“Life imitates art considerably more than vice versa,” Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay “The Decay of Lying.” From this became the philosophical attitude Life Imitating Artand nowhere is this more evident than in the buzz term of the technology industry. Everything is to be connected with everything in the “metaverse,” art and life and all the rest. That’s why entertainment giant Sony and the Lego Group have each invested a billion dollars in the American video game manufacturer Epic. The companies are betting that the metaverse could replace the previous digital experience of many people – i.e. the web and social media.

Epic is best known for Fortnite, at least as much a pop culture phenomenon as video game. Epic founder Tim Sweeney has stressed for years that he doesn’t see his third-person shooter as just a game. Sure, the Battle Royale variant is about being the last of 100 players to survive on a post-apocalyptic island, so it’s a game. What there is in the virtual world, however: Live concerts by Ariana Grande, Travis and Marshmallo; the Party Worldswhich are both playground and meeting place; the Creative variant, in which users create their own worlds and mini-games with their own rules; collaborations with other pop culture pillars such as Marvel superheroes and Street Fighter characters.

More than a game

“Fortnite Is a game,” Sweeney wrote on Twitter in late 2019, “But please ask that question again in twelve months.” Now, 29 months later, it must be said: it’s still a game, but more importantly, it’s a glimpse into what several industries envision as a “metaverse.” And that leads to Epic, although still not publicly traded, currently valued at $31.5 billion.

It’s worth taking a close look at who the company is partnering with: In addition to Sony and Lego, for example, with the Chinese tech group Tencent, which holds 40 percent of Epic’s shares. Epic has also just bought the music community Bandcamp, and there is this symbiosis with Disney. The company has long been a master at earning money with its treasure trove of intellectual property in many sectors such as film, toys, series, computer games and theme parks. This is exactly what will soon happen in the Metaverse as well.

You have to imagine the metaverse like the fantasy world in the book “Alice in Wonderland”: pretty much anything is possible in this world – but it has to follow a certain logic and be coherent so that people believe it, at least at the beginning. This can be physical laws, such as a ball rolling down a hill. Or visual aspects such as reflecting sunlight. Or the fact that Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t look like the pan-galactic Thunder Gurgler, but first of all like himself.

It’s extremely costly to create such a realistic world that works in real time for as many users as possible at the same time. This is where Epic comes in: The company recently presented the new version of its developer software, Unreal Engine 5.. It is supposed to provide logic in the metaverse. The software not only helps game developers, it was also used, for example, to produce the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian,” architects work with it, Porsche engineers used it to design the 911 GT3, corporations first plan factories virtually before building them, the U.S. space agency Nasa used the Mars XR Operations Support System developed there.

Building blocks for the new universe

It is a kind of reality simulation software, Art Imitating Life so to speak. So well, in fact, that users forget, at least for a few seconds, that none of this is real. Epic’s chief technology officer is Kim Libreri, who previously worked with “Matrix” creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski and was jointly responsible for the legendary scene in which main character Neo dodges bullets; a moment that has gone down in film history as “bullet time”. The scene is symbolic of what the Metaverse could be: The impossible happens – but in such a way that it still somehow makes sense to the viewer.

The first update to the Unreal Engine in eight years includes three important new building blocks: Lumen for these realistic lighting effects, Nanite for three-dimensional details as well as Metahumanwhich creates avatars that are almost indistinguishable from real people. The goal is to make people driving through virtual San Francisco in a virtual Porsche forget that it is an illusion. A few creative people have already created experiences that demonstrate this realism: the station of the developer Martin Nebelong for example, or the revised GTA trailer by Hossein Diba.

The first million is free

Of course, the alternate reality of the Epic metaverse in particular follows a natural law of the analog world: a lot of money must be made. So it’s no coincidence that on Thursday Epic announced a collaboration with WPP, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. But Epic is determined not to repeat the nightmares from the classic Internet and social media – flashing banner ads and influencer marketing. The alternative is so-called digital twins, and of everything. In other words, test-driving a hyper-realistic car in a virtual world and then buying it in the real world.

Just about any product is conceivable for this. And to make that happen, Epic has come up with a special business model: Any developer can currently use Unreal Engine 5 for free, despite collaborations with Disney, Sony and Lego. Epic only wants five percent of the revenue when the developer has reached one million dollars in sales. So the company is betting that the pie will still grow immensely and wants to get as many people as possible to jump on the Epic bandwagon.

Not a bad plan to solidify its own market position, says Jacob Navok, head of streaming tech company Genvid and co-author of some of the most important essays on the Metaverse. While there are competitors to Unreal Engine, Unity, for example, Amazon Lumberyard or CryEngine, he says, “It seems like Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is betting on an extremely growing market, and especially with young developers, cost plays a huge role in the beginning.” Epic promises, “Not only can its software make a better product, whether it’s special effects in movies, prototype cars or the San Francisco skyline. It should also be cheaper than with previous tools.

Everything is supposed to be connected to everything else in the metaverse, the difference between real and virtual worlds disappearing as much as possible. Art imitates life – which in turn imitates art. Will this be good for humanity? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s likely to be like any technological development: when anything is possible, both the best and the worst will happen: live sunset in San Francisco or live influencer ads and much more terrible things.