Now we are much closer to turning that vision into a reality. Well, our session at the October 25-26 San Francisco event will be entitled “From science fiction to reality: Bringing the open and real-time metaverse to life.” Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” back in the 1990s when it was a science fiction vision for a digital world where we could fully immerse ourselves in a virtual experience.

It’s no different from Marvel’s Multiverse, right? Many of us think of this stuff as science fiction, as the metaverse is the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash. Neal Stephenson Neal Stephenson is cofounder of Lamina1 and author of Snow Crash. And as always, we will look at deal-making and the financial trends in gaming. Those subthemes include the metaverse, user-generated content and the creator economy, influencers and the upheavals in marketing, nonfungible tokens and cryptocurrency, emerging markets, subscriptions and cloud gaming and the changing infrastructure of games. Our major subthemes will focus on key areas and how they will grow in the post-pandemic world.

You don’t want to experience FOMO about our event on the emerging parts of gaming that could turn into the next big markets. You can use the discount code Dean50 to get 50% off the ticket price for a limited time.

GamesBeat Summit Next 2022 will examine the next big opportunities in a disciplined way with the industry’s thought leaders. Waves of hype always crash into the game industry, but we never know if they’re going to get our feet wet or be tidal waves that change the whole industry.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson