Metaverse Developers

The author Neal Stephenson coined the word metaverse in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Stephenson used the word to describe a virtual environment in which people utilize their digital avatars in the metaverse to gain status. Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) also helped popularize the metaverse. In it, people use virtual reality headsets and haptic gloves to enter OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe, to escape their problems. The building blocks of the metaverse emerged much earlier, although it took many years since their introduction to develop them into their modern, multifaceted versions. Examples include artificial intelligence (1940s), virtual reality (1960s), and the Internet (1960s).

The origins of the modern metaverse can be linked to the launch of the virtual social worlds The Sims in 2000 and Second Life in 2003. Both offered a 3D experience that attracted millions of users. Although their popularity has waxed and waned over the years, they remain popular virtual social worlds. In the last decade or so, the metaverse has evolved to focus not only on gaming and virtual social worlds, but also education and training, remote work and collaboration, product development, and virtual events and conferences. The COVID-19 lockdowns fueled additional interest in gaming, immersive commerce, and virtual conferencing in the metaverse. Metaverse developers have been needed ever since the earliest days of the metaverse. But demand has increased as more technologies (e.g., advanced artificial intelligence, blockchain technology) have been integrated into the metaverse.