Will designers be able to replace the real world?

The video gaming industry is a fascinating space in technology. It has always been propelled by an artistic approach to creating fun experiences that are more often than not bootstrapped together by creatives trying to birth something into this world. Looking at the variety of games one can access now, it’s easy to see the progress we have made just in terms of pure graphical standpoint. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_for_Two" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The first video game that ever came about was a tennis game</a>, similar to pong that ran not on a computer but an oscilloscope. It is the retro equivalent of running doom on a Texas instrument calculator, and although the visuals were not anything — the immersive experience was too hard to deny. Cut to the present and you can see companies pouring their entire valuations to put humans into those experiences. From social media companies to tech legacies to telecomm monoliths — everyone wants a piece of the metaverse pie. As designers, whether we like it or not, that seems to be the next frontier for us to conquer. The concept of the metaverse is not new at all, in 1992 American novelist Neal Stephenson published a sci-fi fantasy called Snow Crash. The premise of an anti-hero living in a dystopian cyberpunk world where the socio-economic conditions depend on technology does not sound new now but was a revelation when it came out. If you are thinking it sounds like Ready Player One, you are absolutely correct, in fact, Neal Stephenson first coined the term “metaverse”. After 3 decades, humanity has finally reached a position where living inside a virtual world sounds more real than fake, which begs the question — can we actually design experiences that can replace reality? <a href="https://uxdesign.cc/will-designers-be-able-to-replace-the-real-world-9913d792c666">Read More</a>