Given that this latest investment represents a five-fold increase in Sony’s stake in Epic, it certainly seems like Sony is happy with the benefits it is getting from the relationship. With the costs of developing triple-A titles only going up, and the competition for people’s attention increasing exponentially, this feels like a shrewd move. After all, if you can’t beat Fortnite, and you can’t make Fortnite PlayStation-exclusive, why not ensure that you get some of the benefit wherever Fortnite is played? This also seems like a good outcome for the industry generally, allowing gamers to enjoy their favourite titles at home and on the move without necessarily having to own every last piece of gaming hardware, and demonstrating that there is significant capital available for investment in growing developers. LEGO is no stranger to getting competing brands to work well with others, having experienced phenomenal success in recent years creating elaborate brick representations of some of the most beloved media franchises, from Star Wars to Harry Potter, not to mention the hugely successful The LEGO Movie and the Lego Dimensions game series. LEGO is a discerning partner, and so the significant financial investment from KIRKBI is a real endorsement of Epic’s metaverse credentials, but it also goes to the heart of a question that seems likely to become crucial in the coming years: can multiple metaverses survive (a meta-multiverse, if you will), or will there be one metaverse to rule them all?
In many ways, the concept of the metaverse as articulated by people like Mark Zuckerberg is nothing new. Massively multiplayer online games have been around in various forms for decades, with 1997’s Ultima Online being one of the most high-profile early examples of a virtual world that persisted whether or not you were logged on. While there were always plenty of traditional gaming elements to titles like Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there were also plenty of users for whom the primary motivation was social. Meanwhile, 2003’s Second Life was a hugely popular persistent virtual world with very minimal gaming elements.
Today’s discussions about the metaverse often describe it as if there is, or will, be a singular, all- encompassing metaverse, the digital analogue to the physical world that exists around us. Perhaps the aforementioned trend towards
greater openness and collaboration between otherwise competing businesses might help us move towards a single, open metaverse in the long run, but in the near future, it seems likely that people will spend their digital life across various different metaverses.
The announcement of the partnership between Epic and LEGO makes clear that a key objective for the metaverse they collaborate on is for it to be “safe and fun for children and families” and built “from the outset with the wellbeing of kids in mind”. Considering the huge popularity of Fortnite with teenagers and young adults, this is an issue that Epic already grapples with every day, and their acquisition of SuperAwesome, a company building tools focused on trying to keep children safe online, highlights their commitment to making positive progress. Ultimately, in a game like Fortnite, parents can
use parental controls to turn things like voice chat off, and their children can still enjoy the core gameplay. In true metaverse applications, which are all fundamentally all about social interactions, it is much more of a challenge to work out how to ensure children’s safety. Of course, it isn’t yet clear just how Epic and LEGO think they can solve those challenges. With people increasingly voicing concerns about the child protection issues that difficult-to-monitor virtual worlds raise, however, if Epic and LEGO can find innovative solutions that generally do make their metaverse safer for children than its rivals, that seems likely to be a very significant advantage that could have a real impact in the inevitable battle to see if there really can be one, all-encompassing metaverse. One thing in particular is clear: whether it’s shaping the future of the metaverse, or the changing nature of the relationship between the major players in the games industry, Epic is increasingly right at the heart of our digital world, and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
June 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 5
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