More than half a year has passed since Facebook changed its name to Meta, and while interest and investment in the metaverse from technology companies is thriving, there seems to be a lot of consideration still needed regarding what the realization of the metaverse will mean for the general public.It can't be clearly defined because it hasn't been realizedis a rather persuasive criticism from WIRED, and some commercially available VR and AR related products tend to instill a distorted understanding that the metaverse will be limited to an aggregation of already existing technologies. Meta's recent ambitious attempt, Ray-Ban Stories, receives criticism of being 'creepy' before any praise for its technical achievement, as pointed out by the WSJ, because of its design which hides the fact that it is recording from passersby.
Google Glass, released in 2011, already demonstrated the lesson that considerations for social norms are important before technological realization through incidents like cafes banning wearers and proposed laws against wearing them while driving. So, why are similar cases happening now, over 10 years later? What is the metaverse that technology companies envision, and what are they missing in the process? We find a clue in a gaming community.
Photo by etherealSTEVE on Reddit
This figurine is named 'Let Me Solo Her'. More precisely, it's the in-game name of one of the 1.4 million users in the Reddit community for the new game 'Elden Ring', released in February this year and having sold 12 million copies worldwide. He selflessly faced over 1,000 battles through the game's co-op feature to help other users overcome a notoriously difficult boss. This heroic tale of dedication spread through the community, amplified by users who felt limited by their own multiple failed attempts, and soon evolved into a phenomenon of idolization. This fandom has spawned fan art, figurines, animations, reaction videos, and interview articles, and ultimately, even a Rap Song, creating yet another new meme.
Of course, the formation of such fandoms within gaming communities has been observed frequently. However, what makes the Let Me Solo Her phenomenon interesting is that people's attention is directed towards the gamer, a real-world user, rather than the in-game character. For a long time, AAA game companies have designed games based on characters with extraordinary abilities, planning out the storyline, world view, and relationships between characters accordingly. Users were limited to a predetermined path, essentially playing a confined role and immersing themselves in the process of growth. Therefore, whenever they logged into the game, the character was always the protagonist, and the character's growth was the sole expectation. However, Elden Ring has a very different starting point, aiming to foster the growth of the user, the person, rather than the character.
Hidetaka Miyazaki, the game director of Elden Ring, who has a background in social sciences, explains in his interview with The New Yorker that the game starts in a dangerously designed world where death can occur easily, and that the frequent 'You Died' messages users encounter are an intentional message revealing the user's role as an interdependent core feature that sustains the game's world view. He anticipated that users would gain skill and experiential growth through death, and to ensure that all users experience this, he refused to add a difficulty setting option for over 10 years, despite numerous requests from gamers using refunds as leverage.
Games are typically built on fictional challenges, making them seem mundane or distant compared to everyday life. However, Elden Ring's world is rooted in human experiences such as shame, failure, and death, emphasizing the process of fostering the user themselves, thereby bringing the experience closer to real life, even though it's a game. In reality, 'heroic lives' derive meaning from the opposing lifestyle, namely 'everyday life', and are understood from the perspective of interdependent struggles between people (Featherstone, 1992: 162). The act of a firefighter jumping into a burning building can only be understood by considering not only the social role of being a firefighter but also the general human response to witnessing a fire, the social perception of the profession, i.e., the narrative of heroism, and the social conditions that emphasize it (Scheipers, 2014: 5).
In other words, the heroic actions displayed by Let Me Solo Her in the world of Elden Ring are not only contingent upon a good heart, motivation, and the revealed situation but also require an understanding of the underlying nature of human organizations, as evidenced by various sociologists from different fields. Because the trigger for courage and self-sacrifice is found outside, not inside, the individual (Franco et al., 2011: 102–103), the physical and tangible praise manifested in various forms by numerous users in the real world towards a single userwithin the gamecan thus be a clue to establishing a meaningful relationship with the user through technology – a feat Meta has yet to achieve with its Rayban and Oculus.
When envisioning a world infused with technology or creating a digital product, considering the ecosystem – how users and the product interact and integrate into the social conditions – as a starting point, even if it is a specific and limited world, could lead to more realistic results.
Virtual Streamer CodeMikoachieved a technological feat completely distinct from reality, yet her D-pic system was rooted in reality, which led to her being banned from Twitch. On the other hand, Google's newly unveiled Translation Service Glassesin April has garnered a smooth, positive response from the public, a natural achievement, because it aims to address issues of communication, which encompass diverse forms of social relationships.
Where does your anticipation for the metaverse and its products begin? Is it the technology that takes center stage? The user's expressions? Or the associated and defined world?
Ryan Son is the partner at Reason of creativity.
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