Former Valve Economist Says “Ten Years Ago, the Metaverse Was Already Up and Running”

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in virtual worlds and other immersive applications. But former Valve economist Erik Johnson argues that while there’s been a lot of excitement about what might be possible with blockchain technology, it already exists in society, just not yet brought together into one place.

Meta image

Yanis Varoufakis, a former Valve economist, recently did an interview in which he revealed some fascinating observations regarding digital economy. It’s impossible these days to spend a day without a corporation or some type of news media mentioning cryptocurrencies, NFTs, or possibly the new Metaverse, but he says that Valve envisaged a digital marketplace where players were already engaging with one another over ten years ago.

The metaverse was already up and running among gaming groups ten years ago. Valve’s games have previously produced economies that were both exciting and terrifying. Before anybody thought of NFTs, certain digital items that had previously been supplied for free (through the game’s drops) started to sell for tens of thousands of dollars on eBay.

“What if the prices of these impulsively profitable things and activities were to crash?” worried some at Valve, which he joked caused some loss of sleep. The thought that virtual economies, which do not have state or nation boundaries, may have an impact on many real-world economies was a surprise to no one at Valve. After all, Valve’s primary goal was to sell games. “Here at my firm we were addressing an issue of integrating economies in two virtual settings (forming a common currency) and struggling with some of the thornier challenges of balance of payments,” he said in an email. He doesn’t say who sent the email, but it’s evident that others started thinking about how to govern virtual economies throughout the world and how to manage them with physical boundaries.

On the opposite side of the virtual fence are gamers who, although primarily interested in playing games, have broadened their social activities inside gaming. Valve had previously seen how in-game artifacts were being traded and sold in the real world, as well as how connections were being formed. Metaverses were in full swing, as shown by this social and commercial activities.

It’s evident now, a decade later, that gaming communities like the one I examined at Valve have been functioning as full-fledged metaverses (to use Zuckerberg’s word). Gamers were driven to them by the game, but once they were ‘inside,’ they remained to spend a significant portion of their lives there, establishing friends, selling items for sale, consuming entertainment, arguing, and so on.

The Ascension of NFTs

All of these activities ultimately morphed into NFTs, which are linked to blockchain and cryptocurrencies. “The blockchain removes the firm (e.g. Valve) and enables the digital asset to emigrate from the game/realm that created it to any other digital realm,” he says.

Mr. Varoufakis compares NFTs to real-world commodities when questioned about possible ethical and ownership problems. Both practical applications and the bragging rights connected with branding may determine value in the real world. NFTs, which only have value to people who have or care about them and, once again, bragging rights, are a new competitor for retail stores such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, who developed monopolistic empires based on branding. He does not consider NFTs to be intrinsically subversive, claiming that they “[i]n no way subverts the framework of property rights that creates and underpins the oligarchy’s disproportionate dominance over the people.” However, he would not exclude the possibility of anything more alarming when it comes to the latest expression “play to earn,” which some game company executives have been employing more often.

The idea that people must now play like robots to earn a living so that they can be human in their spare time is, indeed, the apotheosis of misanthropy as long as these mechanical slaves are not catering for humanity as a whole (and not just producing commodities owned by the 1% of the 1%), is the apotheosis of misanthropy.

To be honest, some gamers all around the globe have been living in a play-to-earn mindset for quite some time. He goes on to say that Valve has seen the advantages of this form of money in everything from game streaming to developing in-game souvenirs, and that it has helped needy nations avoid sweatshop labor.

He concludes the extensive and in-depth interview by claiming that “capitalism as we know it is dying,” and that “technofeudalism is a new system in which the techno-lords are extracting a new authority to force the rest of us to do things on their behalf.” Throughout the discussion, he mentions people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg as examples of emergent techno-lords gaining new power.

This new power comes from investing in a new type of capital (command capital) that allows them to accumulate a new type of value (command value), which allows them to extract surplus value from I vassal capitalists, (ii) the precariat, and (iii) everyone who uses their platforms to produce more command capital on their behalf, unconsciously.

The Crypto Syllabus is the source of this information (via PC Gamer)

Recent Developments

With a 3.1+ GHz overclock, AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT tops the 3DMark Fire Strike rankings.

31st of January, 2022 31st of January, 2022

Call of Duty is said to be Dwayne Johnson’s next video game film.

31st of January, 2022 31st of January, 2022

GeForce Security Update Drivers for Kepler, Maxwell, and Other Older GPUs are now available from NVIDIA.

31st of January, 2022 31st of January, 2022

Part II of the Final Fantasy VII remake will be shown this year.

31st of January, 2022

Bungie, Destiny, and Halo Creator are acquired by Sony for $3.6 billion.

31st of January, 2022 31st of January, 2022

The Intel Core i9-12900KS outperforms the Core i9-12900K and AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in the alleged Cinebench R23 Benchmark, scoring over 29,000 points.

30th of January, 2022 30th of January, 2022