Analysis indicates that games, digital humans, virtual spaces, shared experiences, tokenization and spatial computing are the main trends for the expansion of the metaverse.
According to the most recent survey by the Gartner, a world leader in business research and advice, six trends are driving the use of metaverse today and will continue to drive its use over the next three to five years.
Marty Resnick, Analyst and Vice President at Gartner
“While large-scale adoption of metaverse technologies is still around 10 years away, there are practical ways organizations are already taking advantage of some of their opportunities now, supporting, for example, employee onboarding, sales enablement, teaching higher education, medical and military training, and creating immersive shopping experiences,” explains Marty Resnick, Analyst and Vice President at Gartner.
The analyst assesses that, today, several emerging metaverses are starting. But leveraging these technology trends, with proven use cases and business results, is just the beginning of the value innovation brings to organizations.ions. Long-term investments are the real points that can generate real disruptions for an entire industry, and the metaverse is one of those investments that draws the most attention.
Gartner defines metaverse as “the next level of interaction in the virtual and physical worlds”. Technologies in this context allow people to replicate or improve their activities, transporting or extending them to a virtual world or transforming the physical.
However, despite the hype around the topic, analyzes indicate that the adoption of trends and technologies linked to the metaverse is still is incipient and fragmented. Gartner recommends caution when betting on a specific metaverse, as it is too early to determine which ones will be. long-term viable environments. In addition, the ethical, financial and reputational risks of upfront investments are not yet fully understood.
“Use this time to learn, explore, and prepare for a metaverse with limited implementation,” comments Resnick. "Review these six trends for opportunities that can benefit your organization." According to the analysis, the six trends to be evaluated currently highlighted are:
1. Games – The gaming industry, specifically the video game industry, has been one of the most innovative for years, putting new technologies into practice. The metaverse will use game technologies, with methodologies, development tools and even their theories to create experiences for entertainment and training simulations. Companies will createserious games” (serious games, in literal translation), using the technologies, experiences and narratives of games, for training and simulation of specific tasks and job functions. Gartner predicts that by 2025, the “serious gaming” market will grow by 25%, due to the impact of metaverse technologies.
2. Digital Humans – Digital humans are interactive representations driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) that possess some of the characteristics, personality, knowledge, and mindset of a human, typically represented as digital twins, digital avatars, humanoid robots, or conversational user interfaces. They can interpret speech, gestures and images and generate their own speech, tone and body language.
Organizations are already planning to use digital humans to act as identified digital agents in metaverse environments for customer service, support, sales, and other interactions with current and potential customers. Gartner predicts that by 2027, most marketing leaders at B2C companies will have a dedicated budget for digital humans in metaverse experiences.
3. Virtual Spaces - A virtual space (or virtual world) is a computer-generated environment where groups of people come together using personal avatars or holograms. Such environments involve multiple senses and provide participants with the ability to immerse and interact. For example, they can be used to increase the reach of customers who are unable or unwilling to attend personal appointments, to provide new travel alternatives, or to enable team collaboration. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 10% of workers will regularly use virtual spaces (in activities such as sales, onboarding, remote teams), up from 1% in 2022.
4. Shared Experiences – A shared experience brings together a group of people in a virtual space and the metaverse will deliver that in immersive applications. Thus, it will allow more opportunities to meet, collaborate, interact, participate or share experiences between applications, events and consumer services. In this sense, the metaverse will democratize the immersive experiences. According to Gartner, by 2028, 10% of public events (such as sports and performing arts) will offer participation in these environments, fueling the rapid construction of shared experiences from the commercial metaverse.
5. Tokenized Assets – Tokenized assets offer new business models for content creators. In metaverse experiments, most of them will use non-fungible token technologies (NFTs) and such creators perpetually retain most of the revenue from the sales of their work. The new features and functionality enabled by the metaverse will inspire other ways to not only compete and monetize virtual products and services, but also acquire physical (real-world) goods. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 25% of retail organizations with an e-commerce presence will have completed at least one proof of concept for tokenized assets using technologies in the metaverse.
6. Space Computing – Spatial computing combines physical and digital objects to digitally enhance real environments. This allows organizations to get more out of physical and digital assets, revisiting digitized information and “invisible” content related and anchored to people, places and things. For example, digital content can augment physical objects or environments, such as digital colorization of Greek and Roman statues or additional information about products or things. Gartner predicts that in 2026, the second and third iterations of spatial computing glasses will arrive, creating a more comprehensive metaverse experience connected to the physical world.
