The properties of Web3 bring all kinds of opportunities for companies (or creators) to sell digital goods, but they also present threats. One of those potential threats is immutability. Let me explain.
There is no friction, or erosion or passage of time in the metaverse.
Many companies make their money selling things that decay or deteriorate over time. From fresh fish to rubber tyres. Some are just perishable and others deteriorate through usage, because in the physical world there are forces like friction and weather.
In the virtual world, there is no concept of time, no reason for a product to age, so there is no need to ever buy more than one of something.
There are ways to get around this problem in the physical world. Apparel retailers invented fashion – artificial customs and trends that encourage people to change their style, even though their garments are perfectly in tact. Fashion should be relatively easy to replicate in the metaverse given the level of weaponised peer pressure that will exist. It was even referenced in the metaverse origin story – Snow Crash. Poor people who dialled in via public terminals were stuck with low-res avatars allowing them to be ridiculed to a point where they are forced to by something better.
The other way to get around this problem is what electronic brands do – planned obsolescence. You probably don’t need a new phone every year, but if the battery life is designed to get shorter and shorter and the operating system takes up more and more of your free memory with each update, soon your phone seems slower and maybe you should get a new one.
Customers seem to be okay with both these forms of manipulation. There has been some backlash against the sustainability of fast fashion brands, especially those that use a lot of man-made or plastic based materials, but virtue signalling through having the latest stuff is an ingrained human trait. On the other hand there are people who like vintage clothing and are quite happy to hang onto their favourite pair of jeans until they are threadbare. (I will come back to that later)
Planned obsolescence in a virtual world is harder to justify, especially in the current Web3 ideological headspace. If I buy a car, and it’s an NFT which I have paid for, I expect the value of that asset to increase or at the very least it maintains some value if I want to sell it. If products expire or cease to become useful, how do customers value those products?
The concept of wear and tear and damage does exist in games. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a mechanic where your guns don’t work as well as they are used, even if they are exposed to water for a prolonged period of time. Using a consumable – gun oil, to maintain your weapons helps you restore them to peak condition. Real Racing 3 also factors damage into it’s gameplay. There is a penalty for crashing into things. But this decay rate or penalty is known to players.
Consumption can exist in the metaverse.
The other kind of good that generates repeat purchases are those which can be consumed. From deodorant to fertiliser. From soap to bullets.
The value equation for these goods can be more easily communicated in a virtual world. They can make your experience different. You can level up faster, travel to the other side of the map more quickly. Perhaps you could build in some kind of ‘cleanliness’ function – something that was also present in Red Dead Redemption 2, NPCs reacted differently to you depending on whether or not you had bathed recently.
Aging in the metaverse
I’ve used Red Dead Redemption 2 a few times in this article because the developers thought about this stuff. You hair grows as the days pass. This creates the need to get it cut. If you hunt animals and leave them on the back of your horse too long they rot and become inedible. If the weather is cold, you will need to buy a warm coat to continue. The towns change. New buildings are built throughout the course of the game.
I’m not close enough to the development of spaces like the Sandbox or Dececentraland, so I don’t know if the passage of time is a thing. If you leave an apple on a park bench and no-one picks it up, does it decay? Does my shiny new leather jacket stay shiny and new forever? How do I signal that I bought it 2 years ago before anyone had heard of the metaverse?
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