Definition of Metavers: One or more Metavers?

Visit report published on October 20, 2022 by Camille François, Adrien Basdevant and Rémi Ronfard, commissioned by the Ministries of Culture and Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty (France), attempts to give a definition of metavers and outlines 10 avenues for the development of a French metavers ecosystem, the essentials of which we publish below.

The authors distinguish between the abstract concept of the Metaverse "with a capital M" (as in the case of the "capitalized" Internet), which describes a concept of immersion, containing a multitude of services and spaces, more or less open, which are all Metavers with a lower-case "m".

The term "Metavers" therefore encompasses a wide range of immersion technology horizons.

For several years now, the term Metaverse has been used to describe immersive social technologies (augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, etc.). These new connected and immersive social networks are and will be accessible via computer screens, smartphones, and the first augmented and virtual reality visiocasks and goggles. They are propelled by rapid technological development: microelectronics (nano-oleds, motion sensors, sound spatialization), on-board graphics processors, real-time rendering in high video and audio resolution, and more.

Modalities to date focus on the possibility of accessing them with or without video headsets, of using avatars or not, and of exchanging information with or without distributed registry technologies. Different types of metavers are already taking shape, with varying degrees of social acceptability (in fact, at present, metavers are driven more by industry in a supply-driven logic, than by the public in a demand-driven logic).

On the Silicon Valley side, there's a battle of perspectives about what the "Metaverse" can represent: open or closed, general public or industrial, virtual reality or augmented reality, general public or specialized, and so on. For example Nvidia, Microsoft, Siemens and Dassault Systèmesthe focus is on industrial and professional applications with, for example, the development of industrial digital twins by Dassault Systèmes. While Snapchat, Niantic or Apple to some extent, augmented reality is favored over virtual reality. These players take a rather negative view of Metavers, as virtual reality isolates users from each other and from the world around them, while augmented reality enables them to stay connected with their direct environment.

France seems well positioned in immersive technologies. With big names such as UbisoftDassault Systèmes and Ledger and on the other, numerous start-ups acquired by American groups and world-renowned creative studios.

In addition, other innovative projects - essential for navigating and transacting in metavers - are under development, with the aim of offering solutions for identity management, decentralized storage, or securing digital assets. As a result, the pioneers and nuggets of the French metaverse are divided between two ecosystems. These two ecosystems (which are also two generations, and two different groups of players) are clear and distinct. On the one hand, the virtual reality / augmented reality / mixed reality (or extended reality) ecosystem; on the other, the Blockchain / Web3 / NFT ecosystem. There are French talents in both these ecosystems.

1- Take advantage of the 2024 Olympic Games being held in Paris to serve as a catalyst and showcase for French know-how. Indeed, this ecosystem deserves to be the focus of a proactive public policy to organize infrastructure, support innovation, capitalize on cultural uses, orchestrate regulation and take into account societal and environmental issues.

2- Organize the Metavers infrastructure to ensure free and interoperable metavers, notably through standardization, as has been done for the Web.

3- Develop open standards to create open, trusted and free technological building blocks (interoperable and secure services, open data), by promoting an organized public strategy with the various public entities that hold technologies and services that will be essential building blocks and drivers of innovation for French public metavers.

4- Support innovation by prioritizing the emergence of key solutions and technologies through a rigorous analysis of metavers' value chains in order to guide strategic investment areas and identify risks of loss of sovereignty or value leakage. This metaverse economic strategy will :

5- Focus on cultural uses , because the cultural sector can be a real laboratory, in particular by providing a clear understanding of the different distribution systems for immersive content and their modalities.

6- Reconcile technological and cultural sovereignty through public procurement, by promoting the development of sovereign, innovative technological solutions that create jobs and new markets for French companies, rather than relying too systematically on American solutions and technologies.

7- Regulate to organize the accountability of platforms, the protection of personal data and the management of socio-technical risks, by extending the various regulatory frameworks aimed at digital in general and social networks in particular to metaversical issues.

8- Invest in analytical tools and techniques to detect offenses and trace them back to the perpetrators, to create the conditions for an ethical and socio-economically just Metavers, notably through interdisciplinary research (computer science, neuroscience and social sciences).

9- Strengthen training courses (3D modeling, computer graphics, animation, post-production, effects, development of mixed-reality interaction, high standards in engineering schools, video game schools and universities for game programming) and encourage practical, hands-on work to foster dialogue and synergies between scientists and creators, and create high-quality content. In this respect, France is often considered a major player in digital cultural expression, in the creative market.

10- Explore eco-responsible solutions and develop a system to measure the environmental impact of Metavers infrastructures. The technologies associated with Metavers are currently very energy-intensive.

The authors conclude by pointing out that "recent technological developments and their uses have been marked by business models based on the capture of attention and the constitution of oligopolistic players, as well as new forms of casualization or unequal distribution of value. These technologies bring with them a growing need to capture data (e.g., scans of users' entire environment, via glasses and phones in augmented reality, via helmets in virtual reality). In the short term, this raises major privacy issues, and potentially new ones in the case of cognitive data capture: some countries, such as Chile, have taken a step ahead on these issues by enshrining "neuro-rights", an approach favored by some researchers as fundamental to framing responsible metaverse innovation.

Doing business under the best possible conditions for France in the Metaverse means doing business under the best possible environmental and social conditions. In compliance with climate, public health and social acceptability requirements, as well as for the protection of citizens."

To find out more, we recommend reading the more exhaustive summary on vie-publiquer.fr as well as the PDF download of the report Exploratory mission on metavers.