What Is a Creator Metaverse? Web3 for Creators

The metaverse and its related topics are growing quite the buzz among tech afficionados and digital creators worldwide. Beyond just a hype or a distant pipe dream, the metaverse is coming closer into focus with each new project designed around the web 3.0. Today we’ll explore the topic of a creator metaverse, or, in other words, the relevance that the metaverse itself can have for creators. So, what is a creator metaverse? How do the capabilities of digital creation and the metaverse converge?

Digital Creation in the Web 3.0 — Projections and Trends

The topic of defining a creator metaverse couldn’t be hotter right now, on the dawn of the web 3.0. It’s true that there is also a bit of ungrounded hype regarding the metaverse, muddling the facts with unrealistic expectations without saying much.

Pictured above: The Metaverse Museum, a beautiful idea founded in Second Life in 2007, that failed to take off as it should have due to being ahead of its time, remaining an exotic digital curiosity and a milestone for connoisseurs. Now, this second time around, it seems that the world is better prepared to embrace the creator metaverse revolution, technically and otherwise.

Because everyone is talking about the metaverse and what you can and can’t do in it, but without well-documented research, this can create a sense of confusion for tech readers and creators. Allow us to make the context clear before jumping into the topic of the creator metaverse and what can take place there, and at what development pace.

The trends we know (almost) for sure will materialize in the creator metaverse(s), based on outlined and ongoing projects in this space:

· All the digital creation activities you are doing now: text and audio-visual content, influencer activities, broadcasting shows, podcasting, streaming and so on;

· Better 3D visualization of any creative project, right from the stage of planning and design;

· The immersive sharing and showcasing your plan for creative services with prospective clients in a creator metaverse (Not to brag, but we even allow our community members to design their own studio in the creator metaverse that we’re building);

· Creative galleries, museums, any creators-related physical spaces metaversified (like the real-world museums that announced opening a new ‘wing’ in the web 3.0).

The creator metaverse trends which are still far from being implemented, but would be nice to-haves and could become a reality, with the proper focus and efforts:

· Seamless transposition between web 2.0 creator projects and web 3.0 creator projects;

· Seamless integration of the creator metaverse with other web2 platforms used until now for digital creation;

· Doing more ‘material’ arts and crafts projects in the metaverse;

· Getting a true correspondence between physical creations and their metaverse (perhaps NFT-based) counterparts.

The trends which are still sci-fi and not worth taking seriously (yet):

· Molding actual matter in a creator metaverse through integration of 3D printing technologies;

· Seamless integration between physical creative classes and virtual ones in the metaverse;

What Is a Creator Metaverse?

So, what is a creator metaverse, now that we mapped out the main trends for the creative side of the metaverse and their likelihood of materializing soon?

What Can You Do in a Creator Metaverse?

First of all, anything you can do creatively online right now — and if you’re a member of the creative guild, loosely speaking, you know that you can do a lot already — can and will be done in the metaverse as well. Imagine all the platforms you’re using now as a creative amateur or professional, from the main social media platforms to dedicated design apps, podcast creation and distribution platforms, streaming platforms, audience monetization tools and so on. Everything you are doing as a creator in the web 2.0 will be possible in the coming web 3.0 as well, but better.

What does better mean in this context of a creator metaverse? Think of the sandboxing capabilities of Roblox or Minecraft — equated by some voices to the closest thing we currently have to a functional metaverse — but transposed over the serious business of creation platforms and apps. Add way better visualization in a 3D immersive world and you should have a glimpse of the metaverse’s potential for driving forward innovation for creatives.

Second of all, as with any new medium or qualitative jump forward, the web 3.0 will bring possibilities which are entirely new. Some of them can be foreseen already, like the more seamless integration of networking and interacting with collaborators and patrons and the actual creative side of content production. Others are yet to be foreseen from this point in time, unfolding as the metaverse shall progress its self-constructing narrative.

Creator Metaverse Example and Applications

We’ve seen some movement already for creator metaverse examples, from the metaverse extensions of already established content creation platforms (like Meta) to up-and-coming startups trying to give professional creators more 3D freedom.

For the first category of examples, the forecast isn’t looking that great in terms of the enthusiasm such projects can raise in the creative community. It seems that people had enough of big tech and its plethora of issues (from privacy to creative ownership), and rightly so. As an eloquent thought piece recently said, the metaverse is driving innovation, but it won’t come from big tech.

As for the second category of creator metaverse applications, we only saw tool web 3.0 extensions so far. While there are some valuable projects out there, they only seem centered around taking their core service or product from current web 2.0 times and extending it into a more immersive and visually complex web 3.0 version. This is undoubtedly useful for the content professionals that are using the tool, but not exactly what comes to mind when we say creator metaverse.

Not to be overtly promotional here, but the closest we got to a promising idea of a creator metaverse is in Meta Studio, the project we are actively building.

What is a creator metaverse if not a completely unified and fully immersive metaverse space, where creators can explore, create, engage, advertise their creations, buy or sell and network with collaborators, buyers or project partners? Where the community of creators is self-driven and self-regulated and the creators retain full ownership of their work, full earnings and full freedom to explore? Where there is still joy in exploring the virtual world that hosts us? How can creativity continue to thrive in the stifling environment of web 2.0, when the past shows us that freedom is a mandatory condition for any creative process?

This is what we are going to achieve with Meta Studio, the first and only creator metaverse based on a fully decentralized community, where work feels like play. Keep us on your reading list to find out more with every step we take further on this journey.