The Universal Backlot: Metaverse Tools | Jon Peddie

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Jon Peddie recently hosted a talk for our GamesBeat Summit 2023 event on the universal backlot, a metaphor borrowed from the movies about the tools of creation in the metaverse.

Peddie, the founder of Jon Peddie Research, has specialized in computer graphics analysis and consulting for decades and is the author of a three-book series on the history of the GPU, or computer graphics unit. graphics processing.

He started by defining the metaverse as "whatever you want it to be". Omid Rahmat helped create the game but he couldn't get the word out.

"And I'm not being facetious trying to define and label something as a single entity because the metaverse will never work," he said. “First of all, in a perfect metaverse, there is only one metaphor, and everyone who has space there will be able to move freely, trade virtual goods, manage transactions, to communicate and interact freely with everyone. This is ideal."

But that means you have to have standards and interoperability, he said. And while there are standards and attempts to forge a unified, holistic approach, it's unlikely we'll truly achieve a single metaverse, Peddie said.

"Just as there are many standards such as jpg, png, Tiff, etc., data interchange formats for image files," he said. “There will likely be many standardized versions of the metaverse as well. So collaboration will only be possible when there is a clear sense of ownership. That means for a guy with a TIFF file, who wants to share it with someone 'one who wants to use it as a JPEG file, for your purposes it may degrade or create a red flag."

This is a red flag because, in a virtual world, once someone figures out how to access your bits and bytes together, they have the ability to modify those bits and bytes, replicate them, and do different things with them, Peddie says.

"That's the vulnerability that we all have to deal with. So that drives some consideration in any metaverse digital content creation strategy," he said. "How do I lock in my proprietary rights? We haven't found a solution yet, other than a lawyer writing a big document, so I'm guessing most companies will stick to proprietary metrics, and as a result, interoperability will have hurdles to jump. Not insurmountable, but certainly negotiable. And standards mean that everyone is committed to exchanging formats for digital content. Not necessarily open."

Presenting an intricate bubble chart of the universe of Metaverse digital content creation tools, Peddie said, "Here's the real reason Metaverse can exist other than as a generic idea or name for a set of technologies. Digital content is a very, very complex and segmented world. The tools universe model could very easily be adapted to the art and production departments of each Marvel movie for example."

If you watch the credits of a Marvel movie it's amazing how many people are involved in creating these things and then it just goes on and on and on and on it seems, he said declared.

"What you can take away from this is that it's very difficult to get into content creation," he said. "The enormity of managing all the different disciplines and experts in the field is overwhelming. Therefore, your first strategy is to identify your niche and stick to it as closely as you scale."

He noted that all of these functions serve applications, so he didn't give a metaverse definition; there is too much to say.

"For a fashion brand, the metaverse only makes sense insofar as it can be applied to the sale of apparel, footwear, or apparel," Peddie said. “For a manufacturing company like Siemens, for example, these are digital twins, which provide models of its [factory] operation, so that they can be analyzed to create meaningful changes in the factory or in the production of different applications."

So measuring metaverse content creation in these two examples is going to be very different and will require very unique skills for creators.

In addition, in games, content requirements are even greater due to tight integration with fast interaction.

"That in turn...