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NEW YORK<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n IN \u201cSNOW CRASH\u201d, a 1992 science-fiction novel, the author, Neal Stephenson, conjures up a \u201cmetaverse\u201d, where characters immerse themselves in a permanent, interactive online virtual world, one controlled by a single corporation. In \u201cReady Player One\u201d, a 2011 novel later turned into a Steven Spielberg film, Ernest Cline imagines something similar, a virtual \u201cOasis\u201d where people can live, work and play, an escape from dystopian deprivation.\n<\/p>\n In 2020 these ideas, though still far from reality, will begin to gain something more than virtual currency. People will increasingly hear the term \u201cmetaverse\u201d as firms invest in bringing precursors of it to life. A wide range of companies are investing billions of dollars in the physical and digital infrastructure necessary to bring persistent virtual worlds into being\u2014from 5G to virtual-reality spaces.\n<\/p>\n Magic Leap, a startup in Florida, makes augmented-reality glasses that could one day allow people to \u201csee\u201d a digital virtual world that neatly overlays the physical world in which they are wandering about (and it is conceptualising entertainment for what it calls the \u201cMagicVerse\u201d to come, with the aid of Mr Stephenson). Improbable, a British gaming-software startup, is trying to crack the problem of allowing enormous numbers of people to interact with each other in the same space at the same time: \u201cconcurrency\u201d, in a word. Then there is Facebook, which in 2020 will introduce Horizon, a \u201csocial virtual-reality\u201d space. Mark Zuckerberg is a believer in the importance of bringing virtual reality to Facebook\u2019s colossal social graph, and he has also shown, with the purchase of Oculus, a VR gaming company, in 2014 for $2bn, that he is willing to devote billions to the idea.\n<\/p>\n Of all the current contenders, Epic Games probably has the closest thing to a metaverse in \u201cFortnite\u201d, a multi-player battle royale game played by some 250m people around the world. Epic\u2019s Unreal gaming engine powers \u201cFortnite\u201d and other massive multi-player games. As currently constructed, \u201cFortnite\u201d remains a long way from a metaverse: it accommodates only 100 people interacting (often killing each other) in the same space, and each experience lasts the duration of one game round. But millions can congregate in the same virtual space at the same time, even if they cannot \u201csee\u201d and interact with each other. In February 2019, 10.7m \u201cFortnite\u201d players attended a virtual concert hosted by Marshmello, a DJ: it was more than 100,000 instances of 100 people interacting with each other, not one giant virtual mosh pit, but it was a cultural milestone.\n<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, entertainment companies have taken note and allowed their intellectual property to be employed within \u201cFortnite\u201d, even though it means that rivals like Marvel and DC exist in the same space, like Coke and Pepsi. That kind of cultural power suggests the awesome potential of \u201cFortnite\u201d to become something much larger than it is, like a metaverse, says Matthew Ball, a digital-media analyst.\n<\/p>\n Tim Sweeney, the majority owner of Epic, often talks of what it will take to build a metaverse, and especially of what form it should take\u2014an open platform, not controlled by one company like Facebook. He and his competitors will not build the metaverse in 2020, but the virtual experiences they are creating to get there will increasingly be felt in the real world.\n<\/p>\n