In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, sci-fi novelist Neal Stephenson created the term "metaverse" as we know it today. Metaverse was created to escape the horrors of the actual world, with the characters in the book resorting to the avatar-populated metaverse.

Ernest Cline's 2011 novel, "Ready Player One," which was made into a film in 2018, is perhaps the most well-known illustration of the notion in popular culture.

And now, Facebook is making a significant move to rebrand as a metaverse.

Facebook Gaming with 'Harry Potter'

Facebook's cloud gaming service is getting better at expanding its cloud gaming through Metaverse.

The cloud-based service will launch with seven new games, including titles from major intellectual properties such as the "Harry Potter" franchise.

The news comes as rumors circulate that Facebook may be altering its corporate identity in order to refocus the brand on its metaverse activities.

Last October 2020, Facebook gaming released six games on its cloud gaming platform. The catalog has grown to 45 games since then. Cooperation with Ubisoft brought the mobile game "Assassin's Creed Rebellion" to Facebook Gaming as part of the current expansion.

According to Digital Trends, the new batch of new titles coming to the company's cloud gaming offering consists of seven games. "Family Guy: Another Freakin' Mobile Game," "Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery," and "Disney Emoji Blitz" are among the games on the list.

In addition, on the fourth quarter of 2021, developer MyGames will release four additional games on the platform, including tower defense games "Rush Royale," "Hustle Castle," "Left to Survive," and "Mushroom Wars."

Facebook and the Metaverse

Facebook appears to be a strong candidate for extension into some sort of metaverse paradigm as a non-competitive platform focused on digital interaction. Furthermore, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has indicated a tremendous interest in the subject in recent years.

"We will effectively move from people considering us as primarily a social media company to being a metaverse firm," Zuckerberg told The Verge in an interview in July 2021.

The biggest motivator for achieving this goal for the company is a social interaction platform named "Horizon," which is still in development.

According to some experts, the new name for Facebook's parent corporation may be based on that name.

What is a Metaverse?

The metaverse, according to its most ardent supporters, is essentially the next big iteration of the internet.

The key difference is that whereas the internet as we know it is mostly made up of 2D webpages and platforms, the metaverse is a collection of completely 3D interconnected worlds in which avatars can interact.

Second Life and Habbo Hotel were early pioneers in space in the early 2000s, but technology has gone far enough that the idea may now be pushed in a variety of more complicated directions.

As reported by Inverse, in general, metaverse products involve 3D avatars engaging in non-competitive activities, such as viewing movies, attending concerts, or shopping for digital goods with friends.

Epic Games' "Fortnite" and CEO Tim Sweeney have become important metaverse figures since the company's free-to-play battle royale game has also hosted concerts by artists, such as Travis Scott and Ariana Grande.

Outside of concerts, limited-time events have allowed players to operate computer avatars and view full-length Christopher Nolan films while surrounded by equally digital recreations of real-world pals.

However, one important aspect of the metaverse is that it is rare for everything in it to be created by a single firm.

The Facebook metaverse will theoretically contain digital areas with multiple owners all connected via a new form of the multidimensional interweb, similar to how we currently surf countless websites generated by different firms on the same internet.