The metaverse still lacks a killer app - PureGym CIO Andy Caddy
'We’re in 1990 talking about the iPhone’
Massive amounts of money are pouring into metaverse efforts, but Andy Caddy – CIO of low-cost fitness chain PureGym – remains “totally unconvinced” by its potential as a mainstream media.
Hype about the metaverse and NFTs defined the IT conversation last year, with millions of dollars spent on virtual stadiums and pictures of frogs wearing hats. The messaging has moved on to AI chatbots in 2023, but that VR investment hasn't gone away - even if it's threatened by the latest job cuts.
Several companies are trying to make the metaverse work, but Andy thinks we're too early in the technology's lifecycle.
"I remain totally unconvinced by it as a mainstream media - I think we're really at very early stages. We're in 1990 talking about the iPhone, that's how far we are."
Could it really be the better part of two decades until VR reaches mainstream adoption? Caddy would not be the first CIO to think so. There are, he says, "so many obstacles in the way - but maybe I just haven't seen the thing that breaks them down."
It's true that VR hasn't had its ‘killer app' moment yet like other technologies. Even augmented reality had a big boost with the launch of Pokémon Go in 2016, but its more immersive cousin lags behind.
The issue is two-fold: partly content, which is a metaverse-specific issue, and partly hardware, which affects all VR.
All dressed up and nowhere to go
Virtual reality content is already well-placed for casual use, especially around gaming. Skyrim VR, Beat Saber, Superhot - the software is getting better every year. Even the fitness sector is getting involved, with the likes of Les Mills' Bodycombat VR, which Andy is personally excited about and which we'll return to later.
But when you move away from casual gaming, VR's draw falls off dramatically.
Mark Zuckerberg has talked passionately about the possibility of meeting friends and colleagues in the metaverse, but people have been slow to embrace the idea of immersive virtual meetings.
It turns out that while a digital conference table might be a big selling point in Silicon Valley, in the real world it falls flatter than Meta's share price.
That's despite the majority of business leaders citing collaboration as a reason to bring people back to the office - the thought being that meetings are more productive in person, when you can use body language as a social cue, than via videoconferencing.
However, while the content is getting better, it's not yet good enough to support that level of immersion. At best you get someone's face pasted onto a sort of ambulatory blob (legs are a recent innovation), with arms vaguely waving about in time with their sensor movement.
That will, of course, continue to improve. In a few years we may well see avatars leaping, jumping and dancing all over the place in exact replica of their owners' real-life movements - but we're not there yet.
Away from the content side is the cost. The cheapest headsets for business use cost hundreds of pounds, and more if you want to add body-tracking sensors. Outfitting an entire team with them at a time when capex budgets are strained to the limit is a losing proposition for most CIOs.
The story is slightly different in the fitness sector, where gyms are unlikely to buy their own headsets - but in some ways that only makes the problem worse.
"I don't want to use someone else's sweaty visor when they've been working out for half an hour, so now I've got to have my own visor," says Andy. "And when they're up to £600, that's just not going to work.
"[Another challenge is that] the ability to move freely in in your front room is severely limited. We've all seen videos of people chucking controllers at their TVs; there's a lot of that."
A digital fitness future
It's easy to be cynical about a new, emerging technology. As Meta spokesperson Andy Stone pointed out last year, "Actually building it is a lot harder."
Meta, and other companies investing in their own metaverse efforts, hopes there's light at the end of the long, expensive tunnel - and if Andy is anything to judge by, there might be.
"Seeing someone play Beat Saber...or the Les Mills immersive stuff that they do in the fitness sector - there's something there, there's something about that engagement it brings you, the immersion in it definitely does something...
"I have been to Box Park's VR playground [meetspaceVR], where you sit in a massive open space and wander around with your headset on... You come out of that as a convert, thinking ‘This is the future, this is amazing, I've never seen anything like it'."
It might, he repeats, be "a very long way from mainstream," but virtual reality certainly has potential in fitness.
As for the metaverse? We've already seen very (very) early efforts in virtual group classes from the likes of Peloton. If the popularity of those innovations is anything to go by, and the price and weight of headsets continues to fall, a fitness-first metaverse might - unlike the avatars - actually have legs.