The full reddit post with links to various articles and sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/ovia19/our_role_in_the_metaverse_pt_1_exploring_the/ Edit 2: My hope for this post was to try and generate meaningful dialoged around the possibilities of interconnected games, SC, and how that reality might be closer than we think. It looks like some readers here are getting caught up in the mention of blockchain tech (and I'm guessing apprehension of over monetization). I probably should have foreseen this, and I can understand it. That being said, I would encourage any other readers to keep in mind that the "what" here is the metaverse concept, not the specific merits of blockchain tech. Although that is also worthy of discussion. I am not trying to hype crypto in any way. It is simply a tool and could easily be replaced with a different tool in the future. Thanks! Edit 1: Links for articles are below the quotes, or see the reddit post. **I wrote out a bunch of stuff, but it's just too long for a single post. I'm going to break it down into a couple parts and post them over the next few days or so (on reddit and spectrum). Hopefully we can get some good conversation going and see where it takes us! Thanks for reading! So earlier this year I read this article: From sci-fi to reality: Evidence that the metaverse is closer than you think. I thought it was a pretty cool look at the type of thing you see in Ready Player One and how/why we actually might get there some day. Things like Starlink have the potential to be the backbone of access for people all over the world and truly allow for mass participation and adoption. This was also an interesting section from the article: A host of trends and social pressures are gradually bringing the metaverse into fruition, beginning with gaming becoming the world’s dominant form of entertainment. Venture capitalist Matthew Ball wrote an insightful blog piece on this thesis, but we can spotlight a few of his points. TV is aging out. According to The Atlantic, American household TV viewing peaked in 2010 at nearly nine hours daily and then began sliding. Nielsen data for 2020 shows U.S. TV consumption down to a daily average of 4 hours 16 minutes, but age is clearly a key factor, with the 65+ audience averaging over 7 hours and the 18 to 34 demographic logging only 1 hour and 37 minutes. Gaming is growing up. A 2020 report shows that gamers average 6.3 hours of play per week globally, with players from 18 to 45 averaging over 7 hours. This doesn’t count the additional 3.5 and 4.6 hours weekly that women and men, respectively, spend watching other people play video games, with younger groups investing more hours. Gaming dwarfs other media experiences. Pick your criterion. Interactivity? Gaming beats video and reading. Length of immersion? A season of TV might last for 10 or 20 hours. One game, including extras, may span well over 100 hours. Gaming is built around signaling the participant’s expertise and quantity of involvement. This fuels social competition in addition to social discussion. Traditional media has no such competition driving adoption, nor does a group viewing experience compare to multiplayer. Gaming grows with the addition of each new technology platform — console, PC, mobile, etc. — while conventional media struggles with such jumps. At best, traditional media cannibalizes the prior generation, as we have seen with streaming and disc. And as gaming grows, it iterates more quickly, weeding through new ideas faster and innovating in new directions, such as augmented and virtual realities. These innovations will port smoothly into the metaverse. In all cases, gaming trumps conventional content and is consuming its following. Gaming is eating the world. - from https://venturebeat.com/2021/03/02/from-sci-fi-to-reality-evidence-that-the-metaverse-is-closer-than-you-think/ Fast forward to yesterday, and I came across Cardano and the Coming Metaverse, which is a much more detailed look at how blockchain technology (using Cardano as an example in this case) will likely be instrumental in creating a metaverse full of interactive gaming worlds with real world interactions and implications. The author builds out a scenario of what it might be like to function in such a metaverse. Give it a read if you have 20 minutes and are interested in blockchain tech (it is fairly detailed, but I think that is helpful in this case). From the start of the article: Before going any further, however, it might be worth explaining how blockchain gaming is any different from, say, a high-quality game release on XBOX. After all, immersive gaming is already possible with current gaming technology and hardware, so why do we want a future where games happen on-chain? If you get nothing else out of this post, let it be this: the paradigm shift happens when you accept that blockchain games aren't really "games" as we currently understand them — they are more accurately described as alternate realities. Everything in a blockchain game is final and immutable; in other words, the blockchain can be thought of as a digital reconstruction of linear time — and with time, comes real cost. If you sell something, you can't change what happened. If you purchase something, you can't erase that purchase from your history of events. Mix this hard truth with the creative potential to imagine worlds without end, bend the laws of physics, and rewrite natural order? Everything we already play on consoles and watch in cinemas is now — for lack of a better word — real. We call this the Metaverse. - from https://thecryptodrip.com/cardano-coming-metaverse/ As an old Eve Online player, this reminded me of the "hard truth" of how getting killed there really sucked and going to dangerous places in that game really did feel like a true risk (because of all the time/mental energy invested in playing - its not called spreadsheets in space for nothing!). Eventually, for me, the time/energy requirement of playing was no longer rewarding enough for me in real life to keep playing. But as illustrated in the article above, such time investment/risk would have a new twist on it via the blockchain and a metaverse. Success in games like Eve or SC could actually translate to benefits outside the game itself, not just in-game glory. Being good at one game or task could translate into benefits in a completely different game (by being able to trade/sell assets from one game for those in another), or even potentially into real monetary rewards as people are willing to purchase your time/skillset/or assets as a player. And because of blockchain tech, you can remove much of the potential for scams or fraud from the interactions. I just did a quick google search for metaverse gaming, and was quite surprised by all recent news coverage and articles that showed up. Epic Games (Fortnite) has just purchased Sketchfab, a major marketplace for creators to sell 3D content they have created (everything from 3D scans of faces to spaceship models). “By joining forces, Epic and Sketchfab will be able to make 3D, AR and VR content more accessible and grow the creator ecosystem, which are critical to an open and interconnected Metaverse.” Facebook (for better or worse) has said they are going to shift into a metaverse approach in their business model and are investing heavily in AR and VR projects. According to the article, they have 10,000 employees already working on these projects, which seemed utterly crazy until I read they have over 58,000 employees in total. There is even a new ETF you can invest in that is specifically focused on tracking metaverse development.... So...if it looks like the race is on and the metaverse is coming in some shape or another, what could Star Citizen's place be in all this? Should it have a place at all? What do you all think of this idea of a metaverse and blockchain/crypto interactions in gaming in general? In Part 2 of this post, and with any comments/discussion below in mind, I would like to continue this conversation and look a bit more at the SC specific implications (good or bad) of a metaverse for both CGI and players. Thanks for making it to the end! This stuff was all just fascinating to me, so I thought I would see what the rest of you think! (Edit: removed duplicate links/text)