It's been over half a year since Facebook changed its name to Meta, and interest and investment in the metaverse is booming, surrounding tech companies. However, there still seems to be a lot of thinking needed about what the meaning of its implementation will be for the public.It cannot be clearly defined because it has not been implementedWIRED's criticism is quite persuasive, and some VR and AR technologies on the market are actually more likely to create a distorted understanding that this will be a world limited to existing technology concentration. Meta's ambitious recent attempt,Ray-Ban Storiesas WSJ points out, receives a creepy evaluation before receiving praise for its technological achievement, as it is designed in such a way that people passing by cannot know that it is being filmed.

The 2011 release of Google Glass led to the introduction of bills prohibiting cafe entry and road driving while wearing the device,a lesson that consideration of social norms is important before technology implementationhas already been confirmed, so why is this happening again over a decade later? What is the metaverse that tech companies are drawing, and what are they missing in the process? We find clues to this in a gaming community here.

This figure is called 'Let Me Solo Her'. To be more precise, it is the in-game name of one of the 1.4 million users in the Reddit community of the new game 'Elden Ring', which was released in February this year and sold 12 million copies worldwide. He has voluntarily faced over 1,000 battles through the game's Co-op feature for other users in a boss known for its extremely difficult difficulty. This dedicated heroic tale spread through the community through users who felt limited despite dozens of attempts, and soon began to spread as a phenomenon idolizing him. This fandom has followed through fan art, figurines,animation,reaction videos, followed byinterview articles, and finallyRap Song, has become another new meme in the form of content.

Of course, the creation of such a fandom within the gaming community has often been witnessed. However, what makes the Let Me Solo Her phenomenon interesting is that people's interest is directed towards the gamer, ie the real-world user, rather than the in-game character. AAA game companies have long been designing games with characters with special abilities, stories, worldviews, and relationships between characters. Users have been assigned a limited role that they have to play, essentially walking along a well-paved predetermined path and becoming immersed in the process of growth. Therefore, whenever you log into the game, the character was always the main character, and the character's growth process was all you could expect. However, Elden Ring takes a very different starting point, focusing on growing the user, ie the person, rather than the character.

Hidetake Miyazaki, the game director of Elden Ring, who majored in social science,In an interview with The New Yorkerexplains that it started with a world designed to be dangerous, where you could die easily, and as a result, the 'You Died' that users often see is an intentional message that reveals the user's role as a key interdependent feature that sustains the game's worldview. He expected users to experience technical and experiential growth through death, and made sure that all users experience this equally, refusing to add a difficulty change option for over 10 years despite numerous requests from gamers armed with refunds.

Games are generally made up of fictional challenges. Therefore, this feels trivial or far from everyday life. However, the world of Elden Ring is rooted in human experience, including shame, failure, and death, and focuses on the process of growing the user itself, making the game and the experience within it closer to that of life. In reality, a 'heroic life' is derived from the opposite way of life, ie 'everyday life', and is understood from the perspective of an interdependent struggle between people. (Featherstone, 1992: 162) The act of a firefighter jumping into a burning house is understood only when it is premised on the social role of a firefighter, as well as the common human response to encountering a fire scene and the social perception of that profession, ie the narrative of heroism. (Scheipers, 2014: 5)

In other words, it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that the heroic actions in the world of Elden Ring that Let Me Solo Her showed are not only dependent on the right mind, motivation, and revealed situation, but also premised on the nature of human organizations, as evidenced by various subject area sociologists. Because the trigger for courage and self-sacrifice is found outside, not inside, the individual (Franco et al., 2011: 102–103)within the game towards one userin the real world Numerous physical and substantial praises by many users in various forms are therefore clues to the 'meaningful relationship establishment with users' through technology, which Meta has not yet been able to overcome through Rayban and Oculus.

When drawing a world permeated with technology, or when creating a product experienced digitally, it will be more helpful to consider the ecosystem, ie the social conditions in which users and products permeate each other in what direction, as a starting point, even if it is limited, if it is seen as a specific world.

Virtual Streamer CodeMikoDespite its technological achievements that are completely separated from reality, the public's view of the D-pic system is rooted in reality, which led to a ban from Twitch. On the other hand, Google's newly releasedTranslation Service Glassesis aimed at solving various social relationship issues related to communication, which naturally leads to a smooth response from the public, unlike before.

Where does your anticipation for your metaverse plans and products begin? Is it technology that's the main character? The user's expression? Or is it a clear world related to it?

Ryan Son is the partner at Reason of creativity.