "You must have a concept of metaverse, otherwise you won't get a good price." In the big storm of the game industry, a small evil meta-universe storm blew up.

GT game industry group

Domestic game industry is swept by Metaverse

In the storm of the metaverse, a well-known game company's words, a product, or even a long time ago may be retrospectively interpreted as "layout for Metaverse", and no company can be protected by itself.

Mihayou, who has fought a beautiful battle in the global market with the help of " Genshin Impact ", has become the biggest goal of "being Metaverse". Last year, Mihayou announced that it would jointly develop brain-computer interfaces with Shanghai Jiaotong University , which some analysts called "Mihayou is the interface for the layout of Metaverse", and the virtual character Lu Ming is called "Mihayou's attempt to develop Avatar (i.e., Metaverse world virtual image) in the metaverse field", and the Inverse Entropy Studio serving Luming's sound AI and brain-computer interfaces is interpreted as "Mihayou is preparing for Metaverse's AI."

In just half a year, Mihayou has changed from a two-dimensional game company to a Metaverse Metaverse Technology Company. During the whole process, Mihayou's executives did not even mention the words "Metaverse" or "Metaverse".

Anyone who has a little understanding of the game industry knows that domestic game companies' research on " brain-computer interface " did not start with Mihayou. Shanda Game founder Chen Tianqiao established the "Chen Tianqiao Luo Qianqian Brain Computer Interface Center" as early as 2016 to explore the human brain.

Regarding the virtual image Lu Ming, it seems that it is just a different approach for Mihayou in the virtual idol track. The "Artificial Desktop" product launched by Mihayou is more like the virtual image PGC version of "Wallpaper Engine". As for the Inverse Entropy Studio, the current public sound AI generation effect is similar to the works related to Microsoft Xiaobing and Netease Fuxi. It has a wide range of applications and is not limited to the Metaverse direction. Mihayou is not the only one who is "metaverse" in

. It is obviously more helpful to hype the concept of the metaverse.Therefore, Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi proposed the concept of "super digital scene" at this year's Tencent Game press conference, which was interpreted as "Tencent Game Defined Metaverse". Therefore, " Peace Elite " invited Hua Chenyu to hold a virtual concert in the game. In the eyes of "Metaverse Man", it became "Tencent's attempt to practice Metaverse at this stage in the national level products."

investment and introduction of "Roblox" is also seen as "an important action taken by Tencent to value Metaverse." In addition, Tencent Vice President and President of the Interactive Entertainment Business Group (IEG) Tianmei Studio Group Yao Xiaoguang , and also serves as the head of the social platform business of the Platform and Content Business Group (PCG). This personnel transfer is also considered by the "Metaverse Man" to "this confirms that Tencent will start from Tencent + social media to focus on the Metaverse ecosystem."

Peace Elite × Hua Chenyu Concert

even became the main focus on business and nourishment. The mobile game "Moore Manor" that emphasizes "restore and leisure" cannot escape the fate of being "Metaverse". The popularity of the mobile game "Moore Manor" is interpreted by "Metaverse Man" as a sign of "Jibit waving the Metaverse banner". In fact, Thunder Game, a subsidiary of Gibit , is only the publisher of the mobile game "Moore Manor". Moreover, although there is a difference between the mobile game "Moore Manor" and the original web game "Moore Manor", there is basically no additional content to take advantage of the popularity of the metaverse (click to review: male players uninstall, why is the mobile game "Moore Manor" that female players are addicted to is popular?), so it is used to determine that it is too nonsense to embrace Metaverse by Jibit listed companies such as A-share .

is very obvious. The concept of Metaverse has already swept the domestic game industry. When this concept is blown up and higher, the domestic game industry is more obviously affected by the metaverse, and even affects the development of the game products themselves.

Observing the release and updates of various games in recent times, it is not difficult to find that domestic game manufacturers attach more importance to the layout and publicity of the "editor" and "open world" fields. Perhaps in the eyes of some capitals who invest in the hot spots, editors and open world must be metaverse. But for gamers and game manufacturers who want to make the game well, both the "editor" and the "open world" have nothing to do with Metaverse.

editor has a long history. Many games have achieved their own breakthroughs through the editor's development of new gameplay, and even subverted the original gameplay, creating a new generation of game categories, such as dota born from the WAR3 custom map, H1Z1 born with armed raids, and PUBG born with the battle royale mode in H1Z1. These are all value created by the editor.

WAR3 can fight Landlord, is it a Metaverse?

and the open world are the goal that MMO games have always pursued. With the improvement of game equipment's functions, there are fewer and fewer air walls on PC and mobile game products today, and more and more free elements such as Roguelike and sandboxes, allowing players to directly feel that the game world has become more open.

In other words, these elements of are born to make the game more fun and more diverse, and are not forcibly fabricated for the implementation of a science fiction concept.

Roblox and Epic's Metaverse are smoke bombs. You can't do their practical things. Compared with domestic blind investment, under this wave of metaverse, Roblox and Epic are very pragmatically doing what game companies should do.

has established Roblox, which is defined and standard for Metaverse to some extent. It did not adjust its products for the so-called "Metaverse" concept, but did this after it was successfully launched and obtained funding to supplement it: Roblox invested more than US$260 million in content review costs in 180 countries around the world to ensure community security, and pay more than 30% of the total revenue to support and maintain the developer ecosystem.

With such efforts, Tencent brought the "Roblox" product to China in the form of a joint venture + special product "Roblox". "Roblox" not only has become a popular global product, but it has added color to children's education on the one hand, but also brought real income to many independent developers.Although Epic, which completed a new round of US$1 billion financing, has made a bold statement that it will "build a Metaverse vision", it clearly stated in its official financing statement that this financing "will accelerate the interconnected social creation of products such as " Fortnite ", " Rocket League ", and "Bean Man: Ultimate Knockout", as well as 's support for game developers to use Unreal Engine, Epic online services and Epic game stores." This is obviously an open repair of the Metaverse plank for investors to see, and it is actually strengthening self-operated stores to fight Steam and continuously strengthening Unreal Engine's secret crossing Chen Cang. The cleverness of

Roblox and Epic is that on the one hand, they are regarded as gods by the "Metaverse Man" and are the upcoming cases of the Metaverse. The lucky "Metaverse Man" can get a lot of financing by describing the story of "how they will become Roblox and Epic". On the other hand, Roblox and Epic used the "meta-universe leeks" they had cut for use in the game industry, achieving meaningful positive development.

However, in China, all the real money invested in the Metaverse concept has been poured into the empty demos, presentations and newly created folders, without any real cases. Some people may say that it will take time to test the results of Metaverse in China, but in the past six months, nothing seems to be left behind except for the flying words "layout" and the astonishing hundreds of millions of dollars being sprinkled.

So, who has Metaverse harvested in the country, what has it been harvested, and who is the real harvester?

Metaverse is blown up, which does not mean that the game industry will take over this concept.

There are endless excellent domestic game products. Perhaps it is because although popular concepts such as the second dimension, big IP, and going overseas originated from overseas, the domestic game industry has never been absent, and even took the lead in the world after carefully researching products. So this round of Metaverse concept craze comes from some capital forces that as long as the funds are abundant, domestic games can "overtake" again.

However, can the domestic game industry really satisfy and realize most of the current Metaverse imagination? I'm afraid it can't.

Metaverse three modes, image source: GT game industry group netizen

Nowadays, the concept of Metaverse has been advocated to a height that does not belong to this era, but For many game developers, they have not even heard of the words "Metaverse" and "metaverse" so far. they only want to make excellent and fun games. Mihayou CEO Liu Wei once commented on the circle of friends who discussed Metaverse that "the best way to predict the future is to create." Indeed, pragmatic creation is an important factor in making a good game. Although game manufacturers such as Roblox have actively embraced the concept of Metaverse, the embrace of some manufacturers does not mean that the domestic game industry must fully take over this concept, and even change its own development plans and affect its original development goals in the gaming field.

At least the ideal Metaverse is not a simple air-free MMORPG, nor a game with its own editor, nor is it an app that recreates a contemporary QQ show community wheel under the guise of the metaverse. If you can use the concept to win investment, it is the success of toVC and a skill for the founder to get money. It does not necessarily mean that the concept itself has a lot of substantive significance. Every practitioner who is optimistic about the prospects of Metaverse should have a sense of awe of the industry, so that people who truly have the ability to create a virtual world and love creation can build a ladder to Metaverse in different fields.

As Epic founder Tim Sweeney mentioned in an interview with the media: "Metaverse is not something a company can do, it is not a company's product or source of income. It is a popular media form. Moreover, society will not allow Metaverse to be monopolized by one company, just as the Internet cannot be monopolized by any company."