Feeling the Elephant: Insiders’ Perspectives on the Metaverse

Abstract

The metaverse has been considered in various literature reviews as a multifaceted and complex concept that can not be defined from a single set of terms. These literature reviews have attempted the Metaverse definition based on the research most published before the heated attention on the Metaverse in 2021; therefore, they may not provide an up-to-date understanding of the phenomenon that incorporates the perspectives from the industry. This paper aims to disentangle the complexity of the Metaverse concept considering the perspectives of insiders - practitioners who play essential roles in the recent Metaverse wave. To achieve our goal, we analyzed one specific type of gray literature - a podcast series from Bloomberg entitled “Into the Metaverse” which featured different professionals active in the Metaverse landscape. Three themes were identified that represent the essential characteristics of the Metaverse which include technology capabilities, infrastructure characteristics, and social and economic aspects. Our study contributes to a more contemporary industrial understanding of the Metaverse concept. The understanding can assist researchers in future investigations into the evolving Metaverse paradigm.

1 Introduction

The Metaverse landscape has rapidly evolved in recent years since Facebook’s announcement of its transformation into Meta. Google Trends data underscore the surge in Metaverse-related searches since late 2021, reflecting its growing significance [8]. In tandem with the burgeoning popularity of the Metaverse, there has been a commensurate increase in the volume of related publications during the same period [1, 3].

Scholars and practitioners alike grapple with the challenge of defining the evolving concept of the Metaverse [2, 11]. The Metaverse represents an extension of the internet’s evolution, with the potential to merge seamlessly with our physical world through technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) [1]. As industries like retail and entertainment venture into the Metaverse, the need for a universally accepted definition becomes increasingly pressing to facilitate interdisciplinary discourse [10]. However, due to the multifaceted nature of the Metaverse, its precise definition remains elusive.

Defining the Metaverse is like feeling an elephant. Different perspectives from different stakeholders existed. Each company interprets the Metaverse according to its needs, goals, and industry sectors, resulting in various definitions and applications [11]. While some companies may view the Metaverse as a platform for social interactions and entertainment experiences, others consider it a fundamental tool for future¹. This variety of interpretations highlights the need for a deep and context-specific analysis of the various definitions of the Metaverse prevalent in the industry [16].

Taking into account the motivations above, our study aims to fill the existing gaps in the current literature by adding a contemporary industrial understanding of the Metaverse concept. To this end, we formulated the following research question: RQ: What is the definition of the Metaverse from the perspectives of the involved practitioners?

To answer this question, we qualitatively explored data collected from 10 podcast episodes focused on the Metaverse. Other studies have investigated the Metaverse complex definition from the scientific perspective as in [2, 4], or considering few amounts of papers which showed professionals’ viewpoint about this definition [1] or then did not explore the practitioners’ perspective deeply [2, 11]. Our work differs from the others by taking into account the perspectives of insiders - professionals who are working in the fields related to the Metaverse and actively shaping its development.

The contribution of this paper is to bring forward the current understanding of the Metaverse concept from these insiders, which both researchers and practitioners can then use to make better sense of the elephant - the complex phenomenon of the Metaverse. Our findings restate some topics that have been discussed by other authors. Additionally, we uncovered new perspectives of people expressing themselves from avatars, and also emergent themes of discussion such as technologies for connectivity and the problem of distinguishing the real and virtual world.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents related work that aims to define the Metaverse. Next, Sect. 3 describes our research method, and Sect. 4 presents the study’s results. In Sect. 5, we discuss the results in response to the research question. Finally, we conclude the work in Sect. 6.

2 Related Work

The metaverse complex definition has been explored mainly from the scientific literature. The literature reviews have presented the Metaverse conception from a more broad and general perspective [2, 7, 10], while others focus on specific domains such as education where Metaverse has been strongly adopted [3, 4, 6]. There is also work aspiring the unified definitions by adopting an ontology to explain the Metaverse concept [5]. Little works have explored sources that explore the Metaverse definition from the perspective of practitioners [1, 11].

The systematic literature review conducted by Ritterbusch and Teichmann [7] led to the understanding of the Metaverse as a decentralized, three-dimensional online environment that is both persistent and immersive. In the authors’ perspective, users who are embodied by avatars and can interact socially and economically in virtual spaces that exist independently of the physical world. Considering 30 papers in a literature review of Chen et al. [9] stated that the definition of the Metaverse is mainly divided into two categories: service-related to the Metaverse and technology used in the Metaverse. For the service-oriented, the authors found that in the Metaverse, the avatar that represents users, the daily communication, and the community are essential and also allow real-time social interactions for many users simultaneously. In the techniques-oriented category, the Metaverse is seen as the next generation of the Internet, building a 3D virtual world using technologies like AR, VR, and MR and exploring blockchain as an economic system with virtual money.

Similarly, Almoqbel et al. [2] conducted a systematic literature review and considered service and technology perspectives to define four categories that represent the main characteristics of the Metaverse. The categories include activities, content creation, users and their roles, and technical specifications. Space was an additional theme (i.e., out of the scope of the main categories) which represents the most challenging and inconsistent topic. It points out different perspectives on the relationship between the Metaverse and the real world. Park and Kim [10] proposed concepts, and techniques for realizing the Metaverse from the analysis of 260 papers. These concepts and techniques are divided into three components: hardware, software, and content. According to the authors, hardware is crucial for creating immersive experiences, with Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) serving as key devices. Software components encompass functions related to recognition and rendering. Content covers multimodal content representation, avatar modeling, and scenario generation population and evaluation.

Education emerged as an eminent application field of the Metaverse. Zhang et al. [4] defined it as an enhanced environment that fuses Metaverse-related technologies with elements of both virtual and real educational settings. According to the authors, this environment allows learners to use wearable devices to access education from anywhere, interact with various digital elements, and feel as if they are present in a physical classroom. The authors propose a framework for the Metaverse in education that highlights key technological components like high-speed communication and networks and technologies for managing computing analytical, modeling interaction and authentication.

In another work, Hwang and Chien [6] stated the Metaverse as an encompassing virtual environment with numerous applications in education providing learners with immersive, entertaining, and continuous experiences. It includes an authentic world for working and learning alongside intelligent non-player characters(NPCs), tutors, peers, tutees, and other human learners. For the authors, the Metaverse topic presents challenges related to technology, ethics, and pedagogy. [3] analyzed 19 papers published between 2009 to 2022 from a qualitative approach. The results showed that in the late 2000s to mid-2010s the Metaverse was described as 3D digital virtual worlds where individuals could live and build their identities through avatars. After the mid-2010s, the definition remained relatively similar; however, it also encouraged communication, interaction, and collaboration among the users. For the author, the Metaverse is continuously evolving with advancements in technologies like AR, VR, and AI applied in learning environments. The author also proposed key elements to enhance the value of Metaverse for educational purposes that include immersion, advanced computing, socialization, and decentralization.

Abu-salih [5] employed the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) to design a domain ontology (MetaOntology) for the Metaverse. The resulting definition of the Metaverse is a digital ecosystem that encompasses advanced technologies and infrastructure. This ecosystem includes digitization aspects, key technologies (e.g., Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality), software and hardware components, metaverse content, tech companies, physical counterparts, and user feedback.

Different from the previously discussed work, Weinberger [1] included two non-academic publications in their work. The author conducted a meta-synthesis of both scientific literature and grey literature to provide a single Metaverse definition. This unified definition covers the themes of ubiquitous space, virtual worlds, use of avatars, immersive environments, and promoting interaction of users. In contrast, Dolata and Schwabe [11] carried out a fully grey literature review. They reviewed 273 unique newspapers and magazines published in English between 1995 and 2022. For the authors, the construction of the Metaverse occurs in a broader social, technological, organizational, political, and cultural context. They stated that there are multiple metaphors and explanations coexisting simultaneously. Definitions are influenced by the following perspectives: ontological, differential (comparisons with other phenomena), structural (constituents and relationships), and capabilities (what is possible within the Metaverse). The results revealed that social groups are relevant in shaping the meaning and development of the Metaverse; groups include producers (i.e., big tech companies, game producers), users (individuals and retail/entertainment firms), and advocates (investors and governments).

The concept of the Metaverse has been the subject of extensive exploration and definition in the literature. However, most of the studies conducted so far have been focused on academic and technical sources. This has resulted in a need for more research that examines the understanding of the Metaverse using sources that are closer to the industry. Given the fast-growing interest in the Metaverse and its potential applications, it is crucial to have a better understanding of the different perspectives surrounding it. It is worth noting that although Dolata and Schwabe [11] have examined practitioners’ perspectives from grey literature, their data sources brought very different views. The authors did not filter the Metaverse definitions by groups of professionals or ordinary people which resulted in a broad definition. Therefore, our study aims to address this lack of a more focused viewpoint by concentrating effort on getting evidence about the understanding of Metaverse solely from the industry’s perspective. Our study addresses this knowledge gap by exploring the insiders’ view of the Metaverse.

3 Research Method

Considering the gap in exploring the Metaverse definition from the perspectives of professionals, we decided to conduct an analysis of a specific type of grey literature - podcasts. Our study focused on examining the perspective of practitioners who are actively working in the fields shaping the Metaverse.

Grey literature corresponds to content that is not published in peer-reviewed traditional sources such as academic journals or conferences [12]. It is available in various sources (e.g., technical reports, theses, dissertations, audio and video media, patents). Grey literature content often is produced by professionals who report their practical experience [12]. It has been adopted as a source of valuable information in Software Engineering research as can be seen in [15, 17].

Garousi et al. [12] provide a set of questions that support the decision on adopting or not the grey literature as a research source (Table 1). The authors recommend the use of Grey Literature Review (GLR) in the case at least one question has the answer“yes”. Taking into account our goal of exploring the Metaverse definition, we have five “yes” answers out of the seven questions.

Table 1. QA to decide whether we should use the GL in our work.

Considering the relevance of examining the grey literature, we analyzed the perspectives of insider professionals from 10 episodes of a podcast entitled“Into the Metaverse”². We selected this podcast series because it is from Bloomberg, a well-known broadcaster, and primarily focuses on discussing ’what is metaverse’ from the perspectives of practitioners who were actively involved with Metaverse. In the following sections, we discuss the data preparation and analysis in detail.

3.1 Data Preparation

The podcast series conducted the interviews from 2021 to 2022 and consisted of 12 episodes and one teaser. Each episode lasted from about 30 min to one hour. We selected 10 out of the 12 episodes for investigation and two episodes were excluded from our sample due to they did not feature external interviewees. In each of the 10 selected episodes, an insider - a professional from different industry sectors (e.g., gaming, business) who is active in the Metaverse arena - was interviewed, providing insights into the conception of the Metaverse. Table 2 shows the title of the selected episodes and the professionals interviewed.

Table 2. Selected Episodes from the podcast series.

As the episodes were in audio format, we transcribed them into a textual format for data analysis. We employed Whisper, an open-source³ tool for audio-to-text transcription. Developed by OpenAI, Whisper is an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) tool supporting multilingual and multitask⁴, and having an error rate of 3.52% for audios available in the English language [13]. We implemented a Python script coding to use Whisper and get the transcribed texts. A total of 7 h and 45 min of podcast audio resulted in for analysis.

3.2 Data Analysis

Taking into account the 135 pages of transcribed text, we conducted a thematic analysis in four steps following the coding technique illustrated in Fig. 1. Open coding technique is a procedure for qualitative data analysis involving decomposing raw data into smaller segments, referred to as codes [14]. The generated codes aim to descriptively and objectively represent the information available in the chunk of text to facilitate subsequent data organization, interpretation, and analysis [14]. We adopted Atlas.ti⁵ tool for the coding process. It is a popular software tool to assist researchers in qualitative data analysis.

Fig. 1.

Data analysis process.

Four researchers participated in the data analysis (see Fig. 1), hereinafter referred to as R1, R2, R3, and R4. R1 and R2 are master students with 2+ years of experience in software engineering. R3 and R4 are senior researchers with 15+ years of experience in qualitative research in software engineering. In the first step, R1 guided their analysis of each podcast episode by searching for evidence that answered the question “What is Metaverse?” as soon as R1 found some chunk of text related to the question, a code was assigned to it. After that, R1 proceeded with a review of the codes to identify codes with substantial similarities, leading to the creation, removal, or merging of certain codes. This step produced 147 initial codes (see Step 1 in Fig. 1). Subsequently, R2 evaluated the codes assigned to the text and the respective code definitions. In Step 2, R1 and R2 held a consensus meeting to consolidate the open coding results, resulting in 104 remaining codes (see Step 2 in Fig. 1).

Before the start of Step 3, R1 reevaluated the podcast episodes and codes to identify intersections within the text. Utilizing the snowball sampling technique across the documents, the researcher uncovered relationships among different codes. Additionally, R1 and R2 worked collaboratively to identify these relationships specifically. In the second part of Step 2, they explored the interconnections of the 104 codes. In Step 3, R1 and R2 collectively defined a set of categories in which the codes were systematically organized. During this phase, the 104 codes were categorized into 32 categories. In Step 4, R3 and R4 reviewed the 32 categories, conducting a double-check of the results. After a consensus meeting involving R1, R2, R3, and R4, two categories were merged, resulting in 31 unique categories. Figure 2 provides an illustrative example of data extraction. The final codes and the respective categories were compiled into a spreadsheet⁶ After examining the categories, we arranged the 31 categories into three groups that represent the enabling factors that will make the Metaverse a reality, the main characteristics that the Metaverse presents, and the impact that the Metaverse will produce in the world. In the following section, we will focus on the main characteristics group, which answers the RQ posted in the Introduction section.

Fig. 2.

Example of coding result.

4 Results

Table 3 shows the categories of the main characteristics of Metaverse, their sub-categories, and the episodes that contained evidence for the categories. In the following sections, each category is presented in detail.

4.1 Metaverse Technology Capabilities

This category encompasses several key technology capabilities that characterize the Metaverse meaning (i.e., what Metaverse is) according to the interviewed professionals. It is composed of four sub-categories which are described in the paragraphs below.

Virtual realm: it describes the digital environment where individuals can interact, explore, and engage within the Metaverse, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital realms. As the vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA declared, “we need to assemble a virtual world.” The CEO and co-founder of SuperData is more cautious: “Virtual reality is something that we’ve seen every decade that comes back and then it becomes nothing and then it comes back again. You know, and it’s always in the future. It’s always this perfect relationship, this perfect technology. And I think the Metaverse is similar...”. Independently of the terminology, i.e., virtual environment, virtual reality, or virtual world, the interviewed professionals agreed that it is one of the essential aspects of the Metaverse.

Avatar identity: it captures the concept of individuals representing themselves with digital avatars in the Metaverse, allowing for personal expression and adaptation based on context and experiences through multiple avatars. Living in the Metaverse as an avatar or multiple avatars makes it a place to manifest oneself. According to the CEO of SuperSocial, avatars are key tools in the Metaverse experience, capable of enabling different types of experiences depending on the avatar type. For him, it is “potentially the most transferring and there’s so much to unpack on that point is we’re going to manifest ourselves into the Metaverse as humans and living in the Metaverse as an avatar. And that avatar doesn’t even have to be one avatar. It could be many, many, many avatars.” The Vice President of Research from Round Hill Investments shares the same line of thoughts, suggesting that the possibility of avatars is a factor for the decision of interacting in these spaces: “The reason that consumers want to interact in these spaces is this concept of expressing yourself with your avatar. Digital self-expression is, I like to call it like that. The avatar economy is what the younger generation likes to call it.”

Table 3. The main characteristics categories

3D representation: this sub-category refers to the need to include three-dimensional digital objects and environments within the Metaverse. The professionals interviewed in the podcasts believe that 3D is essential for representing the Metaverse, “whether we like it or not” (mentioned the CEO and co-founder of SuperData). The general manager of Epic Games thinks that the Metaverse “is going to be born out of the revolution around the World Time 3D. As World Time 3D becomes a mainstream medium, it becomes easy to capture 3D and everybody can consume interactive 3D content, because they have a powerful device or it’s streamed from the cloud.”

Integrated simulation and inter-connectivity: quite a few professionals believe that the Metaverse needs a holistic approach to combining software and hardware elements. As the vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA explains, “our unique contribution to this thing we’re calling the Metaverse and the future of computing is powering all of the simulation necessary to do this. That’s not just a hardware problem. It’s a combination of software and hardware problems.” The accurate modeling of physics-based simulations is needed to ensure the faithful representation of the laws of physics and the interactions of objects within the virtual environment. It also highlighted the concept of bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds, involving a seamless connection and interaction between tangible reality and virtual spaces.

4.2 Metaverse Infrastructure Characteristics

Claimed as the new Internet, there are key characteristics that the active players in the arena believe that the Metaverse infrastructure should embrace in order to exist and function on a global scale.

Decentralized: by being decentralized, the Metaverse provides enhanced security, transparency, and decentralized control over data management. For the Director of the Open Meta Foundation, decentralized technology is non-negotiable: “the Metaverse is just a phase of the Internet that we’re kind of going through right now. To me, there are some non-negotiable [things]. I believe that it needs to be decentralized. I think the only way to have Web3 is through decentralization”. Blockchain is at the very center of decentralized technology. Even though some believe that it is an optional solution, it is considered necessary to foster an environment where users and developers have the freedom to integrate blockchain technology into their Metaverse experience. According to the Vice President of Ubisoft, blockchain represents the core feature of Metaverse: “I’m very, very bullish about that. I’m pretty sure that without blockchain there is no Metaverse... The idea is, with decentralization, you share the infrastructure, then you are creating trust [in the environment] and from that trust, you can create this representation of the new value [and] we all share, and you can distribute this more fairly”.

Open platform that ensures persistence and consistency: There will be challenges in maintaining soundness among different virtual worlds in the Metaverse, ensuring that they align with shared standards and guidelines. Standardization is needed to provide consistency, persistence, and compatibility across platforms and applications. An open platform ensures coherence, continuity, and longevity within the virtual worlds of the Metaverse, as the Leading strategist interviewed in Episode 2 (see Table 2) claimed: “we’re going to have to invent a new infrastructure, [and we need to] manage that openness”. This may not be easy, as the CEO of Crucible and Managing Director of the Open Meta Foundation commented: “the Metaverse is emerging as the next big technology platform as I like to say on this podcast. That’s why Apple and Epic are fighting now. Epic talks about open standards and being an open Metaverse platform”.

Upscalable: the Metaverse will be a large-scale environment that can be scalable. The professionals point out that “this thing we’re calling the Metaverse, or Web3, or whatever it ends up being called... the scale of it and the exact shape and feeling it, we can’t predict. But one thing I think we can be sure is that it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve ever known”, mentioned the vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA. Therefore, the Metaverse needs to be “upscalable”, possible for millions of concurrent players, and support the distribution of human behavior over the internet and large-scale simulations. As the CEO of SuperSocial envisioned, “the dream of the Metaverse is of course that not couple hundred people can experience a concert of robots [...] actually it’s millions of people congregating in one place at one single point in time to experience something together”.

Device agnostic: The advocates of the Metaverse believe that it is not tied to any specific device, and it can be accessed and experienced across various platforms and technologies. Both the CEO of SuperSocial and the General Manager of Epic Games commented that “obviously Metaverse experiences are going to be accessible through any device. And so the question of what platform people are going to consume information or experiences on... it doesn’t really matter, because we’re going to be able to access those experiences from any device”. This statement came up “to sort of demystify” that we’re going to access the Metaverse from one single device such as VR glasses.

Real-time interoperable: the Metaverse is “going to be an interoperable synchronous persistent series of virtual space”, stated the vice president of research from Round Hill Investment. It is real-time and always on, featuring user synchronization and responsive feedback. The vice president of Omniverse and Simulation Technology at NVIDIA claimed that “for the Metaverse to exist, there must be interoperability”. The insiders believed that these characteristics provide dynamic, interactive, and immersive experiences to users.

4.3 Social/economic Aspects

This category represents the essential non-technical characteristics of the Metaverse.

Immersive environment: it describes the quality of experiences within the Metaverse that support the deep engagement of users’ senses, creating a sense of presence and realism through advanced technologies, high fidelity, and spatial interactions. For some, the capacity of being immersiveness is one decisive characteristic of the Metaverse and is a “kind of gate to its adoption” of it. However, when the virtual and physical worlds become indistinguishable, the Metaverse can be a way for some users to escape reality, which may bring negative consequences to their personal and social life and well-being.

Gaming as primary interaction: gaming is a central focus into the Metaverse, playing a pivotal role in shaping and popularizing virtual worlds. For the vice president of Ubisoft’s Innovation Lab, “at least in the foreseeable future, the Metaverse is still going to be predominantly about gaming”. The gaming companies have built a massive user base and they are investing in gaming to have the content to support their Metaverse efforts. Therefore, gaming will continue to be a key driver in the early stages of the Metaverse maturity, serving as a way to popularize Metaverse immersion.

Co-shaped by both tech and non-tech communities: this sub-category emphasizes the understanding that the Metaverse is co-created and shaped by both its developers & community and users. It is a community space that motivates various types of collaboration and co-creation of innovative products, services, or experiences. As the vice president of research from Round Hill Investment claimed, “to me, that’s what’s sort of really, really exciting about the Metaverse as a place for human experience, human interaction, playing, working, doing things together”.

Global economic infrastructure: it encompasses the elements that contribute to the establishment and operation of an economic system. The Metaverse insiders recognized the importance of a robust economy that allows users to engage in buying, selling, and earning which can add value to the virtual experience. As the Chief Officer of ROBLOX explained, “all these experiences in this universe are integrated with a common fabric. And that fabric has a couple of different dimensions to it. You know, it has a common identity framework, you’re the same person. It has a social graph, right? I go around with my friends. It has an economic [ecosystem]. I’m able to buy, sell, and make a living across these different experiences”. The demand for negotiating things requests a common digital currency or monetary system to facilitate transactions and economic activities on a global scale, as the vice president of Ubisoft’s Innovation Lab argued, “without global currency, you don’t have a Metaverse... Gold [used as currency] was the standard for all monetary systems, pre-World War One, Bitcoin could become that new standard”.

Futuristic temporality: For some of the interviewees, the Metaverse concept has a temporal dimension that encompasses the understanding that the Metaverse “is not something that’s going to be realized overnight. It’s going to be probably a decade or more until there is actually a Metaverse in place”, mentioned the CEO and co-founder of SuperData. There is also the opinion that the Metaverse is not only a virtual world or a set of technologies. It is “a point in time” when people stop making the distinction between the virtual worlds and the physical ones.

5 Discussion

The analysis of the 10 podcast episodes supported us to answer our RQ (What is the definition of the Metaverse from the perspectives of the involved practitioners?). First, our findings confirmed that the sole definition of Metaverse can hardly be achieved due to the complexity and multifaceted of the themes that compose it. This perception is aligned with the discussions previously presented in our related work (see Sect. 2). Unlike the related work, we could see from our results that there are high-level groups that provide a viewpoint on the enabling factors to become the Metaverse a reality, and the main characteristics of the Metaverse and the impact that the Metaverse will produce in the world. In this paper, we concentrated on discussing the the main characteristics group which covers three categories.

Taking into account the three categories presented in this paper, we can see that 3D representation, avatar identity, immersive environment, and virtual realm, i.e., elements of metaverse technology capabilities category, have already appeared across the related work [1,2,3, 7]. This similar result restated these elements as core features of the Metaverse that show a consensus from the definitions presented in other works. Although the use of avatars has been found in the literature recurrently, our results unfold a new expression for defining such practice: digital self-expression. It represents a new form of showing how people see themselves from a picture they created. Nonetheless, the results revealed that the professionals are concerned about connecting users to the Metaverse considering the endeavor of integrating a complex environment with different technologies and the available connectivity (i.e., integrated simulation and interconnectivity, a new category uncovered in our work). Our result emphasizes the importance of having properly interconnected devices and software to provide a seamless simulation. Park and Kim [10] provided a similar discussion but as a simpler view of the relationship between software and hardware.

Considering the metaverse infra-structure characteristics category, the results revealed that most of the elements have been discussed in the literature [2, 7, 9]. However, we could see that the discussion about the scalability of the Metaverse environment (i.e., upscalable sub-category) attained new concerns about the sharing of the Metaverse infrastructure and the value that this practice could bring to the trust of using the environment. The device agnostic was also another new element uncovered in our study that gives the perspective that there are various means of accessing the Metaverse that involve multiple device types.

Finally, the results showed an evolution in the discussion about the social/economic aspects related to the Metaverse. Elements such as the immersive environment, interaction from games, global economic infrastructure and the participation of tech and non-tech communities in the co-shaping of the Metaverse have been addressed in the literature [1,2,3, 9, 11]. Our results reaffirmed the tendency for discussions about these elements to mature within the industrial context. However, the futurist temporality sub-category emerged from the results as a futuristic concept that professionals will strive to understand. It may represent a rupture of the viewpoint of online communication due to it can make it difficult the distinguish between the interaction that happens in the physical world and the ones that occurs in the virtual environment. This perspective triggers an ethical and crucial discussion on the direction that society will evolve and the relationship among people.

Although our study brings contributions to the exploration of the Metaverse definition, we understand that it has some limitations. First, we have the conscious that the Metaverse is an evolving concept and defining it solely based on insights from professionals may not encompass all characteristics and future developments. Even though the interviewed professionals in the 10 podcast episodes come from different types of companies and assume various roles, the sample size is relatively small. Therefore, the findings can not be generalized as the shared understanding by all professionals working in the Metaverse-related fields. More interviews of professionals, either by collecting more grey literature or by conducting interviews directly with them, will increase the generalizability of the findings obtained in this study.

6 Conclusion

In this work, we presented a study that explored the definition of the Metaverse from the perspective of insiders actively working in this field. To achieve this, we analyzed 10 podcasts, i.e., grey literature, which contains interviews with professionals from different companies. Our main result was the identification of the essential characteristics of the Metaverse concept that we classified into three categories, i.e., the Metaverse technology capabilities, infrastructure characteristics, and social and economic aspects. each category presented elements which supported us to discuss different elements that impact the Metaverse definition.

As a contribution, we restated some important elements requested to the Metaverse definition that have been covered from the literature as well as unfolded new ones. We could see that some common elements that appeared in the literature, e.g., the use of avatars, are now recognized as a way for users to express their view of themselves. Besides, the adoption of multiple devices, infrastructure sharing, and the recognition of real and virtual worlds are concerns of industrial professionals that deserve more discussions. In future work, we intend to explore further the other main groups of categories that we have found in our study. These categories certainly can expand the understanding of the Metaverse phenomenon.