A Simple Way to Interpret Metaverse and Its Context

The metaverse term is gaining popularity since Facebook changed its label to Meta, shifting from social media to metaverse development. Furthermore, more literature arises in local languages to make it easier for people to understand the context of the metaverse. It happens in Indonesia.

In a brief discussion on the metaverse definition and its context, #SelasaStartup invites Shinta VR's Co-founder & Managing Director, Andes Rizky. He shared tons of insights related to the metaverse and how it is implemented in Indonesia. The excerpt is below:

Metaverse and online realm

On a general note, Andes said that many people has actually experienced the metaverse concept through online games that are semi-metaverse, for example in Mobile Legends, PUBG, Free Fire, and so on which involve virtual teams (multiple players) to play.

However, the experience offered in this game is not immersive as it requires a VR device. "In a quasi (meta) world, we all feel like we are there (the game), emotionally immersed, even though we don't use VR (a connecting device to the metaverse)," he said.

The right keyword, he continued, the most striking difference between the metaverse and the online realm is emotional involvement. In fact, all the emotional acts and behavior of a person in the metaverse nearly match someone's behavior in the real world.

For example, he mentioned about Shinta VR's current development of VR for education and human development. These two segments involve a human learning process that focuses more on the emotional than the logical element.

"For example, you don't like math, if you don't have an emotional connection, it won't work perfectly. Shinta VR helps personalized learning processes that involve emotional elements.”

Andes' opinion is in line with Kraken's Co-founder and CEO, Jesse Powell statement. He said people who play popular online games are attracted to the metaverse with the idea of moving virtual items, virtual tokens, virtual outfits, or whatever it is, between different platforms. That's where NFT and cryptocurrencies will play a big role.

Implementation and target

Moreover, because it involves an emotional element, the metaverse application in the future is to expand to many verticals of life. It includes making it a "tool" to detect a person's behavior in certain scenarios, a medium to defeat phobias, meditation, analyzing shopping behavior as a target for digital advertising in the future.

Andes said, it is very possible that these potentials will be more accurate than assessments in the online realm. Take a real example, the majority of Indonesians are less objective when it comes to rating the goods they order on marketplace. Even though the stuff is not that great, it will get 4/5 stars. It also happens,when shopping for clothes on online platforms, the sizes are often not the right size.

“As a unified universe, all difficult activities to do in the real world is possible in the metaverse. Therefore, metaverse has many functions, depending on how we want to use it, because everyone is the target of metaverse users."

In other words, it's only a matter of time before the metaverse becomes mainstream, which begins with the NFT hype earlier this year. Industrially, the devices that support metaverse presence are getting friendly in terms of price and size. It's no longer like it used to be, where a VR set must be connected to a PC which costs around IDR 36 million.

It also applies in terms of connection, the 4G network is getting widely and evenly distributed in Indonesia and the quality is increasing from time to time. Andes said this network quality will be able to present social interactions in the metaverse world.

"However, the metaverse is more complex, for a more immersive experience involving video, it requires 5G. However, for social interaction, 4G is enough. The only challenge is how to import VR as it is still challenging, both in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, there is no official Oculus distributor yet," he said.

Andes also mentioned, “Another thing is, because the metaverse is quite new, it requires further literacy from content creators. This is no longer about digital literacy, but a more complex metaverse literacy. Relevant stakeholders are expected to be involved.”

–Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian