Jacob Navok: Computing and Network Needs of the Metaverse
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Episode Summary
For Jacob, the Metaverse is defined as a 3D, persistent, synchronous, multiplayer experience of interconnected virtual worlds that have massive scale. He believes it’s the next evolution of the internet and not something that can be owned by a single company, just like how one would never equate a platform like Youtube to be the entirety of the internet.
On the topic of VR’s role in the Metaverse, he is skeptical that it will play a major one. The reason being that while VR is a compelling, high fidelity way to view 3D content, it has not (yet) fundamentally changed how we create input into a virtual experience nor altered the capabilities of a game or an experience from an technical architecture perspective. This is in comparison to computing advancements that have completely shifted the gaming industry such as improved processing power which moved gaming from arcades into mobile devices, or network improvements that enabled online multiplayer experiences and no longer a single party experience.
As for the role of decentralization and the blockchain in the Metaverse, Jacob sees it as a way to better certain things like revamping the financial infrastructure of the internet, but not effective in powering live synchronous multiplayer experiences. He believes a decentralized system would further fragment the processing power that is necessary to ensure low latency experiences.
In terms of the role existing popular social products will play, Jacob believes that platforms like FB, Twitch, and Discord will become the identity systems of the Metaverse. Just like how you likely authenticate an app with a FB account today, you could very likely log into your virtual office or virtual school with your Discord login.
On Big Tech’s role in the Metaverse, Jacob wants to remind us of how much they operate significant fundamental layers of the internet. Whether it’s investments in dark fibre and undersea cables, to cloud computing services such as AWS, or critical APIs that form the backbone of the internet. Big Tech has been able to provide secure, stable and cheap options that will continue to be appealing for new developing businesses.
To progress towards this vision of the Metaverse, Jacob is focused on tackling the hard problem of improving concurrency. How do you get millions of people to concurrently be participating and interacting in one live experience with no lag?
He breaks this down the problem into two components:
Limitations of the traditional network to handle multiplayer experiences: coordinating, say, positional data of where you and all the other players in a game, gets very complicated, especially when latency needs to be low. Meaning, if you want to see everything that everyone is doing at all times, coordinating the traffic of that data is very difficult
With more connection, internet speed slows: the internet was not built for true real time communication, but rather optimized for cost and routing efficiency. When you load a FB page, it’s okay if it takes 10 milliseconds, but when you are in a shooting game, a delay of 10 milliseconds is a matter of life or death
His company Genvid is building technology to solve this problem through experimenting with MILES (Massive Online Live Experiences). They debuted the first online interactive AI reality show called Rival Peak, where 12 AI characters were streamed 24/7 on Facebook Watch. Audiences were able to participate by being able to input what they think the AI should do next every few minutes. Based on the audience input and the AI’s personality, the AI would make decisions that would either get them eliminated or progress further. Genvid will be releasing upcoming MILES that will further push technological limits.
About the Guest
Jacob Navok is co-founder and CEO of Genvid Technologies, the leader in interactive streaming technology. Prior to founding Genvid, Jacob led worldwide business development and strategy at Square Enix Holdings, reporting to the CEO. He also built their cloud gaming division, Shinra Technologies, where he met many of his Genvid colleagues. You can see his writings on the networking and computing challenges of the metaverse in the Metaverse Primer series.
Show Notes
[5:20] Definition of the Metaverse
[7:20] Why VR is not representative of the Metaverse
[13:05] Concurrency and the challenges of hosting live, synchronous events with millions of people
[17:35] Twitch as the first example of massive multiplayer concurrent gaming
[19:40] Rival Peak, Genvid’s Live Interactive Multiplayer Reality Show with AI contestants
[22:50] Hacks for the concurrency problem
[25:30] Why decentralized systems don’t work well for live 3D experiences
[27:15] Future use cases of live synchronous events
[30:30] Social platforms like FB, Twitch, Discord as identity systems of the Metaverse
[37:15] Why FB keeps investing in AR/VR
[39:10] How will life in the Metaverse be different from the real world?