Hey kid, see you in the metaverse?
Next month, Epic Games will shut down Houseparty — the group video-chatting app that became popular in the pandemic — to focus instead on the metaverse. But, what is that, exactly? That is a topic for “Quality Assurance,” where we take a second look at a big tech story. While there are different visions of the metaverse to come, most digital builders and watchers believe the metaverse is essentially the next evolution of the internet, a virtual world that you’d move through with, some say, just one identity, not a bunch of separate logins or accounts. And you could do things in it like attend a virtual concert, sit in a virtual conference room or go to a virtual shopping mall. Marketplace’s Marielle Segarra speaks with Alexander Lee, a reporter at Digiday covering esports and gaming, about who would want this. Lee said it’s partly a generational thing.