By Anil Dash

January 28, 2022

Let's build the open metaverse

There’s a lot of noise and excitement around rise of virtual reality, shared environments, and something called the metaverse. Some of the biggest players in tech are eager to stake their claims, telling us that the metaverse is the Next Big Thing.

But the truth is, it’s already here. The open metaverse is *100 times as large *as any of the commercial platforms, in terms of what regular people have created. The metaverse is not going to be controlled by big tech. It’s being built on open tech by a wide—and wild!—variety of creators across the internet, right now.

Let’s explain what that means.

First, the basics: Legions of creators and millions of users have been chipping away at the metaverse for years. At Glitch, we want to give voice to all of these people and communities, so we don’t see just a single metaverse. We think the future is an open metaverse, built by a diverse set of stakeholders, from corporate behemoths to individual trailblazers. Sure, it’s high-tech experiences that happen in fancy VR headsets. But it’s also fun and silly stuff you build in your browser with friends.

The most exciting part is, this isn’t just the future: It’s an exciting, weird, fun, inspiring present that millions of people are already participating in, ready to welcome millions more.

In short, the open metaverse is centering creators, communities and a diverse set of implementations, rather than a top-down vision dictated by any one company. If it helps, think of the open metaverse as more of a multiverse—there are lots of different realities, and they overlap and intersect in interesting ways

The Arrival of the Giants #

The loudest players in current discussions of the metaverse are Facebook and Microsoft, each eager to extend their legacy strengths into the next generation of social technologies. Horizon Worlds is Facebook’s attempt to create a shared, virtual environment to the masses, putting their Oculus line of VR devices at the center of social technology. Microsoft wants to be a player, too; they’ve been working for years  to bring their own social VR technologies to market in both software and hardware, like the business-focused Hololens.

While these tech titans have deep pockets, the truth is they’re catching up to an already-thriving market—and today’s creators aren’t sitting around and waiting for them to perfect their technologies.

That brings us to the open metaverse, and its constellation of different virtual technologies that go far beyond the limited visions of any one company. Together, the communities of the open metaverse are defining the future of virtual spaces for play, collaboration, exploration and expression.

What is the open metaverse? #

What it ain’t #

Just as important in understanding this vision is knowing what the open metaverse is not:

The Overlooked Metaverse #

Rich Yee's Kalidoface uses motion tracking to animate 2D and 3D characters

There are many different subsets of the open metaverse, and some will be familiar to those who’ve been following the metaverse conversation, while others will not. Let’s consider some that get overlooked in many discussions.

How Creating the Open Metaverse is Different #

When the web was just starting out, “serious” content creators were using complex and costly tools like Macromedia Director to make elaborate multimedia content. Even the early online services like AOL and MSN had proprietary creation tools that allowed for creating rich content. And the conventional wisdom was that the simple, open, text-based standards of the web couldn’t compete.

Of course, we know how that turned out. The nonstop innovation of the open web community not only caught up to what the proprietary platforms could do, it far surpassed them in reach and in creativity. We think that pattern is going to play out again, and the evidence we base that on is the fact that it’s already happening.

Building for the Open Metaverse on Glitch #

Glitch's editor working on a Networked AFrame scene

There are three things that make Glitch special, each building upon the next:

These factors have woven together to produce a thriving ecosystem of metaverse-style projects. We have hundreds of thousands of projects spanning VR and 3D.

In fact, right now, today, you can instantly remix dozens of potent example projects on Glitch for your experiments in VR. We didn’t build any of these. They’re labors of love from people passionate about the next frontiers of the web and social software, and proof that the metaverse is real—and bigger than any one company.

Some stuff is simple, and perfect for getting your feet wet if you’re new to the scene. You could remix a seasonal snowglobe, or riff on the latest absurdist orb memes.

But the technology goes much deeper. You can build sophisticated scenes with navigation and interaction. While this would be impressive enough, the community has gone deeper.

Realtime, multi-user environments, with avatars, are waiting for you to remix them right now. They’re a powerful foundation for 3D social projects.

Many of the most challenging technical problems already have example code provided to support advanced uses. You can incorporate 3D positional audio, stream users’ video into your 3D environment, even build a first-person shooter. All using free, open web technologies that will run on everything: desktop browsers, mobile phones, and the latest VR hardware.

The next chapters of the web promise more possibility than ever. We’re excited to support creators pushing the boundaries of immersive, social and open technologies here on Glitch. We hope you’ll dive in, join them, and build something fun.