Why Interoperability Is Needed For Gaming And The Metaverse

Bringing interoperability to gaming and the metaverse is one of Somnia’s primary goals, but you might be wondering why this is so important to us. The idea of having high levels of compatibility between games, worlds and platforms seems strange because it hasn’t really been possible before, but what if it was possible? Below we will share some of the basic ways that interoperability can improve user experience, create real economic opportunities and inspire innovation.

Moonshot Experiments

One of the big media narratives surrounding Web3 gaming in the previous bull run was that you would be able to use the same items in multiple different games. This idea is still very exciting to a lot of people though, despite the fact that it will probably only work in a few very rare circumstances. 

Most people don’t consider the fact that allowing items that impact the gameplay to be taken from game to game could totally ruin the experience. Imagine if one of the players in an online game of FIFA had access to weapons, or maybe even wings, it would break the game. This will not stop some brave devs from attempting to make this happen, and it will be messy, but it will also be very interesting to watch. 

We think that cross game compatibility for digital items will only work in rare cases, when a game developer or production studio builds multiple games that are designed to accommodate the same items. Perhaps in the distant future DAOs would be taking on this role, instead of corporations. 

Cosmetic Compatibility

Cosmetic items in video games are a $50 billion industry, and this is where we believe interoperability can be extremely beneficial. This would be an obvious upgrade for user experience because it would make all of the cosmetic items from many of their games more useful, and vastly improves the cosmetic options that they have in each game. 

The metaverse is a much younger industry, but it is developing in much the same way, with a serious demand for cosmetic items. These will become even more important in the metaverse because avatars will be digital representations of ourselves, in environments that are built to be social.

Growing The Creator Economy 

Interoperability also sets the stage for sprawling marketplaces with digital items, many of which would be user generated. As we said earlier, if cosmetic items can be transported between experiences, those items would become more useful. When things are useful they usually become valuable. Platform owners have incentives to discourage user generated content, but there is a growing demand for it, and soon the incentive to offer that feature could outweigh the financial risk for them. In fact, user generated content is what will take the industry to the next level, offering opportunities to millions and inspiring an unimaginable quantity of quality content for the world to enjoy. 

To learn more about what we’re building read our litepaper, or join or community to keep up with all the latest developments.