Understanding the Metaverse and Its Intricacies in a Simple Way

The term metaverse has become increasingly popular since Facebook's announcement that it changed its name to Meta, the shift from social media to metaverse development. Since then, there has been more and more literature in local languages ​​to make it easier for many people to understand the ins and outs of the metaverse. This also happened in Indonesia.

To discuss simply what is metaverse and the intricacies in it, #TuesdayStartup This time, we invited Shinta VR Co-founder & Managing Director Andes Rizky. Andes will share many things related to the metaverse and how it is implemented in Indonesia. Here's a summary:

Metaverse is different from the world online

Andes explained in general that currently the metaverse concept has been enjoyed by many people 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 in a game.

It's just that, in the game the experience offered is not immersive because it requires a VR device for that. "In a quasi (meta) world we all feel there (game), immersed emotionally, even though I don't use VR (a device that connects to the metaverse)," he said.

The right keywords, he continued, are the most striking difference between the metaverse and the world online now is the involvement of the emotional side. Because, all the behavior and emotional behavior of a person in the metaverse can be said to be close to someone's behavior in the real world.

He gave an example with what Shinta VR is currently doing in developing VR for education and human development. Which, these two segments involve human learning processes that focus more on emotional elements than logical ones.

"For example, you don't like math, if you don't already have one" emotional connection, yes it will not work perfectly. Shinta VR help customized learning process that involves an emotional element.

Ander's opinion is in line with what was stated Kraken co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell. He said the people who played the row online game Popular people are attracted to the metaverse because of the idea of ​​​​the ease of moving virtual goods, virtual tokens, virtual clothes, whatever it is, between different platforms. That's where NFT and cryptocurrencies will come into play a lot.

Implementation and target metaverse

Again, because it involves an emotional element, the application of the metaverse in the future will be wider to many verticals of life. Including making it a "tool" to detect a person's behavior when placed in certain scenarios, a medium for eliminating phobias, meditation, to detecting shopping behavior as a target for digital advertising in the future.

According to Andes, it is very possible that these potentials will even be judged to be more accurate than assessments in the online world. Take a real example, the majority of Indonesians are less objective when rating the goods they order on the marketplace platform. Even for stuff that isn't great, it often gets 4/5 stars. Likewise, when shopping for clothes on online platforms, the size is often not the right size.

"As Universe one unit, all activities that are difficult to do in the real world can be done in the metaverse. Therefore, there are so many uses for the metaverse, 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 was preceded by the NFT hype that started earlier this year. Because industrially, the devices that support the presence of the metaverse are more 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 that costs around Rp. 36 million.

Even in terms of the connection itself, the distribution of the 4G network in Indonesia itself is starting to spread evenly and the quality is also increasing from time to time. According to Andes, with the quality of this network, it is able to present social interaction in the metaverse world.

“Only if a more complex metaverse such as involving video for more experience immersive, must use 5G. But if social interactions, 4G alone is enough. The only challenge is how to import VR because it is still challenging, both in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, there is no official Oculus distributor yet," he concluded.

Andes concluded, “Another thing to note is that the metaverse is still new, so it needs further literacy from content creators. This is no longer about digital literacy, but a more complex metaverse literacy. Relevant stakeholders also need to be involved.”