Echelon and the Metaverse
In anticipation of Futureverse’s special session at SXSW, I rewatched the Ready Player One film, and reread Earnest Cline’s Ready Player One and Ready Player Two. Reading the latest Futureverse paper, I understand the vision and am excited for the Metaverse for the first time in a while. There’s a foundational, monumental web3 paradigm shift underfoot, that started coincidentally around the same time I embarked on my journey to transform online interactivity and value in gaming with Echelon.
Around 2019, I approached Twitch with an embryonic idea: a mechanic designed not just to elevate gaming experiences but to redefine them. After 18 months of prototyping, this idea matured into Echelon, a platform underpinning a new ground-breaking mechanic, which I then introduced to investors to kickstart November Games.
The world of the Oasis is driven by merit. The Big Scoreboard sits at the very center of the Metaverse of Earnest Cline’s imagining. Ready Player One, Warner Bros.
At that time, the digital landscape was ablaze with the fervor of cryptocurrency and the nascent whispers of the Metaverse. But, as investment circles buzzed with speculative futures, I found myself disillusioned. The discourse seemed disconnected from the core of gaming—the raw, unbridled passion that fuels gamers, the drive that turns overnight sessions into quests for glory. Most importantly, everyone seemed to be completely missing the “why” of “why build the Metaverse?”
Funny enough, Ready Player One came up in every investor meeting I took around that time. “How does this relate to the Metaverse?” and “Is this a web3 play?” came up over and over. My answer remains the same; mainstream gamers will only enter the ecosystem when they are offered more value than they can get anywhere else. Echelon is designed specifically to provide new value that is highly tokenizable. At its core, Echelon transforms gaming skill into a unit of real world value, that gamers actually want.
“Gen Z’s Main Career Aspiration is to Be an Influencer”
November Games was conceived from a clear vision: to democratize the gaming world, to make the leap from passionate player to professional gamer not just possible but straightforward and merit-based. The ethos was clear: if a gamer possesses unparalleled skills, they should be able to convert that mastery into a tangible, rewarding career from day one. And finally, give brands a way to participate at the nexus of epic gaming moments, supporting the communities that love them.
“Until a gamer with god-like skills in a game (whatever game that is) can wake up, and decide “My journey as a pro gamer starts today” and they can begin earning THAT DAY, esports has not finished evolving.”
What troubled me about the rush toward web3 integration into gaming was its misplaced focus. It prioritized speculation and asset collection instead of value realized through an asset’s intrinsic and extrinsic properties; in short, its usefulness inside and outside the game. The first rush created barriers (many of them financial) instead of breaking them down; alienating the very essence of what makes gaming an all-encompassing world. It distorted the ‘why’ of the Metaverse into something unrecognizable from the inclusive, meritocratic worlds envisioned in seminal works like Ready Player One.
Echelon solves the “why”, just as Futureverse solved the “how”.
A player can load up an Echelon-enabled game built on the Open Metaverse and immediately start building value. How? Because items that get you ahead in an Echelon game don’t just look cool: they mean growing your streaming audience and achieving this generational aspiration of making gaming your career. Smart digital items imbued with the power of the Echelon viewer network have massive extrinsic value from the get go. Forget cosmetics; we’re talking about a new class of items that directly affect a gamer’s path to pro. This new kind of meta-behavior needs a platform and protocol to transact this value interoperably, and I believe we are seeing it now.
In the first web3 rush, critically missing all web3 projects was information brokerage. Highly prevalent in Ready Player One, this missing piece is an entry point for the rest of the world into web3 gaming. Don’t have the skills to obtain a level 100 item in game, but you have used your detective skills to figure out the pattern of where the next one will drop? Imbue that information into a smart item, and auction it to other players, driving value up in the game ecosystem.
Samantha watches Parzival’s stream from the Oasis, along with thousands of his fans in chat. Ready Player One, Warner Bros.
Echelon represents a divergence from the prevailing web3 narrative. It isn't about gating experiences behind paywalls or commodifying every aspect of gaming. Instead, Echelon offers a bridge between skill and reward, between dedication and recognition. It’s a testament to the belief that anyone, anywhere, armed solely with their gaming prowess, should be able to carve out a niche for themselves in this burgeoning digital landscape.
In essence, Echelon is the backbone for a new kind of value ecosystem. One where the value created in digital spaces is by the players, for the players. It champions a future where gamers can leverage their skills, to ascend in the digital realm. This, to me, is the true essence of what a gaming-oriented Metaverse should represent.
There are a thousand Wade Watts and Samantha Cooks out there right now; gamers with so much value to offer the Metaverse, waiting to be enabled. We stand on the brink of this new era, not as bystanders but as architects. As we move forward, Echelon continues to pave the way for a more inclusive, skill-based digital world. And while the path is fraught with challenges, the direction is clear: a future crafted by gamers, for gamers, grounded in merit, skill, and the unyielding spirit of competition.
The revolution WILL be televised. Ready Player One, Warner Bros.
In closing, the journey of Echelon is far from complete, but it’s a journey worth embarking on—a narrative that respects the gamer’s grind and rewards the dedication. It’s more than just a platform; it’s a movement towards a fairer, more inclusive gaming universe.