The creation of a “European metaverse” is on Emmanuel Macron’s program among the “essential” subjects, like the questions of the retirement age, energy independence or even full employment. But what would this virtual world consist of? And why is this such an important topic?
For most French people, the concept of metaverse is very vague. Concretely and in short, it is a digital universe, a kind of Internet of the future, which allows, if we push the concept to the end, to lead a parallel virtual life. These universes already exist for online players (Fortnite, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, etc.) who evolve in the form of an avatar. In this metaverse, we could participate in a meeting between colleagues, visit any place on the planet or even attend a concert with his group of friends, all thanks to a virtual reality headset.
Supporting European ecosystems to limit the domination of American giants
The metaverse is “a key subjectexplained the president-candidate during his speech on March 17. Both for creation, but also for the ability to allow all our creators, whatever their cultural fields and their fields of activity, not to depend on Anglo-Saxon or Chinese actors or aggregators, who will be able to completely circumvent the rules of respect for copyright or related rights. This is an essential subject to defend the rights of our authors.”
The challenge is not to be left behind by the usual giants. Those who have already monopolized the e-commerce, social networks or even online advertising markets… But this is not a priori not, for France or the European Union, to create a metaverse such as one can see it at Meta (parent company of Facebook). But rather, as explained by the Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O., “creating graphics engines from software”. Concretely, the idea is above all to support the creation of the underlying technologies which, like Unreal Engine and Unity, must allow the metaverse to function, to create video games and virtual universes.
Read also: Meta: a Facebook 2.0 to create a parallel virtual universe worthy of science fiction
Beyond the universes for the general public, devoted to commerce and leisure, it is also a question of supporting the industrial metaverse, these solutions which make it possible to create ecosystems making it possible to work on massive projects, such as the manufacture of a new airplane for example. Engie and Dassault are already well positioned in this field.
In general, European actors should not waste time. Apart from a few projects that manage to break through, such as The Sandbox, a French project now based in Hong Kong, most of the business of the metaverse is today in the hands of the giant Meta, which has announced that it wants to hire some 10 000 people within five years, in Europe.
Cybersecurity and environmental issues
The prospects are huge, but the stakes are also high. Beyond cybersecurity issues, it is a question of ensuring that the digital tools of metaverses respect environmental issues and that the computer systems that generate these virtual spaces consume as little energy as possible. Today, our traditional digital activities already consume more than 10% of the world’s electricity. It will take five or ten times more just to make the metaverse imagined by Facebook work.
Of course, there are also a host of ethical questions that arise. Are we really ready to change our real life for a parallel life?