How Epic is "doubling down" on its vision for the metaverse
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At GDC, Epic Games showcased a myriad of features, tools and tech that all tie into its vision for a metaverse.
Yes, Tim Sweeney assures us, the metaverse is finally happening, and Epic has a big part to play in it. While the firm's executives say they're not ready to talk about what they're doing with their kids-friendly metaverse project with Lego, a lot of milestones seem to have been reached on other fronts.
The idea that a metaverse would come from Epic's flagship, Fortnite, isn't new. But finally unveiling its long awaited Unreal Editor for Fortnite, its user-generated content monetisation plans, a unified marketplace, Metahuman Animator, and more, at State of Unreal last week felt like a significant, tangible step in that direction.
It's a lot of effort being put into the metaverse at a time when much of the big tech attention to the idea has moved on to AI.
"We're the last company to unironically use the term metaverse," smiles executive vice president Saxs Persson. "We don't have a better term for it. It truly is the best way to describe it. We don't see very many scaled ecosystems, but I bet each one of them internally have the same observation that we do, that having a critical mass of people engaging in some social way with creator-generated content, where you have a meaningful amount of choice and a meaningful amount of friends – that's unique."
Perrson tells us that GDC's State of Unreal was about "doubling down" on that idea, as well as on the tools and economy around it.
"In order for us to take the next step, we have to recognise what the ecosystem we're building will be a part of," he says. "Are we helping the ecosystem?
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