The metaverse is currently being created. Engineers and coders are terraforming new worlds, in many cases in their own image or nostalgic vision. While users have been asked how much time they think they will spend in the metaverse, a relatively small number have been asked what they want it to be.
I want a multiverse, time travelling metaverse.
When I was in primary school I spent a week dressed like a child of the 1850s learning in a single room schoolhouse in the middle of the goldfields. We used chalk on tablets to learn the script of the time before graduating to quill and ink to write poetry of the day.
While I was being caned for writing with my left hand, tourists would look on and take photos on 35mm film. Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, Australia is a bit like a real-world Westworld. You can pan for gold, eat boiled sweets or hang out with the blacksmith. Like Disney world, the ‘characters’ in the park never break character, they are living life on the goldfields.
This memory came to me as I was playing Assassins Creed Odyssey recently. The game is set around 420 BC in Greece. The open world map is vast including high peaks of the Peloponnese and rocky Cyclades islands with white walled houses and blue roofs. As part of the main mission of the game you engage with Pericles, Socrates, Aristophanes and the kings of Sparta. One of the side missions can only be completed by learning the story of Perseus (which involves a golden shower) and teaching it to children.
I’ve studied ‘The Bacchae’ and read parts of the Odyssey, but I never got the sense of what it might be like to live during that time. These historical worlds seem to be useful. As well as the educational value, the curiosity of living in an age gone by is a powerful motivator for many.
The other ‘problem’ that these age specific worlds solve is the one of virtual goods lasting ‘forever’. If I buy a pair of comfy blue jeans for my avatar I never have to buy another pair. But if I can’t wear those jeans because it’s medieval Europe in the 1400s, then brands get to sell more virtual stuff.
There are problems with it though. The same problems we have with the metaverse which is currently being created. He (it’s usually men) who defines the world can control the narrative and the experience. Should these historical worlds be ‘accurate’ and who is to say what happens and what doesn’t. Am I allowed to kill indigenous people and get away with it? Do I have to play in a class system where feudal leaders own all the land and everyone else is a tax-paying serf? Is slave ownership legal? Is it enough to ‘just be’ in a different time without any gamification?
The other issue with this approach is that it ‘breaks’ the desire that some Web3 people have for interoperability. Rules may need to apply to make the experience authentic. If I am living in 1850 in Ballarat Australia, then there shouldn’t be any cars. I shouldn’t be allowed to use my Rubiks cube NFT while sitting by an alluvial deposit.
Nevertheless I want a multiverse metaverse. Don’t give me a DeLorean in 2030. Send me back to 1985 so I can travel back to 1955 – talk about meta… Personally, if someone said – do you want a free-for-all, jumbled up, real life current day metaverse or the option to visit a world in the past I would choose the latter. Some of the time.
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