Thursday, Jan 20, 2022 • 23min
Microsoft and the Metaverse
Play Episode
Microsoft announced this week that it was acquiring Activision Blizzard, the maker of video games such as Call of Duty and Candy Crush, in a deal valued at nearly $70 billion.
Microsoft, the owner of Xbox, said the acquisition was a step toward gaining a foothold in the metaverse.
But what exactly is the metaverse? And why are some of the biggest companies in the world spending billions of dollars to get involved?
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(5)
Kevin Roose
Michael Barbaro
Mark Zuckerberg
Show more
Transcript
Verified
Break
Michael Barbaro
00:28
From
The New York Times
, I'm Michael Barbaro
. This is The Daily.Share
00:38
Today: why so many major companies are now investing in the
metaverse
and whether that means those companies will control what the metaverse
becomes. I spoke with my colleague, technology columnist Kevin Roose
.Share
01:02
It's Thursday, January 20.
Share
Kevin Roose
01:09
Michael
, hello!Share
Michael Barbaro
01:12
Hello, Mr.
Roose
.Share
Kevin Roose
01:14
Happy New Year. Is it too late to say that?
Share
Michael Barbaro
01:16
I mean, if you didn't say it in a card that came into my mailbox 10 days ago, I think so.
Share
Kevin Roose
01:21
I'm sorry, I meant to put you on the card list this year, but you know... things happen.
Share
Michael Barbaro
01:28
Well, I left you off my card list too.
Share
Kevin Roose
01:32
I forgive you.
Share
Michael Barbaro
01:34
It's good that we're still talking.
Kevin
, as you know, we turn to you when we need to translate the digital universe. Whether that's cryptocurrency
or social media platforms, and today it's a mega merger in the gaming world. So, tell us about this deal that was just made public.Share
Kevin Roose
01:55
Well, earlier this week,
Microsoft
announced that it was acquiring the gaming studio Activision Blizzard
, maker of such hits as Call of Duty
, Candy Crush
, World of Warcraf
, lots of games like that, in a deal that was valued at nearly $70 billion. And this was a monumental deal in the world of gaming. It's the biggest acquisition ever in the gaming industry.Share
02:21
And on one level, this isn't all that surprising.
Microsoft
, you know, has been investing in games for years. It owns the Xbox
, produces some of the most popular video games like Halo
. It also owns the company that makes Minecraft
- the enormously popular video game, especially among kids. So it's already a big force in the gaming industry, but this will make it an even bigger force.Share
Michael Barbaro
02:47
And what stood out to you about this deal?
Share
Kevin Roose
02:51
Well, aside from just the size of the deal and the impact it will make in the gaming industry, what caught a lot of people's eye was that
Microsoft
framed this as not just another acquisition of big gaming studio, it framed it as a step towards establishing a foothold in the metaverse
.Share
Michael Barbaro
03:11
Right, the
metaverse
. And this is a word we hear a lot and I feel like when I hear that phrase, I nod along and I pretend to know what it is, and everybody I know pretends to know what it is, but we don't. So let's once and for all settle this question: what is the metaverse
?Share
Kevin Roose
03:32
Here's the thing: it's not really clear yet what the
metaverse
is, it's not really all that well defined, and it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I think it's okay for the record that everyone is kind of faking it, because even the people who profess to know what metaverse
is are also faking it.Share
Michael Barbaro
03:54
Well, to the best of your ability and the ability of those faking it. Can you begin to define what this still being defined thing actually is?
Share
Kevin Roose
04:05
Sure. So, let's just start with the term itself:
metaverse
. This term dates back to the early 1990's to a science fiction novel written by Neal Stephenson
called Snow Crash
, which is this story set in this futuristic 21st century world.Share
04:27
It's not a very sunny picture of the future. It's, you know, basically the economy's collapsed, the earth is sort of crumbling and society is shifting from living in the physical world into this thing called the
metaverse.
Share
04:41
This digital world full of immersive experiences. We're basically instead of logging into the internet or going on the internet, the internet sort of just becomes the world. It's the air we breathe, you're always plugged in, you're always online, all of your experiences, your social interactions, your work, your family time, that all takes place inside the
metaverse
.Share
05:07
And for a long time this idea of the
metaverse
persisted basically in science fiction. It was, you know, the premise of books like Ready Player One
, movies like the Matrix
, there was this sort of idea that this was kind of a far-off future.Share
05:22
And then a couple of years ago some of the most influential people in the tech industry began trying to build the
metaverse
for real. They actually thought that we had the technology or we were on the verge of having the technology that would allow us to have an actual metaverse
.Share
Michael Barbaro
05:43
People like who,
Kevin
?Share
Tim Sweeney
05:45
You talked recently about how it was possible to create the
metaverse
?Share
Kevin Roose
05:49
Well, the first big tech person I heard talking seriously about the word
metaverse
was Tim Sweeney.
Share
Tim Sweeney
05:57
Yeah, I think we're getting there really quickly already.
Share
Kevin Roose
05:59
Who is the Ceo of
Epic Games
, which is the gaming company that makes Fortnite
.Share
Tim Sweeney
06:04
You're seeing the beginning components of the
metaverse
actually coming together now, where multiple people are being put together in an interesting social scenario and hooked up...Share
Kevin Roose
06:15
And
Fortnite
for those who don't know or haven't spent a lot of time around pre-teens recently is one of the most popular video games in the world. And Sweeney
was basically making the case that Fortnite
was not just a game, it was the beginnings of something that he thought would eventually become the metaverse
.Share
06:39
On one level, like,
Fortnite
is a game, it's run around shooting people and building things and trying to win the Battle Royale; but it's also become so much more than a game. It's a place where you can spend real money on costumes for your virtual avatar, on dance moves, you can customize your look and your items, and it's got modes where you can just go and hang out. It's become kind of a social space, you can even attend concerts inside Fortnite
.Share
07:08
So what
Sweeney
started talking about a few years ago was the idea that Fortnite
and games like Fortnite
were sort of the on ramp for people to the metaverse
to this thing, this immersive vision of the internet that we would all eventually be living in.Share
Michael Barbaro
07:29
Okay, so what's the next phase of all this?
Share
Kevin Roose
07:31
So, the term
metaverse
sort of kicked around the tech world for a while, but it really amped up last year.Share
Mark Zuckerberg
07:38
I believe the
metaverse
is the next chapter for the internet and it's the next chapter for our company too.Share
Kevin Roose
07:44
When
Mark Zuckerberg
announced that he was renaming Facebook
, his company to Meta.Share
Mark Zuckerberg
07:52
The best way to understand the
metaverse
is to experience it yourself.Share
Kevin Roose
07:57
And he released this kind of funny, weird video, that got a lot of people's attention.
Share
Mark Zuckerberg
08:03
Imagine you put on your glasses or headset and you're instantly in your home space...
Share
Kevin Roose
08:09
Where you saw the real
Mark Zuckerberg
and then Mark Zuckerberg's
cartoon avatar and...Share
08:16
Hey are you coming?
Share
Mark Zuckerberg
08:18
Yeah, I just got to find something to wear. Alright, perfect.
Share
Kevin Roose
08:28
He was exploring this virtual world.
Share
08:32
Oh, hey Mark!
Share
Mark Zuckerberg
08:33
Hey what's going on?
Share
08:35
Whoa! We're floating in space?
Share
Kevin Roose
08:37
Hanging out with his friends, going to a work meeting, attending a concert, basically living a pretty normal life just... in the
metaverse
.Share
Mark Zuckerberg
08:48
This is wild!
Share
Kevin Roose
08:49
So, this video by
Mark Zuckerberg
goes totally viral, becomes a huge topic of conversation. Lots of jokes, lots of memes, lots of like "see you in the metaverse"
references, but it also sets off this sort of gold rush among other big tech companies who say to themselves basically, how do we get in on this? How do we make sure that we are building things for this metaverse
that will position us to be a big player in it, if and when it arrives?Share
09:23
Well, my vision is to use
Disney
+ as the platform for the metaverse
.Share
Kevin Roose
09:28
Disney
talks about creating its own metaverse
.Share
09:31
Without boundaries, without borders, without constraints.
Share
Kevin Roose
09:35
Nike
expresses interest in being part of the metaverse
with virtual sneakers.Share
09:41
And eventually
Nike
is going to sell you a pair of digital Air Jordans that you're going to wear around the metaverse
or any game that you want, or maybe even to a virtual sporting event!Share
Kevin Roose
09:51
Even
Walmart
decides it's going to get into the metaverse
and explore ways to create new shopping experiences for people inside these immersive digital worlds. And so people are starting to accept that this idea of the metaverse
is not total science fiction, that some parts of it may actually come true.Share
Michael Barbaro
10:16
Right, which I think brings us back to this $70 billion
Microsoft
deal for Activision Blizzard
, because there's nothing sci-fi about $70 billion dollars on a company.Share
Kevin Roose
10:28
Yeah, $70 billion, that's real money, even to a company as big as
Microsoft
. And on one level you don't need the metaverse
to make this deal makes sense for Microsoft
. Like, the games that Activision Blizzard
makes are very popular and make a lot of money, and they're betting on that. But they're insistent that they're not just betting on the popularity of these games. They're betting on this bigger idea, this future concept of the metaverse
.Share
11:01
And this deal and the way that this deal is framed is evidence that it's not just sort of this thought experiment anymore, that some of the biggest companies in the world are actually spending billions and billions of dollars trying to make the
metaverse
happen.Share
Michael Barbaro
11:26
We'll be right back.
Share
Break
Michael Barbaro
12:50
So,
Kevin
, you said that with all of these companies now officially rushing in, we're truly closer to some version of the metaverse
becoming real. So, what is it gonna look like, and how will it in theory start to change our lives? Can you evoke it for us?Share
Kevin Roose
13:06
So let's stipulate first that, you know, all of this is very theoretical, most of it doesn't exist yet and the parts of it that do exist aren't fully formed. But there are several views of what this could look like and how it could change people's lives. The more utopian view, the people who think the
metaverse
will be a very good thing for society is a metaverse
that looks basically like a kind of digital oasis.Share
13:34
A place that is full of new and stimulating, you know, experiences and adventures, and you can look anyway you want to look, you can go anywhere you want to go, you can have breakfast at a Parisian cafè and lunch at a steakhouse in Brazil, and dinner in Tokyo and you could do that all without leaving your living room.
Share
Michael Barbaro
14:02
That does sound nice and it does sound utopian because nothing about that sounds bad.
Share
Kevin Roose
14:09
And I think that's the vision that a lot of companies want to be true and want to work towards. There's also a much more dystopian view of the
metaverse
, that I think a lot of people have been talking about and that's become quite worrisome.Share
14:24
And so this basically becomes like an inescapable digital prison. I mean, you wake up, you put on your virtual reality headset, you get transported to this world where everything you do, every interaction you have with another person is being tracked and surveilled and used to target ads at you. You're virtual world looks less like a Parisian cafè and more like, you know, the mall of America.
Share
14:51
You're just constantly being sold stuff and the companies that built the
metaverse
whether it's Facebook
or Microsoft
or someone else will have almost total control of our lives. And all of this will be happening at the same time that the world outside the metaverse
, the physical one, is crumbling due to climate change and inequality. Because we're all just being entertained and distracted by this immersive digital world.Share
Michael Barbaro
15:26
It feels like option three, which feels the most realistic to my ears, is some hybrid version of the two things you just described. Not utopia, not dystopia, but maybe
Kevin
you and I go have lunch in Paris
and on our way there we get served with an ad from Facebook
about things we might want to do in Paris
. Something like that.Share
Kevin Roose
15:50
Yeah. I mean, as with most technologies, the real outcome is probably going to be somewhere between the dystopian and the utopian. And it will be piecemeal. I mean, we won't wake up one day and find this
metaverse
just fully assembled and ready to visit. Instead, pieces of it will emerge over time.Share
16:09
You know, we'll have a more immersive way to play video games, a more immersive way to attend work. Zoom calls a more immersive way to talk with our friends and family. And some pieces of this will be very compelling, other pieces will be boring or lame. We won't use those, and we won't fully escape the physical world into the
metaverse
, it will just be something that we do for maybe a couple hours a day.Share
Michael Barbaro
16:38
Well that leads me to the question of just how present the
metaverse
is going to be in our lives, whether we like it or not. Is this something we can kind of opt out of?Share
Kevin Roose
16:47
Well, I think the mistake that we make is just not realizing the extent to which we already kind of live in an immersive digital universe. People spend millions of hours a day playing video games where they are fully immersed, and they go by a different name, and they have an avatar, and an identity and a community inside those games.
Share
Speaker 8
17:10
But even things like peloton, if you have a peloton bike, you're participating in kind of a
proto-metaverse
experience. Like: you're not in the metaverse
, but you're taking a virtual exercise class with people located all over the world, and I think a decade or two ago that would have seemed pretty far out and futuristic to people, and now it's just peloton.Share
Kevin Roose
17:30
So, in some ways the way we use technology is already getting much more immersive and a lot of people, especially young people, spend enormous amounts of time in virtual worlds. And also crucially spend enormous amounts of money in virtual worlds, you know?
Fortnite
users have spent billions of dollars on virtual goods for their characters.Share
17:52
The gaming industry is already huge and it's got these sort of fully developed economies inside of them. And the vision of the
metaverse
isn't really all that different, it justapplies to more than games.Share
Michael Barbaro
18:06
Kevin
if the metaverse
is already happening, but it's still early days, how much room will there be for people to shape it? How much agency will you, or me or anyone have in creating the terms of the metaverse
?Share
18:21
What's allowed, what's not allowed what we see, what we don't see. So far, it sounds like companies are building the
metaverse
, which makes me think that they are going to control what it looks like, what it feels like, and that we are going to live in their universe, not the other way around.Share
Kevin Roose
18:39
This is a big debate that's raging in the tech world right now because a lot of people are sort of scared and hesitant about the idea of a
metaverse
that's controlled by a handful of giant companies the way that much of today's internet is controlled by a handful of giant companies. And so they are talking about ways to build a more decentralized metaverse. A metaverse
where Facebook
and Microsoft
and Walmart
might have presences, but where they won't ultimately control the whole thing.Share
19:14
And so I think that's a big question mark as this
metaverse
becomes more real and comes into focus a little bit. How successful will these companies be at sort of claiming their land and building out the infrastructure and attracting people to their own version of the metaverse?
And what kinds of experiments and projects might crop up to try to take back some of the control, to not have it turn into what this era of the internet has become, which is a very centralized, corporate controlled experience.Share
Michael Barbaro
19:47
Right? And
Kevin
, you made an entire audio series about what has happened on the internet when a few major companies control what so many of us consume on the internet, when it's their algorithms dominating what we see, when it's their systems rewarding conflict and partisanship.Share
20:05
And, you know, what you found and what feels indisputably true is that under the watch of these major internet companies and social media platforms, the internet went from a pleasant place where people shared baby photos to a pretty dark place where people share misinformation about
Covid
and election fraud and organized the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.Share
20:27
So the stakes of this feel very high. Who controls the
metaverse
, and whether it follows that pretty awful arc of the internet.Share
Kevin Roose
20:38
Yeah, I mean, I feel like to keep us somewhat grounded in present day reality, I should note that all of this might just turn out to be marketing. It could be that the
metaverse
is just a buzzword that companies are using to make themselves appear futuristic. This deal, this Microsoft
acquisition of Activision Blizzard
could turn out to just be one company with a large gaming division, buying a big gaming company. It could just be a standard acquisition in the corporate world.Share
21:13
But I think we all need to be paying attention to what's happening in this sort of realm of the
metaverse
now. Because if it does happen, if the things that these companies are spending billions of dollars developing do become a kind of new version of the internet, then the decisions that they're making matter just as the decisions made 10 or 15 years ago by the people running companies like Facebook
and Twitter and YouTube ended up having a huge ripple effects, not just on our use of technology but on our politics and our culture.Share
21:52
It's possible that the decisions that these companies are making today about the
metaverse
will impact our lives. And that the worlds, the digital immersive worlds that are being built now, could be the ones that we live in tomorrow.Share
Michael Barbaro
22:12
Kevin
, thank you very much.Share
Kevin Roose
22:14
Thanks for having me.
Share
Michael Barbaro
22:22
We'll be right back.
Share
Break
Michael Barbaro
23:03
Here's what else you need to know today.
Share
23:06
Did you overpromise to the American public what you could achieve in your first year in office, and how do you plan to course correct going forward?
Share
Joe Biden
23:13
Why are you such an optimist? Look, I didn't overpromise, and what I have probably I'll perform what anybody thought would happen.
Share
Michael Barbaro
23:22
During a rare news conference on Wednesday,
President Biden
rejected the claim that his first year in office has been a disappointment now that both his social spending and voting rights bills have collapsed in Congress. But Biden
said he had underestimated the opposition he would face from congressional republicans or how committed they would be to obstructing his agenda.Share
Joe Biden
23:49
I did not anticipate that there'd be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that
President Biden
didn't get anything done. Think about this, what are republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they're for.Share
Michael Barbaro
24:09
Asked about his most pressing foreign policy challenge, Russia's build up of troops on its borders with
Ukraine
, Biden
said for the first time that he expects Vladimir Putin
to invade Ukraine
.Share
Joe Biden
24:23
But I think he'll pay a serious and dear price for it, that he doesn't think now will cost him what it's gonna cost him. And I think he'll regret having done it.
Share
Michael Barbaro
25:11
That's it for The Daily. I'm
Michael Barbaro
. See you tomorrow.Share
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.36.0
Michael Barbaro
Kevin Roose
Tim Sweeney
Mark Zuckerberg
Joe Biden