Metaverse x Guidelines (2022)
Virtual City Consortium on Virtual City Guidelines
Rules are necessary to make it exciting.
Just as Facebook changed its name to Meta, I have a feeling that “Metaverse” is likely to become the next big topic in the tech industry. There are various business opportunities in the Metaverse that combines XR (VR, AR, MR), but among them there is a project to reproduce an actual city in virtual space.
And this time, the “Virtual City Consortium”, which is a collection of KDDI, Tokyu, Mizuho Research & Research, and Shibuya Mirai Design, has established “Virtual City Guidelines” for the development of the Metaverse / City-linked Metaverse industry.
Virtual Shibuya that reproduces Shibuya in the Metaverse
In fact, from 2020, a project called “Virtual Shibuya” has started by the “Shibuya 5G Entertainment Project” led by KDDI, Shibuya Mirai Design, and Shibuya City Tourism Association. This guideline makes use of that experience and clarifies the points to be noted / examined when establishing and operating the Metaverse / City-linked Metaverse.
The topics of the Virtual City Guidelines can be divided into two categories: “City-linked Metaverse” and “Metaverse”. “City-linked Metaverse” includes reproducibility and modification of cityscapes, the idea of ”publicness”, cooperation with existing cities, and arrangement of commercial distribution. “Metaverse” includes rights / technical content such as activating the creator economy, protecting avatars, portrait rights, publicity rights, virtual properties, and more.
The destination of the virtual city
So what is the aim of the Virtual City Declaration? The following goals have been set for this consortium. For more information, see the guidelines published here.
1. Encourage creative activities and open up the diversity of people
2. Expand people’s living space and create a new economic zone
3. Fostering “city pride” and urban culture at the global level
4. Create accidental encounters and communication of “people, things, things”
5. Leverage technology to properly protect user rights
6. Ensuring proper management and openness as a public place
7. Promote democratic rule-making activities
In the future, the consortium will protect privacy and user rights, ensure interoperability between metaverses, and in other cities other than Shibuya, which have not been organized in “Guidelines ver.1” toward “Guidelines ver.2”. It seems that we will discuss the arrangement for adaptation of. In addition, we will collaborate with Metaverse Japan, which was established in March 2022 to become the hub of Metaverse.
At the press conference, Gizmodo Editor-in-Chief Oda asked, but the significance of these guidelines is that it is an economic zone where sociality and publicity are more essential than the virtual world such as so-called online games. It seems to be one of the points of Metaverse. If so, the know-how of virtual Shibuya, which started from linking with the real city of Shibuya, is likely to become an advantage in establishing guidelines in the future.
