A metaverse without content, no grass grows

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Text / Wen Yehao

Source: Photon Planet (ID: TMTweb)

British writer Conrad Joseph once wrote: “Every age is nurtured by fantasy, lest people give up life prematurely and make mankind die.”

At the moment, the Metaverse is carrying the deepest fantasy in the Internet context, ranging from philosophical speculations around virtuality and reality, down to the rudimentary little people in the Metaverse social application, the Metaverse is extremely inclusive. Accept everything that is born at the moment.

Although no one knows when the metaverse will actually arrive, and no one has any insight into whether the road to the metaverse will be twisted and twisted, this does not prevent players from piling into the same river, looking for the next wave of opportunities under the tide.

Looking back at the metaverse process of domestic players, Tencent and Byte seem to have chosen to bet on the hardware entrance, Soul and Inke went to the social metaverse, and Kuaikan took the lead in launching content and encircling the metaverse world first. The three factions have different routes and starting points, which also adds a touch of confusion to the metaverse industry. One can’t help but wonder who will be the first to eat crabs.

The meaning of “drunkard” is not in the Metaverse

In layman’s terms, the so-called metaverse is a virtual world that mirrors human avatars.

When its concept broke out, the “Oasis” in the movie “Ready Player One” that approached and even surpassed reality seemed to outline the ultimate form of the metaverse for the public – to perceive the virtual world through hardware devices, and “rebirth” in it.

This logic undoubtedly points to two exits, hardware and social. The former, as the hardware entrance of the Metaverse, is a necessity for creating a space for human-computer interaction and the coexistence of reality and reality; the latter, as the most “sexy” existence in the Metaverse industry, carries a rich imagination space. Based on this, the two have become the most popular directions for players in the metaverse track.

However, as pointed out in the “2020-2021 Metaverse Development Research Report”, the technology ecology and content ecology of the Metaverse are not yet mature, and the scene entrance needs to be expanded. There is still a long “de-bubble” between the ideal vision and the actual development ization” process.

In other words, the virtual space carried by the current metaverse is undoubtedly barren—whether it is the metaverse concert of Meta at the end of last year, or the “multiplayer interaction that spans virtual and reality, and persists forever” emphasized by Baidu’s “Hirong” Virtual world” was widely spit out by expectant users.

This also means that, based on the current technical level, whether VR hardware depicts the scene or fabricates a virtual world out of thin air, its core is still in its infancy, and the so-called ultimate form is out of reach. Players who go to the Metaverse under this background often do not mean the drunkard here.

Taking the “hardware school” players represented by Tencent and Byte as an example, although conceptually, the XR track is undoubtedly coupled with the immersive experience and mirrored reality metaverse, but the current hardware technology is far from mature. . Taking the “Oasis” as a sample to examine the current mainstream VR equipment, not only does it lack high-precision images to support immersion, but the hardware side will also face the shackles of volume, weight, and heat dissipation.

Therefore, compared to winning the hardware entrance and dreaming of the metaverse, “hardware faction” players in the XR field are more like chasing the hardware outlet and quenching their thirst under the cold wave of consumer electronics. After all, the era of mobile internet is aging, and the smartphone market has entered a period of contraction. In this context, the next-generation hardware is almost equivalent to the “ship ticket” of the next era.

Compared with the “hardware faction”, the “social system” players have another purpose.

Taking Soul, which emphasizes “soul socialization” as an example, its tree-like experience in its early years attracted waves of start-up users, but in order to establish large-scale barriers, it has been on the road of expanding its circle in recent years. However, most of the influx of new users have never experienced the tree hole period, and naturally cannot adapt to the social context created by the start-up users.

From the perspective of commercialization, the slightly outdated old users are limited by the scale, and the value created cannot be compared with the new users with huge volume. Therefore, as the native culture becomes more and more diluted, Soul has to build a “playground” according to the preferences of new users, and change the slogan from “following the soul to find you” to “young people’s social metaverse”. “Realize the brand-level farewell to the old and welcome the new.

Similar to Soul, behind Inke’s renaming of “Ying Universe” more or less reveals the meaning of brand renewal. In other words, for the “social” players, the “metaverse”‘s blessing of their brand image may be more important than reshaping the world in the dense and complicated metaverse.

Therefore, in this metaverse gold rush, players who choose hardware and social paths seem to be numerous, but the purpose is actually not pure. This is not to say that all players who enter the metaverse are making useless attempts. After all, in the face of the ten-year technological revolution, not everyone has the patience to give up the benefits and go straight to the ultimate form. The significance of testing the water is now here.

However, as more and more players join the game, the track will inevitably become crowded, much like the California Gold Rush in the 19th century. Most fanatical gold diggers end up in vain.

It is worth mentioning that compared with the lonely gold diggers, the Jews who sold water in the gold rush made a lot of money, and the same logic is also reflected in the current metaverse track-compared to “hardware”. For gold diggers such as “Sect” and “Social Department” who went to the Metaverse, the “Content Party” is doing the business of “selling water”.

Content Metaverse, “Water Seller” in Gold Rush

In the current mainstream conception of the Metaverse in the industry, the Metaverse industry is actually a business that serves users. No matter what purpose the players who stop in the Metaverse have, in the final analysis, it will fall at the level of user needs.

The Metaverse, which is still in its early stage, is still far from reaching the general public. Because of this, in the current early adopter stage, the core customer group of Metaverse products is naturally the Z generation who grew up in the digital age.

In other words, only by understanding the needs and love of Generation Z and grasping its circle can we truly understand the business logic of the Metaverse, and then dive in at the application level. Looking around the current metaverse industry, whether it is the hardware strategy of many players or social gameplay, it is difficult to accurately hit Generation Z.

Taking VR hardware as an example, Meta, Apple, Sony, and Tencent are all trying to divide this cake. Although the hardware ecology is different, based on the similarity of the upstream device industry, the products are similar in form, and the difference lies in the specific specifications. parameter. In this context, hardware players are easily submerged in the ocean of similar products on the track, and are always at risk of being replaced.

The same is true for the Metaverse social track. Take the once-popular gel as an example. Even though it can cut into the market with its novel and exquisite body, the core is still empty and boring. Once the user’s freshness is over, it will quickly cool down and become a short-lived product. .

The reason for this is that the key to capturing the user circle is not whether the hardware meets the parameters or whether the product is related to the concept of the Metaverse, but whether the services provided by the players can hit the user’s perception of the Metaverse. spiritual needs. The reason why “Oasis” is so attractive is that, in addition to its rich and interesting gameplay, it also gives players a space for “personality rebirth”, which is the connotation of the Metaverse.

The so-called “personality rebirth” is not the virtualized personal image that Soul and Jelly show through appearance, but the “empathy effect” catalyzed by deep content – users project themselves into the metaverse, and metaverse products. The content provided serves as a substitute for emotional experience, and then lingers in the virtual world. This also means that the product matrix of the Metaverse is becoming more and more generalized, and at the moment of aesthetic fatigue, the players of the deep content Metaverse have become “water sellers”.

In the context of the Internet, the meaning of content is very complex, and sub-categories such as film and television, games, comics (animation), and novels can be regarded as content. But in the content metaverse scene, the games and comics (anime) that are closest to Generation Z obviously have more advantages than other categories. Taking the game as an example, whether it is the cyber city built by “Cyberpunk 2077” or the medieval scene outlined by “The Elder Scrolls”, it can give the player group a full sense of substitution and produce an “empathy effect”.

Adhering to this logic, all the “content party” players who have entered the metaverse regard the game as the entrance. As everyone knows, the game industry has always been deeply bound to the aforementioned hardware manufacturers. As a result, the current immature metaverse games are not only difficult to attract core game-loving players, but may even be attacked by word of mouth.

Kuaikan founder Chen Anni once publicly stated: “In the future development of the metaverse, it is very likely that technology is not a barrier, but content.” This means that before breaking through the shackles of technology, comics (anime) may be more likely to become the content metaverse. soil. And look at it, maybe he will become the player closest to the exit on the track.

Who will provoke the lead of the content metaverse?

With the rapid development of games, comics, virtual people and other tracks, China’s two-dimensional industry has entered a mature stage from the budding stage.

According to CIC’s “China Secondary Content Industry White Paper”, in 2021, my country’s pan-secondary content users will reach 460 million, and the secondary content market will reach 60 billion yuan. In the next five years, the average annual scale of China’s secondary content market will be The compound growth rate is about 12.6%.

This also means that the two-dimensional culture, which was born out of the niche circle, is gradually being recognized and incorporated by the mainstream culture. In this process, the head platforms in the subculture stage benefited from the Matthew effect and were often able to become gathering places in the process of flocking to the mainstream market.

As the largest comic platform in China, Kuaikan seems to show strong competitiveness. At present, it has covered 340 million user groups, with a market share of over 50%. The monthly active users are the sum of the second to sixth places in the same track. Its registered creators have reached 120,000, and the total number of comics has exceeded 11,000. That is to say, Kuaikan is likely to become the biggest beneficiary of comic expansion.

At the Kuaikan Guoman press conference in 2022, Kuaikan not only disclosed more actions at the company and content level, but also made a preliminary exploration of the metaverse, and authorized some comic IPs to develop NFTs.

In fact, whether it is NFT or digital collections, it is no longer a new thing in the current public context. After all, the creation of various digital collection platforms or the stories of thunderstorms are being staged almost every day and every night. However, this does not mean that the first exploration of the metaverse is an arty attempt, on the contrary, this strategy is another evolution of the content metaverse players.

In Chen Anni’s view, the current NFT market is mixed and needs time to settle and develop, but Kuaikan is not willing to blindly follow the trend and regard NFT as speculation, but spend longer time thinking, accumulating and building the value of content IP. Go slowly and steadily.

The “slow” of fast-seeing makes it stand out from the crowd in the game of drumming and passing flowers. Prior to this, domestic users often purchased digital collections for speculative purposes rather than love. The high prices of various museum IPs in the secondary market are the best illustration. In this context, digital collections are more of an opportunistic spree than a testing ground for the metaverse.

“Content Party” players have escaped the shackles of traditional data collection to a certain extent, and shifted the focus to “love”. In March of this year, Kuaikan made the materials of the two original comics “Universal Love Grocery” and “Super Cube” into digital collections for external sales, and prepared the original manuscripts and signatures of the comic authors for users who purchased the digital collections within a limited time.

This means that the entry of digital collections by players who mainly focus on the content metaverse is not all speculative behavior following the trend, but rather means to test the user’s recognition of content in the metaverse by selling “love”. Obviously, the feedback from Kuaikan’s initial exploration of the metaverse is positive. It is reported that Kuaikan will also carry out in-depth cooperation with Xinhuanet in the field of NFT in the future.

The positive feedback from users on Kuaikan NFT may reflect the value system of the content metaverse built by interest and love. In a sense, this is related to the connection between Kuaiwan’s past content and the user circle.

From the perspective of the timeline, Guoman grew up and grew up in the same era as Generation Z, which is not only its “spiritual reserve”, but also brings a deep sense of pride to Generation Z in the process of gradually moving towards the mainstream. Taking the well-received Chinese movies such as “The Return of the Great Sage” and “Nezha’s Devil Child Comes into the World” in recent years as an example, they have not only created a whirlwind of national tide in the entertainment industry, but also detonated the consumer market.

Take KK World, the largest ACGN offline experience exhibition for young women in China as an example. It breaks through the barriers between online and offline, users and content, and precisely hits the spiritual needs of users. Taking Kuaikan as an example, its own anchored future is to become a super entertainment company, and at the same time, it will make efforts in many fields such as comics, comics, communities, animation films, peripheral derivatives, games, and offline experience.

This shows that the current players are well aware of the importance of content in the metaverse. In addition to promoting the comics industry into the video era through comics, Kuaikan seems to want to bring the spiritual hometown of Generation Z into the metaverse in the future. the world, manifesting it in diverse ways.

On the other hand, although the core of the content metaverse lies in content quality and ecology, the technical aspect also needs to keep up with the changing rhythm of the times. After all, the absolute technical gap will damage the presentation of content. To this end, Kuaikan invested hundreds of millions of yuan, gathered a large number of powerful R&D engineers from Google, Microsoft, and BAT, and deployed cutting-edge technology fields.

Obviously, Kuaikan is not satisfied with the status quo, and is heading for the future with a dual attitude of diversified content and cutting-edge technology, which has also set a benchmark for domestic enterprises in the long road of the content metaverse.

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