Just Like Thanos, Metaverse RPGs are Inevitable
Full-immersion dungeon crawls? The Metaverse is going to change the way we look at games. If we’re ready for it, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The Metaverse is coming; a version of the internet that represents a single, universal, enveloping virtual environment, accessed by virtual and augmented reality tech. It’s not quite here yet, but it is definitely on its way. When it arrives, roleplaying games are going to be one of the many things that it offers to users. It’ll be a means to get you engaged and keep you interacting with it as much as possible.
From Snow Crash to Ready Player One & Beyond
The metaverse as a gaming environment has been a part of its premise since the beginning. It goes all the way back to 1992 when the term itself was coined in Neal Stephenson’s amazing novel Snow Crash. Probably the best-known version of a gaming metaverse came along in 2011 in Ernie Cline’s novel Ready Player One. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is actively building a platform for a metaverse for up to 1 billion people to interact with in virtual space. One presumes this has to include games.
A smaller version of a metaverse includes the popular game Second Life. In the game, players interact with each other using virtual avatars in a series of linked electronic worlds (though admittedly, Second Life is far more of a social platform than a game.) Second Life has roughly 1 million users as of 2022. Of course, it’s not too difficult to look at games like World of Warcraft and EVE Online as other examples of a budding metaverse.
What’s a Metaverse Good For?
For the purposes of this article, though, let’s focus on what a metaverse can offer to RPG enthusiasts. The answer is simple: unparalleled immersion. A proper metaverse (like the OASIS from Ready Player One) is sufficient to completely override the user’s senses and simulate an entirely different environment than the real world. In a metaverse like this, journeying into a dungeon might be a complete sensory replacement. You could hear the dripping water, glimpse wandering monsters in the distance, and hear the whispers of your fellow adventurers as you proceed into the darkness.
The concept is certainly exciting. You could play a fully-immersive RPG with people from around the world. Your DM/GM could populate the virtual environment with all kinds of interactable items, traps, treasures, and secrets. It is easy to imagine hours of being surrounded by exciting, full-sensory scenes, not to mention some truly heart-pounding combat!
That kind of immersion is both highly attractive to people looking for an escape from the real world. At the same time, it’s dangerous. High levels of immersion while playing a character can have significant effects on the player. In the Nordic LARP circles, for example, they have the concept of “bleed.” For them, bleed represents the intense nature of these LARPs causing the character’s reactions to carry over onto the player’s own psyche.
How Soon is “Soon”?
Let me be clear, I’m no Mazes and Monsters-esque fear-mongerer claiming that metaverse RPGs are going to lead to people unable to separate fantasy and reality. I am saying that there could be greater exposure to effects that gamers are already experiencing from intense and immersive roleplaying, both for good and for ill.
This isn’t going to happen soon. Metaverse technology is still largely in its infancy, currently represented by the Oculus VR and similar headsets, along with a few other peripherals. However, if the history of personal computing has taught us anything, those access devices are going to improve and improve rapidly. The experience of a multiverse is only going to become more immersive, not less.
The Metaverse is Going to Change a Lot
And there are quite a few applications of a metaverse RPG that would be a net good for society. Not just better and more immersive games, not just exciting ways to interact with worlds and IPs that we love, but actual innovation. Imagine having a therapy session that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Imagine social workers able to virtually tour the homes of their clients, training simulations for pilots and surgeons, and much, much more. The possibilities are significant.
One possible application of a metaverse RPG would be to gamify good behavior and use that as a means to guide people through moral choices and integration with society. It would be useful for prisoners to actively promote rehabilitation. Just imagine a Paragon/Renegade meter and place your convict on the Citadel, for instance. Metaverse RPGs could help people study criminal and immoral behaviors or experience world history in a way never before possible.
Behind Every Exalted Success Lurks the Shadows of Envy & Greed
Similar to NFTs and Blockchain technology, however, metaversal games have just as much potential to become twisted into pure profit by the corporations that control them. Metaverse games, when they arrive, must be watched carefully for such anti-gamer “innovations.” It would be simple to over-commodify the experience (similar to how many first-person shooter games are experiencing greater use of in-game advertising) and compromise the game’s potential in the name of cold, hard, cash.
Looking ahead, it’s also only a matter of time before further applications of metaverse tech catch on, such as AI-driven games. Take the concept of “procedurally generated” aspects of video games and apply them to an RPG adventure.
Also, the issue of privacy becomes paramount when you’re interacting in a virtual space. RPGs are a great way to immerse yourself in a character, a world, or a story that you love. But it would be easy in a virtual space to take that love and use it to extract every bit of information from the player — from their facial structure to their bank accounts.
Maybe you look at an article like this and consider it alarmist. Maybe you’re unconcerned about the potential for future tech (such as AIs and the metaverse) to impact the hobby that you love. That’s fine — but keep in mind that these advancements are far more likely to impact the next generation and the next. Myself, I’m part of Generation X, and I know for sure I would have preferred to be informed about how things like smartphones were going to change the gaming landscape. Now’s our time to look ahead and think about what’s coming down the pipe, because we can adapt to our future, or we can lay down while it steamrolls over us. I know which outcome I want.
