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Opinion: The metaverse doesn鈥檛 look as disruptive as it should, it looks ordinary 鈥� here鈥檚 why
1 April 2022
Professor Luke Pearson and PhD Candidate Sandra Youkhana (both 香港六合彩 Bartlett School of Architecture) warn that as virtual real estate in the online 'metaverse' grows, it risks recreating some of the social ills that exist in the real world.
Virtual real estate听is booming. In December 2021, one buyer spent US$450,000 (around 拢332,500) on a plot of land in rapper Snoop Dogg鈥檚 virtual world. Which begs the question of what will be built there.
In the physical world, cities are shaped by innumerable forces. Some are desirable, designed in conversation with local communities. Others are not, subverting building regulations for financial gain.
By contrast, space in the metaverse 鈥� the听version of the internet听comprising immersive games and other virtual reality environments 鈥� has so far been smooth, clean and very ordinary. This is despite its links to emerging, 鈥渄isruptive鈥� technologies such as cryptocurrencies.
Our research听shows that while designing virtual worlds gives people a creative voice, it can also reveal the infinitely more complex social, societal and historical ways by which physical places are formed.
We explore how architects can use virtual environments to enhance understanding about real-world cities. Metaverse designers need to be similarly mindful of the social effect their designs will have.
People have always imagined cyberspace to look like a version of real urban space. In his 1992 novel, Snow Crash, American sci-fi writer Neal Stevenson was听the first to imagine the metaverse, built along what he called the Street. In his world, this grand boulevard wrapped around the globe, but was nonetheless presented as a typical urban thoroughfare, lined with buildings and electric signs.
Recent ads from Facebook鈥檚 parent company Meta suggest Mark Zuckerberg鈥檚 vision for the metaverse is not much different. As a visitor, you stand in front of an impossible landscape where snowy woodlands meet tropical islands, but the built structures are minimalist villas and wipe-clean space stations. It looks more like a spatial mood board of random 鈥渃ool-looking鈥� imagery. Zuckerberg鈥檚 metaverse world acts more like a desktop background rather than as a considered, spatial environment.
Meta鈥檚 Horizon Worlds is a social platform where users have a set of tools with which to create and share virtual worlds. Ads here feature users鈥� avatars walking through food halls or seated in train dining cars, all designed to look like their real-world counterparts, but rendered in a simplistic graphic style, like a children鈥檚 TV show.
Practical (yet unneccessary) design elements including streetlights, plug sockets and window frames underline the urban nature of these sterile, virtual spaces. This chimes with the generic global minimalism that American tech journalist Kyle Chayka听has termed听鈥渁irspace鈥�: that ubiquitous aesthetic (wooden benches, exposed brick, industrial light fittings) found in coffee shops, offices and AirBnB apartments the world over.
While Meta鈥檚 promotional vision for metaverse worlds is a series of distinct snapshots, other metaverse platforms such as听Decentraland,听The Sandbox听and听Cryptovoxels听feature some level of urban planning. Like in many real-world cities, they use a grid system with plots of land distributed on a horizontal plane. This allows for property to be easily parcelled and sold. However, many of these plots have remained empty, demonstrating that they are primarily traded speculatively.
In some instances, content 鈥� buildings and things to do, see and buy within them 鈥� has been added to plots of land, in an effort to听create value. Virtual property developer the Metaverse Group is听leasing Decentraland parcels听and offering in-house architectural services to tenants. Its parent company, Tokens.com, has virtual headquarters there too, a blocky sci-fi-style tower, in an area called Crypto Valley. Like many other metaverse buildings, it serves as a giant spatial symbol, designed to draw people towards it.
Other Decentraland structures include a dive-bar recreation by Miller Lite and a neon shrine promoting Japanese virtual diva Edo Lena. There are also countless white-cube art galleries selling NFTs (digital certificates linked to artworks) such as that by mlo.art. These structures look just like real-world galleries, but simplified and de-contextualised.
In his 2012 book, Building Imaginary Worlds, media theorist Mark JP Wolf says that fictional worlds often 鈥渦se Primary World [ie real world] defaults for many things, despite all the defaults they may reset鈥�. In other words, because everything in the metaverse is built from scratch, technically you don鈥檛 actually have to reference the real world in your designs.
But many people choose to do so anyway. They plump for familiar architectural characteristics in their virtual buildings, because it makes it easier for participants to feel immersed.
Research shows how this is also how artificial worlds have been created in real life. Art historian Karal Ann Marlin听describes听the built environment of Disney鈥檚 theme parks as 鈥渁n architecture of reassurance鈥� where reality is 鈥減lussed鈥�, that is, elevated in ways that makes it feel both new and comfortably familiar.
Another place to find such 鈥減lussed鈥� architecture is Las Vegas. The Nevada city has been听described听by urban historians Hal Rothman and Mike Davis as a vast laboratory. Corporations there have created urban spaces as collages of other cities, such as Paris and New York, in a bid to test 鈥渆very possible combination of entertainment, gaming, mass media and leisure.鈥�
Real cities are now choosing to emulate themselves in the metaverse. South Korea鈥檚听Metaverse 120 Centre听will provide both recreational and administrative public services. The project is one of the few metaverse initiatives primarily led by a government, as part of the nation鈥檚 digital new deal for public digital infrastructure. The aim is to nurture smart city technology, preserve and showcase heritage and host cultural festivals.
Research shows听that the design of public urban spaces has evolved alongside the way people behave within them. Likewise, the success of the metaverse 鈥� whether people use it or not 鈥� will rely heavily on the environments that are created.
Virtual spaces need to be convenient for people to access and engaging enough for them to return to. They also need to听harness and extend听what makes them different from physical spaces. Simply transplanting real-world logics of property development and trading into the metaverse might recreate the social and economic stratification we find in real-world cities, which undermines the metaverse鈥檚 emancipatory potential.
This article first appeared in on 1st April听2022
Links
- Origonal article听in
- 香港六合彩 Bartlett School of Architecture
- 香港六合彩听Faculty of the Built Environment