Gaming the Metaverse.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beil, Benjamin.

Contributor:

Freyermuth, Gundolf S.

Hamm, Isabelle.

Ossa, Vanessa.

Series:

Bild und Bit ; 21

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (398 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bielefeld : transcript Verlag, 2025.

Language Note:

In English.

Biography/History:

Beil Benjamin : Benjamin Beil (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor for Media Studies & Digital Culture at the Department of Media Culture & Theatre at the University of Cologne.Freyermuth Gundolf S. : Gundolf S. Freyermuth (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor of Media and Game Studies and founding co-director at the Cologne Game Lab of TH Koeln-University of Technology, Arts and Sciences, as well as Professor of Comparative Media Studies at the ifs international film school of Cologne.

Summary:

Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash conceived of the Metaverse as an escapist medium within a dystopian future. By the early 2000s, his vision had evolved into a blueprint for pioneering virtual worlds, notably Second Life. In the 2010s, technology companies—from Meta to Epic Games—recast the Metaverse as the next frontier of digital experience and revenue generation. Now, in the 2020s, the still speculative concept encompasses a convergence of extended reality technologies alongside blockchain systems and artificial intelligence. The contributors bring together leading scholars and industry professionals to examine past “imaginations” and recent “achievements” in the pursuit of the Metaverse. They trace its development through literary, media, and cultural history while exploring current applications and their technical, social, cultural, and economic implications.

Contents:

Cover

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

Metaverse's Modern Prehistory. Utopian Media from the Total Work of Art and Total Cinema to Cyberspace and Holodeck

Imaginations

The Metaverse and Other Digital Delusions

Incarnations of the Metaverse in Science Fiction

Dreaming the Metaverse. Virtual Worlds as Audiovisual Fantasy

Body-Crash: "The Impact Will Be Real". On How the Metaverse Could Affect Our Bodies

Metaverse (Re)Visions. Back to the Future of the Internet

The Metaverse: What's Now, What's Next

Achievements

From Pixels to Emotions. Exploring Atmospheres in Metaverse Art Exhibitions

Virtual Wonderlands. Insights from NRW-Forum Düsseldorf's WWWFORUM Project: An Interview

Creating a GTP-3-driven Chatbot for Social Virtual Reality. Quantum Bar

Let's Play the Metaverse …! Expanded Realities as Transparent Playheads

Towards a Responsible Metaverse. Digital Fashion, Avatars, and the Promise of Identity in Virtual Worlds

Akihabara. A Proto-Metaverse

Contributors.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9783839474624

3839474620

OCLC:

1500761711