Meet me in the metaverse. Really?

The metaverse is causing quite the hype, but it will play a big role in how we collaborate in (a hybrid) future, says our associate partner Rik Mulder. Below he explores the opportunities and risks of virtual reality at work, how we can prepare for it, and what is already possible today.

I was offline recently. During my road trip in Canada, whole days went by without mobile internet or even cell phone coverage. Many of you may well think ‘how wonderful!’, but I didn’t like it one bit. Aligning with our Canadian travel companions, searching for camping spots, ferry bookings – everything was cumbersome without the internet.

It’s the same at work, obviously. Where would we be without email, LinkedIn, and intranet? Now think back: not long ago, we were dependent on paper travel guides, fold-out maps, and landlines while on holiday. At work, online communication and collaboration has only become widespread over the past 30 years or so. This begs the question: what will the coming decades bring?

In this article, I take a look at developments in the Digital Employee Experience, specifically at collaboration in virtual reality. Looking far ahead, will we be relocating our entire organisations to the metaverse? Meta and Microsoft are betting big on it, as their CEOs announced in partnership at last week’s Meta Connect conference. Tech giants like these, as well as a slew of start-ups, are also already offering VR services in the here and now, as I will cover later on.

But I will start with that fascinating metaverse.

Reality+

There has been a lot of talk about the metaverse lately. As you know, Mark Zuckerberg even renamed his company from Facebook to Meta. But there is no agreement on a definition, and it might just be that the term itself will not last. Nobody talks about surfing in cyberspace anymore, after all.

So what do we agree on? The metaverse is all about virtual and augmented reality. The confusion starts when tech giants are talking about connecting all kinds of virtual and augmented realities, ideally on their own platforms, of course.

As an internal communications and (hybrid-)collaboration specialist, I’m personally most interested in the opportunities of virtual reality (VR). During my Canadian holiday, I read the book Reality+ by tech philosopher David Chalmers. He defines VR as an ‘immersive, interactive, computer-generated space’. This metaverse is also shared with others and persistent: the world doesn’t dissolve when you turn it off, as is the case in many games.

The hybriverse

I think VR applications can play an important role in the new, flexible ways of working that are emerging. More and more, we work in hybrid mode: sometimes at the office, other times at home or elsewhere remotely. The pandemic has taught us how pleasant and productive remote work can be. Almost no one is longing to return to the office 9-to-5, five days a week. According to recent international research by the Future Forum, 80% of knowledge workers want flexibility in where they work, and even 94% in when they work.

But we also start seeing the downsides of hybrid work: less knowledge sharing, lower engagement, poorer alignment between teams, fewer learning opportunities, and more stress. The main problem is the decline in human contact between colleagues, of course. They don’t share an office so often anymore, don’t run into each other so much at the proverbial water cooler, rarely go to events together. The spontaneity, familiarity, and serendipity are gone.

The Virtual Employee Experience

Part of the solution is obviously to optimise the time you are physically together, but another important part has to do with the Digital Employee Experience. This is the ‘sum of the digital interactions within the work environment’, according to Australian internal communications expert James Robertson. He should know, as he coined the term.

VR is going to play an ever greater role in the Digital Employee Experience, I’m sure. That DEX needs to improve drastically from the current Teams or Zoom videocalls, brainstorms in Miro or Mural, and online pub quizzes as team-building activities. I take it you all agree.

VR promises much more natural online interactions. For example, in a virtual office, where colleagues meet as avatars. Accenture is already experimenting with this on what they call their ‘Nth floor’.

I will explain what is already possible in this field later. But bigger questions come to mind first, such as: do we really want this? Could virtual interactions ever replace physical contact? VR will never be real, right?

Sidestep: how real is VR?

In his book Reality+, David Chalmers, a professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University, tries to answer the question: is VR real? Will people ever regard it as real and valuable? Will they ever want to spend part of their lives there?

Naturally, the answers to those questions depend largely on how lifelike VR will feel. Chalmers predicts fully immersive virtual worlds, indistinguishable from real life, within a century. Look at the progress in gaming over the last 40 years, from Pacman to Fortnite. Now extrapolate that and his prediction looks quite realistic.

He believes in brain-computer interfaces to experience VR in future. These will stimulate the brain directly, circumventing the eyes, ears, and other senses. Just like in the movie The Matrix, indeed. Science fiction, of course, but none other than Elon Musk is already experimenting with brain-computer interfaces in his company Neuralink. And we also never thought he’d be able to land rockets upright, or that we’d think electric cars were cool.

Hold on, you may say: if you know it’s not real, it will surely never feel real? Chalmers’ answer is that we also recently found out that our material world is built from atoms, quarks, and fundamentally, even from quantum fluctuations, whatever those may be. Yet we don’t look at the physical world differently now. Wouldn’t that be the same for a virtual world built from bits and bytes?

All very philosophical, perhaps, but if that is your thing, Chalmers takes it one step further: he thinks it very likely that we are all already living in a simulation without realising it. Feels pretty real, doesn’t it?

Canada, the game

So the question is whether people can regard VR as real and valuable. Let me try to make that tangible. Thinking back to my road trip around Vancouver, what comes to mind?
- the wild landscapes
- the bears, whales, and other wildlife
- the hospitable Canadians
- the spectacular outdoor activities
- the way of life with camping in the wild and campfires

Could I have had the same experience in a future metaverse? Looking at my list, that seems conceivable (and would have saved me two ten-hour squeezes into aeroplane seats and three weeks’ camper van hire!).

VR worlds are already impressive, as I have experienced through my son’s Oculus Quest 2 VR glasses. Just try Google Earth VR and fly through the most beautiful landscapes in the world. That same son can get very excited — and exhausted — by active VR games, some with ‘real’ and fantasy animals. Sensors and cameras in the headset follow his movements, which allows him to play sports games. He can be truly immersed in these game worlds.

What’s more, a great deal of his social interactions take place online. These interactions are real: they don’t only exist in his imagination, they have consequences, and they are valuable, to use Chalmers’ definition. He is part of a close-knit group of friends, even though they hardly ever meet in ‘real’ life. Even after a wonderful Canada trip, he is looking forward to going online again.

More than meeting in the metaverse

All this means that I do believe we will deem virtual worlds just as valuable as the physical one, particularly when they become more lifelike. That obviously opens up great opportunities for work — and a few risks, too. We surely cannot imagine all these yet, but we can start thinking about them.

The end of distance?
Meeting each other without having to travel, that is the great promise of VR, especially in a world of hybrid work. Meta calls this ‘the infinite office’. Everyone can ‘teleport’ everywhere and be present at every meeting.

The flip side of this is even more meetings, whereas we should actually learn to work more asynchronously. But I do see almost unlimited opportunities for learning and knowledge development: touch base with every expert, brainstorm with colleagues from all over the world and build prototypes together instantly, create inspiring hands-on learning environments.

The possibilities are endless, and that is another risk: if all interactions are perfectly planned and designed, will there still be chance encounters? In a physical office, you have to (learn to) collaborate with whoever happens to be there with you. In VR, you can just as easily leave as join a group, so this may actually lead to more silos and less tolerance.

The end of scarcity?
A very convenient attribute of digital goods is that you can copy them at virtually no cost. So no more looking for a free meeting room, all the work tools you need, always your perfect office set-up, which you can take with you wherever you want. For example, to your rustic beach house in a beautiful bay on Vancouver Island — totally free and only one click away!

But also potentially an oversized corner office, a tailored suit, and a luxury company car for everyone. Can we deal with that? It doesn’t look like it when you follow the NFT hype, where digital ownership is artificially limited to those who pay for the privilege.

The scarcity of information will be a thing of the past. Display instruction videos alongside every tool, let LinkedIn profile information hover above people’s heads, indicate the route to take on the road itself. Augmented virtual reality, so to speak.

The end of disadvantage?
Another angle: with your avatar, you can be whomever you want to be. There will no longer be any physical limitations. In case we’re still prejudiced then, VR can be liberating. I personally notice that I’m unsure about designing my avatars. Should I make it look like myself, like a West-Coast surfer dude, or perhaps like a free-my-mind fantasy figure? Who am I to complain as a white male, anyway?

In the meantime, online is rife with discrimination and hate speech, mostly because of the relative (and sometimes absolute) anonymity it provides. Many female gamers apparently assume male identities to avoid harassment. Now that is the opposite of freedom…

The end of the office?
Connecting, brainstorming, aligning: if everything the office is good for can also be done in VR (and perhaps even better), why would we hold on to those expensive piles of stone, steel, and glass? No more traffic jams or overcrowded trains, no more erratic air conditioning, no more drab canteen food.

But are we really going to spend our work lives in a virtual office where everything we say and do will, perhaps by default, be monitored and recorded? If it is up to the tech giants, they will control those metaverses. Will we all work in a Meta, Microsoft, or Google office then? Another tech giant, Atlassian, has in any case decided, even after the pandemic, to build a new (wooden!) headquarters in real-life Sydney.

(I’ll skip a fifth possibility, the end of work itself because of automation and AI, for now.)

Intrigued by immersive virtual worlds? Then I recommend watching not only The Matrix, but also Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, in which the main character escapes his bleak earthly life to become a hero in the metaverse. Or the San Junipero episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror, in which the deceased live on in a virtual world.

Back to reality: what is possible today?

That is way off, of course, but the possibilities today are greater than most people think and extend far beyond my son’s gaming world. We are working mostly with Microsoft and Meta technology for our clients, and both are placing big bets on VR.

Microsoft has a Mixed Reality division which includes AltspaceVR, a company they acquired in 2017. You can build Worlds (spaces) in AltspaceVR to organise meetings and events. There is a choice of templates for offices, meeting rooms, or creative spaces, or you can design your own World.

You participate with your avatar, ideally using a VR headset, but a regular screen also works. Spatial sound — closer means louder — gives the impression you are in a room with others. AltspaceVR also offers a whole range of public events to visit: about technology or science, but also stand-up comedy and church services. There are even public campfire sessions, although they have had to restrict access after people started misbehaving.

The AltspaceVR platform also underpins Microsoft Mesh, which aims to bring virtual meetings to Microsoft Teams. You still need a €3500 Microsoft HoloLens for that, but they are working on supporting other devices, such as Meta’s Quest VR headsets — more on that later.

Apart from using avatars, Mesh also promises ‘holoportation’: projecting a photorealistic version of yourself in VR to make interactions lifelike. Unfortunately, you still need a car to make the system (holo)portable. Simultaneously, Microsoft is leading in Augmented Reality with HoloLens. Even the Apples and Googles of the tech world are looking at (or rather: through) that technology admiringly.

Meta’s version

Meta is no laggard when it comes to the business applications of VR. When it was still called Facebook, it invested early in VR with its 2014 acquisition of Oculus. The popular Oculus VR headsets, like my son’s Quest 2, have been part of the Zuckerverse for years. Perhaps you saw his rather wooden keynote at last year’s Facebook Connect conference, where he tied the future of his company to the metaverse and announced the rebranding as Meta.

At this year’s Connect, which took place earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced a new VR headset, the Meta Quest Pro. Through the tracking of your eyes and face, this promises ‘social presence’ with much more expressive and natural avatars. You can use them in Meta Horizons Workrooms, their version of Microsoft Mesh. Intriguingly, he hinted at mixed-reality ‘magic rooms’, where people physically present can collaborate with avatars of colleagues participating online.

Zuckerberg has bigger plans for business, though. He brought Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella into Connect to announce a new partnership for building the future of work. In practice, that means you can soon use Quest devices to join Mesh for Teams VR meetings and access Microsoft 365 apps, including SharePoint, Word, and Excel. Anyone up for immersing themselves in a 3D spreadsheet?

Beyond the MetaMesh

Microsoft and Meta are not the only companies moving into VR. The big boys focus mainly on headsets. Rumours abound that Apple is working on one. TikTok owner ByteDance recently bought Chinese VR headset maker Pico Interactive. Endearingly, Google is still touting the good-old cardboard glasses we all used for our first VR experiences.

The software space is much more crowded. In Engage VR, you can start a MetaWorld, which you can connect with those of other companies via the Engage Oasis. You can also establish your own campus for onboarding, training, events, and wellness. Glue is an independent, Finnish alternative to Mesh and Workrooms with some big-name clients, including, they claim, Microsoft itself.

Closer to (my) home, Dutch platform Mibo is an option. Developed as a tropical VR island for a covid Christmas party for digital agency Q42, it now also has business worlds — and even an almost Canadian forest campfire! As your avatar, you shuffle around a socket with a screen showing your webcam. I tried it and it works surprisingly well. Welkom combines Mibo with other collaboration tools.

The DEX revisited

Back to the Digital Employee Experience. Clearly, there are many opportunities, but are they already of use to our co-workers? The initiatives described above are mostly still experiments and overhyped pilots. An ex-colleague of mine who joined Accenture recently hasn’t come across any ‘Nth floor’, or even the One Accenture Park virtual onboarding environment the firm claims has already hosted 150,000 recruits.

Accenture has at least already acquired 60,000 headsets. But with prices starting at hundreds of euros, and even €1800 for the new Meta Quest Pro, it comes as no surprise that only around 20 million have been sold worldwide over the years. Kitting out your team, let alone your whole organisation is a big investment.

Some people also get nauseous from using VR headsets because your movements are not always 100% synchronised with what you see. What is more, it is not clear whether people will be happy to put on a pair of futuristic glasses. The early adopters of Google Glass augmented reality headsets were quickly dubbed ‘Glassholes’ ten years ago. But rapid innovation will undoubtedly deliver next-generation headsets that are ever smaller, faster, and cheaper.

VR worlds themselves are still pretty rudimentary, even cartoonish. Avatars are getting better but are still far from lifelike. The big thing Zuckerberg announced at Connect this year was… legs! Up to now, avatars in Mesh and Workrooms only had upper bodies to limit the necessary processing power. Now, they literally take the next step. He also showcased ‘Instant Codec Avatars’ that did look very real, but still need hours to render. An interesting future risk here is the ‘uncanny valley’, where avatars are almost lifelike, and therefore very creepy.

So, what then?

Does that mean there is nothing meaningful we can do? No way! Experimenting is fun and useful. Lots of software vendors offer pilot versions for tryouts; some apps, such as VRChat, are even free. Renting a VR headset costs no more than €25 per day. You can even peek through your computer screen, but evidently, you shouldn’t expect full immersion in that case.

My advice: don’t just play a few games, but try to think about how you could use VR in your team’s and organisation’s work. As we have seen, VR is going to be serious business, so set aside some time and budget, form a working group with enthusiasts, and get inspired.

Ask yourself which online meetings could benefit from VR: team updates, or rather workshops? How would VR fit with your hybrid or remote work strategy? Could teams use it as a third option, apart from working at the office and at home? VR will enable collaboration over long distances, but are these far-away co-workers connected already?

Think about how you can make sure your organisation is receptive to new ways of communication and collaboration. Have you already looked at your Digital Employee Experience? We see that many organisations are reluctant to introduce, for instance, social communication and real-time digital collaboration, although their employees are crying out for it (and organise it themselves via WhatsApp if no one is listening).

Who’s next?

The first employees with VR experiences will likely be gamers such as my son. He will graduate in a few years and enter the labour market, which will undoubtedly still be tight then.

Where will he choose to work? In an organisation that is sticking to physical meetings and email? (Just to paint the picture: he completely missed the email cancellation of his return flight from Canada.) Or in an organisation that matches his ways of communicating and is ready for the future? I know him a little bit and can guess the answer. That’s non-virtual reality!