The future of creation and play in the Metaverse

Driving Game Growth & Into the Metaverse

Register today to connect with the games industry, join private networking sessions, and hear the latest on driving game growth and the metaverse.

January 26-28, 2021

Presented by Unit 2 Games

As the art of content creation becomes both more accessible and more social it will be a huge multiplier for the creativity of the human race.

And so it should be, since creativity is a very fundamental aspect of what makes us human. Researchers from Drexel College of Arts and Sciences recently demonstrated how the reward centers of our brains are activated when we have ‘Aha!’ insights, with the results suggesting that this “may be a manifestation of an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism for the reinforcement of exploration, problem solving, and creative cognition”.

So it’s built into our genetic make-up to be predisposed to enjoy being creative. Let’s explore some of the components of the growing Metaverse that will allow far more people to embrace digital creativity in their lives.

Social impact

One of the most fundamental aspects of the Metaverse is that it’s always connected at a global scale, and is therefore always social and frequently multi-cultural. This critical dynamic instantly changes people’s relationships with creative activities in a number of positive ways, as demonstrated by Hull University’s research:

• Concept development often occurs through the testing of ideas on others and the rehearsing of positions that enable learners to express their understanding of ideas and concepts.
• Peer learning can prompt a sense of responsibility for one’s own and others’ learning and development, increasing confidence and self-esteem through engaging in a community of learning and learners.
• Peer learning offers students benefits such as higher academic achievement, improved interpersonal relationships, enhanced personal and social development, more positive learning environment, and increased motivation levels.
• It enables cultural knowledge and cultural awareness to be developed through conversations between peers.

So the social, collaborative nature of the always-connected Metaverse makes for faster learning, and more engaging forms of being creative with peers.

Hardware accessibility

The benefits of moving to the cloud are continuing their march across all forms of art and entertainment. Music and video were the first to fall, when the convenience of accessible consumption happening anywhere without the clutter of physical media just made too much sense.

And the same is now starting to occur in the gaming industry: What started with the ‘take your hardware with you’ success of Nintendo Switch, is now moving towards the cloud-gaming future with the likes of Stadia bringing huge benefits of serving games across any device without installation or performance concerns.

As NewZoo reports, the cloud-gaming industry is then going to receive a huge multiplier as we start to see the widespread adoption of 5G. This will not only open up high-quality gaming to a worldwide audience, but it will enable that same quality entertainment to be taken seamlessly out of the living room to travel with players, wherever they go.

This dropping of hardware barriers combined with increased bandwidth means that the tools to high-quality digital creativity and play will become accessible to an ever-increasing percentage of the global audience.

Digital natives: The leading light in online confidence

Another critical component to Metaverse adoption is of a psychological nature: the confidence of users to happily play around and experiment in these new, always connected, social destinations.

When it comes to online confidence, Generation Z are leading the way. As the Center for Generational Kinetics revealed in their third international study last year, this generation draws no distinction between their physical and online worlds, and “when asked which value, quality, or attribute is most important to your generation, Gen Z rated tech-savviness (19%) almost as highly as freedom (22%)”.

These users have no problems at all with trying and adopting new social technologies, are not deterred by new hardware or software interfaces, and are not ‘weirded out’ chatting to people online who they have never met in real life.

So we need to look to this audience for two important elements: 1) They will provide the best examples of how users will behave when accustomed to these new technologies, and 2) they are going to be highly influential at persuading other demographics to give the Metaverse a try.

An example

So the Metaverse will need to have the democratisation of creativity at its very heart in order for it to be successful. It will be achieved by bringing down the barriers to accessibility and connectivity, while being largely pioneered by the digital natives, and it’s something we’re already seeing starting to happen.

With that in mind I’d like to introduce you to the Jones family (not their real surname), and how they are being creative within our game, Crayta.

For those who don’t know, Crayta is a collaborative game-development platform, powered by Unreal Engine, and was released on Stadia in July 2020. Crayta has a built-in editor that has two modes: the Basic Mode is accessible to anyone who has used games like Minecraft using just a controller, while Advanced Mode is a development environment that is more familiar to those who have used game engines such as Unity or Unreal. Everything in Crayta is server-based and multiplayer, including game creation itself.

The Jones family consists of Mom, Dad, and their two children. While their Dad was the one who first bought Stadia, it was his kids who got into Crayta; as digital natives they had no qualms about playing lots of multiplayer games with other people, and after a while they soon developed an interest in the game creation side, and joined the Discord community.

As they started making games they then got Mom and Dad into Crayta too, and now the whole family play together, using a combination of PCs, mobile phones, and Chromecasts. They are a perfect example of how the Metaverse can merge with creativity, and these new technologies massively increase the accessibility and reach of these experiences.

A creative future we’re all a part of

No one fully knows what the Metaverse will truly look like when it’s more fully-formed, but to us it promises to be a very fulfilling and fascinating place for all of humanity. It will amaze, delight, and push the boundaries of art forms at phenomenal rates when the tools are within everyone’s reach, and everybody can create, play, and learn together.

This is already starting to happen now, but as the various software offerings become more widely adopted, and the underlying hardware becomes more widespread, a wonderful explosion of shared creative experiences is inevitable.

As the Metaverse becomes more and more firmly established, human creativity will be unleashed globally at a level never seen before. Now that’s something we can all look forward to.

For more information on Crayta, please visit www.Crayta.com

Chris Swan is Publishing Director at Unit 2 Games and will be speaking on January 28th at the upcoming event, “Into the Metaverse,” hosted by GamesBeat. Learn more and register here. 

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