Enter the metaverse

The metaverse has quickly established itself as a key talking point as the gambling industry looks to the future. Yet descriptions of this potentially game-changing technology remain vague and real metaverse gambling products are still rare. Is it the future of gambling, Daniel O’Boyle asks, or is it all hype?

Thirty years ago, the author Neal Stephenson published Snow Crash, a sci-fi novel with obvious biblical allusions about a pizza delivery driver for the mafia named Hiro Protagonist who discovers a “linguistic virus”.

Naturally, in 2021, the book would inspire a name change at a $500bn company.

The book contained the first known use of the word “metaverse”, a term that quickly gained influence within the tech sector, with the developers of Second Life among those getting on board.

But to most, the word didn’t mean much until Mark Zuckerberg announced last year that his business would change its name from Facebook to Meta.

“From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first,” he declared.

That quickly spawned a wave of searches for the metaverse and greater consumer interest than ever before.

“After Facebook renamed to Meta, I think hundreds or even thousands of different metaverses were created and the prices in them shot up,” Evoplay chief commercial officer Vladimir Malakchi says. “I think you can buy a flat in the metaverse for the same price as you can buy a real one.”

Source: https://igamingbusiness.com/enter-the-metaverse/