Here’s Why March 2023 is the Month Which Launched Metaverse 2.0

In my personal narrative for the evolution of the Metaverse, I’d arrange the historical timeline roughly (and very simply) this way:

Metaverse zero point, 1992-1996: Snow Crash published; VRML and several very early metaverse platforms launched, including Active Worlds and Cybertown.

Metaverse 1.0, 2003-2008: Second Life launched, along with a number of other metaverse-aspirational virtual worlds including Roblox in 2006.

Metaverse 1.5, 2014-2022: Facebook purchases Oculus and its “Path to the Metaverse“; VRChat, Rec Room, and other next gen metaverse platforms launched; Fortnite’s crossover success and Roblox’s huge IPO and Matt Ball’s essays help catalyze excitement and awareness around the concept within the mainstream business world, culminating in Facebook changing its name to Meta.

Skepticism over Meta’s approach to the Metaverse, not to mention crypto, started toward the end of 2022, echoed by Meta itself, when its roadmap to the future failed to mention “the Metaverse” even once. Unsurprisingly, an internal survey of Meta staff last January showed waning confidence in the Metaverse, while a leaked presentation last February also showed Meta execs deigning to mention the Metaverse behind closed doors. 

With Meta effectively out of the picture, it’s fair to say Metaverse 2.0 started this month:

We began the month with Roblox reporting that its Daily Active User numbers had grown by 20% from 2021, echoing an earlier outside report that Roblox now has 250-260 million monthly active users.

Early March also saw the launch of Frontlines, a Roblox experience which demonstrated that the platform could now deploy AAA-level games. Roblox the company supported the Frontlines team with funding and technical advice through its game fund, suggesting that we should expect to see many more experiences of this caliber soon.

Then last week, Epic rolled out a number of platform updates to Fortnite putting it much farther in sync with the Metaverse vision, including its Creator Economy 2.0:

Under the new system, Epic will pay out 40 percent of Fortnite’s net revenues each month to creators based on how much players engage with their islands. That means 40 percent of the money Epic makes from things like V-Bucks, its Fortnite Crew subscription, and in-game outfits (like for crossovers like YouTube superstar MrBeast and Resident Evil characters) — all of that goes into the pool. Fortnite currently generates “billions of dollars a year in revenue from player purchases,” Saxs Persson, Epic’s EVP of the Fortnite ecosystem, said onstage at last week’s State of Unreal event. So even if we assume that translates to just $1 billion in net revenues per year, at least $400 million per year is up for grabs.

Closer to home, this month Second Life’s former lead developer Rod Humble unveiled Life by You, a new, incredibly ambitious merging of Second Life, The Sims, and an open game development tool.

Also in March, Linden Lab finally revealed its Unity-based mobile app for Second Life, while a community-driven Unity viewer with Second Life was also announced, and continues to gain momentum.

All of which is to echo Tim Sweeney’s words from this month: “We can set aside the crazy hype cycle around NFTs and VR goggles. These technologies may play a role in the future but they are not required. This revolution is happening right now.”

No word on when the mainstream tech world will realize all this, but fortunately, they’re a bit too distracted by ChatGPT to spend much time declaring the Metaverse to be “dead”. By the time they realize that ChatGPT is really just an incremental improvement to Google Search (basically), I expect they’ll finally grasp that the Metaverse never went away, but kept quietly growing beneath their feet.