It was around this time last year that the term ‘metaverse’ came into orbit. Facebook plunged its flag into this new terrain when it rebranded as Meta in October, and just about every big multinational has scrambled – some more meaningfully than others – to get in on the action since.

But it’s hard to shake off the feeling that a lot of it is uninspired at best, and fairly ugly at worst. One brand that recently launched a new product in Decentraland’s metaverse recreated the drab stage presentation setup that sends audiences to sleep here in the 3D world. If we struggle to stay awake in those kinds of presentations when we’re physically in attendance, surely we’re going to pay even less attention if we’re tuning in on the sofa at home in a room full of distractions?

Max Vedel feels there’s little point in replicating real world spaces. Vedel runs hybrid creative studio Swipe Back with his co-founder Nikhil Roy, who after several years working in AR, 3D and gaming activations for clients, realised that they were “already playing with the building blocks of the metaverse”. Catalysed by Zuckerberg’s Meta rebrand, the pair decided to pivot fully to dealing with the metaverse, and the studio now helps brands like Nike, Gucci and Lego on their metaverse strategies.

“There’s a huge amount of experimentation going on in the metaverse, but I would say that builds and experiences trying to remodel our real world with all its limitations tend to feel annoying and bland. Waiting in a virtual line to attend a virtual conference? Doing your shopping with a virtual trolley? Why bother recreating the most mundane things in our normal worlds in the same way. What a waste,” Vedel says.

Builds and experiences trying to remodel our real world with all its limitations tend to feel annoying and bland

“Now if you were to go virtual shopping with a voice-activated spaceship, flying around food planets, that would be another story entirely,” he continues. “People want to be entertained, engage with art, and wander in environments that look like nothing they have ever seen before. They don’t want to be walking down a frozen food aisle.”

Two of the biggest players in the metaverse are Decentraland and Horizon Worlds (Meta’s offering), where the aesthetics typically fall somewhere between the cartoonish avatars launched with Nintendo Wii back in 2006 and a kid’s TV show. The lockdown Animal Crossing boom maybe implies that people don’t mind that look. And perhaps it’s asking too much of these platforms to transform the way people interact with one another, spend money and entertain themselves, and have a compelling, distinctive visual signature to go with it. However, considering the calibre of graphics we’ve come to expect in the contemporary gaming landscape, a lot of these experiences can feel like a step backwards.

The appearance of many of these metaverse characters and spaces may be down to stylistic choices, but it’s more likely determined by the technical limitations of what’s currently available on a mass scale. To be able to host thousands of customised 3D avatars that can rove about freely in intricately designed open-world environments – plus probably factoring in a live element like a concert or presentation – is no small ask; even more so if audiences only have entry level graphics cards.

Emma Chiu, global director at Wunderman Thompson Intelligence, says that hosting multiple people at the same time is one of the biggest issues at the moment, as well as accessibility to those platforms. The easier ones to access, like browser-based experiences, inevitably come with a downgrade in graphics or performance, and there’s nothing quite like lag to rip you out of the fantasy land that’s been painstakingly built.

“Some of the platforms that we consider ‘metaverse platforms’, such as Decentraland, are fairly young and went through exponential growth. They still lack accessibility, performance and seamless user experience,” Vedel says. “They may also appear pretty empty, of both users and places to explore, but platforms will get better. I think the comparison to the early days of the internet is fair. The early web pages were pretty basic, but the improvements and creativity accelerated as more people started building on top of what was already there.”

I think the comparison to the early days of the internet is fair. The early web pages were pretty basic, but the improvements and creativity accelerated

The very first Metaverse Fashion Week took place via Decentraland back in March, and drew some negative remarks from the fashion press in virtual attendance. Vedel recognises that it wasn’t seamless as an experience but adds that rarely anything is when it’s the first of its kind. “When looking at an event like this, we have to remember that it’s just the beginning of the journey. Not everything was perfect, but it wasn’t all bad either. Decentraland graphics and the overall usability have a fair way to go to really appeal to mainstream audiences who might expect a bit more from the metaverse. But in time I’m sure it will get there.”

He also points out that parts of it did challenge expectations, with the Charli Cohen x Rstless experience a highlight of his. “It was like something from another planet … literally. Meteorites were falling around us spawning the latest limited edition Rstlss wearables. It was an incredible spectacle and got a lot of people talking. And that’s what you should be doing! Get inventive, and create something that just isn’t possible in the real world.” Epic Games is often praised for similar reasons when it comes to its virtual concert experiences within Fortnite.

Despite small stumbling blocks in early iterations of events like MVFW, Vedel says there’s reason to be optimistic about what these spaces will look like moving forward. “What’s encouraging is that the people building on these platforms are some of the most creative around. Historically, humans have been creating amazing stories and experiences on terrible mediums,” he says, noting that creatives have managed to make magic with everything from 8-bit graphics to just pen and paper.

WHO SHOULD DESIGN THESE SPACES?

The most influential factor in dictating what these spaces look and feel like comes down to who’s in the creator’s seat. As Vedel highlights, there are a flurry of new job roles coming up that show the breadth of what this could entail (“look out for the number of new job titles such as metaverse architects, storytellers or level designers multiplying in the coming years,” he says) and there is a growing market for interior, product and furniture design in this space, too.

Many audiences are crying out for more games designers to get involved; others feel they’ve already had enough sway, and that people who design spaces in the real world are our best bet. That was the opinion of Patrik Schumacher, who heads up Zaha Hadid Architects, which has its own stake in the metaverse in the form of Liberland, a virtual city powered by Mytaverse.

In his recent essay, The Metaverse as Opportunity for Architects, Schumacher said that “the metaverse is being built as we speak, rapidly. But who is designing it? Who should design it? My thesis is that the design of the metaverse falls within the remit of the discipline of architecture and the wider design disciplines, not video game artists.

“According to my theory of architecture and design, video game developers/artists are not designers. They do not belong to the discipline of design, but to the entertainment industry.”

Vedel, on the other hand, is in the corner of the video game industry, which is home to a wealth of talented people who “would make the transition to this world perfectly. And we should be welcoming them with open arms,” he says. Yet ultimately he feels it’s open to anyone. “I think that these worlds can be built by anyone as long as you let the dreamers have a say. Those dreamers could be a 3D designer or a project manager, the CEO of a metaverse agency or an intern. It’s got the potential to be a super democratic and level playing field.”

This democratic approach to design is echoed by the team at creative studio IOR50, run by Sam Aldridge and Giusy Amoroso. The pair have worked on a number of virtual experiences, including collaborations on events with Club Qu. The pair feel anyone should have the opportunity to design their vision of the metaverse, though they point out that “it can cost to buy land, so it’s not always available to everyone”.

Whereas Schumacher seems preoccupied with extending the configurations of real life in a virtual realm (rather than what he describes as “ideologically regressive fantasy worlds”), everyone CR spoke to is of the opinion that the metaverse needs some of that fantasy touch in order to make it a compelling proposition for audiences.

“Why would we want to spend time in a digital twin of the real world unless it’s business related or educational?” says Chiu. The agency hosted a space in the metaverse during CES earlier this year, which seems to fall into the business-oriented category, but when it comes to audiences looking to be entertained, Chiu hopes for something different.

“Virtual worlds are not bound by real world limitations – gravity, geography, manufacturing processes, etc do not apply in the metaverse – making it a playground for creativity. Perhaps to make these virtual worlds a place to attract the [masses,] designing a place that offers familiarity is helpful. But for those proficient in gaming and virtual worlds – they will be after boundary-pushing designs that can also offer a new type of experience that the real world cannot.”

“We believe in fantasy,” say Amoroso and Aldridge. “What purpose does it serve to reproduce reality? In our opinion the metaverse was not created as an experiment in hyperrealism, but an opportunity to push past our current imaginative boundaries.”

A DESTINATION WORTH VISITING

Aldrige and Amoroso both find that the metaverse is already slipping into an overly corporate territory, which is arguably where a lot of the uninspired experiences are coming from. They feel that the environments in the metaverse “should be diverse, with creative integrity,” but that “the current metaverse climate promotes a capitalist gambling ideology where profit and gains [outweigh] the need for immersion and inspiration”.

It’s not all bad news, though. “It would be unfair to say they are all poor, but in our opinion, there are very few worth our time,” they say. For Aldridge, one experience that stood out as genuinely (and unexpectedly) enjoyable was a rave he recently attended – via an Oculus headset, in his living room. It took place in Sansar, an open-world metaverse with its own virtual economy. Sansar was developed by Linden Lab, the same company behind Second Life – the online virtual world launched in 2003 – and is considered something like its spiritual successor.

Second Life seems to be having a second wind though – at least in terms of recognition as a precursor to all of these platforms. Indeed, many are questioning how the flurry of metaverse platforms have taken that proposition any further. “Everything actually desirable about this metaverse resembles a pared-down version of the online games millions have been playing for decades,” wrote Cecilia D’Anastasio in an article for Wired in January, which illustrated that many of the apparent novelties of the metaverse – virtual real estate, weddings, concerts and brand involvement – had already taken place in Second Life.

Vedel also highlights the overlap between the ambitions of the metaverse and what gaming companies have been doing for years. “Another point is that there is also a variety of platforms that are not labelled ‘metaverse’ but very much act like it – just look at games such as Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite and Animal Crossing. Elements of the metaverse have been around longer than you think,” he says.

The current metaverse climate promotes a capitalist gambling ideology where profit and gains [outweigh] the need for immersion and inspiration

Despite the technological transformations that have emerged since Second Life launched in 2003, founder Philip Rosedale – who after a hiatus returned to Second Life as a consultant this year – points out that the challenge remains the same for metaverse platforms today. “Most of us who have a comfortable existence in our real bodies, in the real world, are going to still tend to prefer that,” he said in a WSJ interview. “Virtual worlds are a choice that you have to make.”

If brands and creators want it to become a serious destination, then arguably more important than drawing people to the metaverse in the first place is figuring out how to keep them coming back. Ultimately, it’s not enough for brands or creators to come up with a limp initiative, just so they can tick off ‘metaverse’ on their websites. “Successful virtual worlds are persistent, social and user-defined (personalised),” Chiu says. “If people play a part in keeping the world evolving, then they would have a purpose for returning as they have a role in that world.”

Vedel echoes the importance of keeping experiences alive and engaging in the long term, after his own experiences at MVFW. “My main question is this: now what? I ventured into Decentraland to check out Selfridges and to see if there were any post-event initiatives going on. It felt dead. What’s the long-term goal here?”

There’s an argument that people should direct their efforts to creating and improving spaces in the physical, built world, so long as there are environmental and housing crises to deal with, plus a dearth of affordable studio space for artists. But if the metaverse is going to be a worthy contender to how we spend our time, then it’s imperative to consider how these environments are designed – and by whom.