Video games have come a long way from their humble beginnings. What was once a niche and simplistic medium of entertainment has exploded over the past few decades into becoming one of the facilitators for some of the biggest media franchises in the world. The industry is bigger than ever and thriving so healthily – and yet it is being threatened. Video games are art, there is no arguing against that, however the commodification of the industry through the pursuit of a ‘metaverse’ is threatening the artistic integrity of the industry as a whole.
For those who are not in the know, the metaverse is a “neologism typically used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe”. While this definition is somewhat limited in its application – offering a rather narrow view of…
