How to be a Model Metaverse Citizen?

The experience of being a Metaverse citizen will likely replicate the experience of being an earthling. To think through the user experience, we can imagine what features define citizenship, and find the parallels.

Taxes: The subscription fees to participate in and live as citizens in the metaverse will be like our tax obligation.* We will pay property taxes to own real estate in this new frontier.

*But, to learn from Gold Rush history (see other post), in 1850, California tried to enforce a Foreign Miners License Law, charging all non-U.S. citizens $20 per month, which pushed Chinese immigrants out of mining camps, and out to San Francisco, hence the now-flourishing Chinatown there. Greedy metaverses may alienate users if switching costs are lower than the tax demanded, and other metaverses offer more attractive lifestyles.

Passports: Your handle and IP address may be your passport, stamped as you move between territories. When you buy a new game, it will be like taking a trip to a new territory. Social systems must be built flexibly carry a player’s persona across inter- and intra-metaverse state territory, to take your friends with you, regardless of who rules the law of the land when you switch from game to game. This will require collaboration and standardization, as Sweeney realized. The more games that are built on Epic, the more worlds will have a standardized infrastructure for players to seamlessly travel, like a Brit jet-starring from European nation to nation, versus the complexity of getting a visa and going through customs. There is an opportunity for a moat here, as social effects take hold.

Law: Who will play UN of this new land? Antitrust will be crucial to make sure one company doesn’t colonize and monopolize. Laws may have to adapt for cybercrime and larceny of valuable in-game assets. The space around protecting this new land will come with fascinating challenges.