Science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, in an interview with the Financial Times, outlined the conditions for metaverse popularity and spoke about the future of virtual reality.
He questioned the prospects of the technology until people themselves decide to live in a digital world. To do this, a unique “experience that millions will deem worthy” will be needed to venture into the metaverse.
According to Stephenson, achieving such a level is extremely difficult. As an example of a successful realization of a virtual world, he cited the 2021 video game Valheim. It is a survival-in-an-open-world simulator that is procedurally generated with every playthrough—locations never repeat.
“I think that people who spend a lot of time in games, especially in multiplayer ones, get used to the idea of moving in shared three-dimensional spaces. Undoubtedly, this is the most basic idea of the metaverse,” Stephenson said.
He also acknowledged the existence of games in which high-quality worlds are manually crafted. However, the writer is convinced that in the case of the metaverse, full freedom of action and decentralization will be required.
As reported in February, Sotheby’s displayed Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash manuscript. In the 1992 work, the term ‘metaverse’ presumably first appeared.
In June 2022 Stephenson announced the launch of his own Lamina1 blockchain, aimed at virtual worlds and augmented reality. The project also involves former Bitcoin Foundation president Peter Vessenes.