The Dangerous Illusion of Limits in the Metaverse
One thing that I have found perplexing is companies buying up virtual real estate in the metaverse for huge sums of money, to create a storefront or entertainment venue to promote their brands.
Even though current virtual world creators are limiting their environments to generate an illusion of real estate scarcity, with a few code additions and servers, metaverse land can be virtually unlimited.
Especially when virtual world environments become non-proprietary and inexpensive, democratizing metaverse creation, how will these brand real estate owners maintain the value of their virtual real estate? Loyalty is hard to purchase, and attention spans are shorter than they have ever been. A new virtual world pops up and becomes trendy, people are going to flock to that world and forget about the old one. Companies can’t be delusional about longevity on one platform. One would hope that they are analyzing their ROI over a fraction of a period in comparison to a brick and mortar or even a web site refresh.