GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2’s awesome agenda

We have packed inspiring speakers and engaging sessions into our GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 event coming on January 26-27. This post gives you a peek at our nearly final agenda for the event about the technology and trends that could take gaming and the metaverse to its next level.

Sadly, we did not think of inviting Walmart to show us its vision of the metaverse. (In a cosmic joke, Walmart metaverse was trending last week when someone came up with a snide tweet about a 2017 video where Walmart showed off 3D online shopping in a sorry-looking video).

I suppose the Walmart joke helped raise awareness of the metaverse. But we’ve got the real stuff.

We’ll discuss everything from the metaverse to nonfungible tokens and other buzzwords of the moment, and we’ll evaluate the nature of these opportunities. Are they overhyped waves that will get our feet wet, or will they be tidal waves that sweep through the whole industry like free-to-play and social mobile gaming.

GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2 and our GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit feature a total of 113 speakers (with just over 50% coming from diverse backgrounds) across 48 sessions over three days. We’ll have some intimate online roundtables and online Q&A sessions with our speakers and VIPs. It’s a free event for attendees.

The metaverse is coming

This is our fourth online event during the pandemic, coming just a few months after our GamesBeat Summit Next event in November. While that event was about the technological edge of the industry, this combined event is about the Facebook/Meta gaming ecosystem on day one and then days two and three are all about the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.

On day one, our final talk of the Facebook event will feature Jason Rubin, vice president of Meta and the man in charge of Meta content. He will talk about the progress the company has made since CEO Mark Zuckerberg pivoted to the metaverse and changed the company’s name to metaverse.

Then we’ll kick off two more days of metaverse talks, all focused on moving the ball forward and bringing the open metaverse closer to fruition.

Whether you favor a walled garden metaverse from the big tech companies or an open version that is homegrown gaming, we’ll expose you to some of the smartest minds in gaming, investing, technology, and social. And everybody who is coming wants to change the status quo.

Highlighted speakers

We’re delighted to have our emcees back with the return of Kahlief Adams, captain of Spawn On Me; and Andrea Rene, cofounder of What’s Good Games. We’ll hear from gaming’s only knight, Ian Livingstone, and his partner Luke Alvarez at Hiro Capital, which is named after the main character of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

We’ll talk about Nvidia’s progress with the Omniverse with Richard Kerris, head of Omniverse development; Dave Baszucki, CEO of Roblox, will talk about reimagining the way we bring people together; Matthew Ball of Epyllion and Anna Sweet and Tanya Watson of Bad Robot Games will talk about building socially focused virtual worlds.

Kim Libreri, chief technology officer of Epic Games, will tell us just how real the metaverse can look.
Mike Wagner, CEO of Star Atlas, will talk about triple-A blockchain games. We’ll also hear from Sebastien Borget, chief operating officer of The Sandbox and president of the Blockchain Game Association.
Tiffany Wang, CSO of Spectrum Labs and founder of Oasis Consortium, will address how to curb toxicity in the metaverse. Brendan Greene, director of PlayerUnknown Productions, will talk about building massive virtual worlds, as will Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable.

We’ll also have talks with Anastasia Staten, executive director of the ESA Foundation; Cathy Hackl, chief metaverse officer and CEO of Futures Intelligence Group; Jeri Ellsworth, CEO of Tilt Five; Philip Rosedale, CEO of High Fidelity; Brad Oberwager, owner of Linden Research; Jace Hall, cofounder at HiDef; Rick Fox, cofounder of HiDef; Jules Urbach, CEO of Otoy; Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games; Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds.

And we’ll wrap it all up with a witty podcast by GamesBeat’s crew: Jeff Grubb, Rachel Kaser, Mike Minotti, and me.

Here’s the agenda for day one of the second annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit.

And here’s our metaverse agenda below:

Day 2 – January 26, 2022 — GamesBeat Summit: Into the Metaverse 2

8:00 am – 8:10 am

Emcee Introduction: Kahlief Adams, captain of Spawn on Me

8:10 am  -8:25 am

Opening Remarks (Dean Takahashi)

8:25 am – 8:45 am 

Building socially-focused virtual worlds

Gaming is more social than ever, and that is getting us ready for the transition to the metaverse. How are games being designed, staffed, and operated differently as a result? There are still only 300 million to 400 million people engaging in what we traditionally define as high fidelity virtual worlds. How do we move beyond that? We’ll explore how Bad Robot Games is approaching this.

Matthew Ball, Epyllion
Anna Sweet, CEO of Bad Robot Games
Tanya Watson, COO of Bad Robot Games

8:45 am – 9:15 am

How do we keep the metaverse cool?

Kim Libreri has helped make cool special effects in movies and craft the tools that game developers use to make games with near-perfect imitations of reality. He has seen the world of games and movies and technology converge. We’ll ask him what he thinks about the tools we have to automate the building of the metaverse, and the challenges in interoperability that we could face for a long time. We’ll talk about how close the metaverse can get to imitating reality, and the things that we’ll be able to do in the metaverse that we can’t do in real life.

Kim Libreri, Chief Technology Officer, Epic Games
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

9:15 am – 9:45 am

Reimagining the way people come together

The Roblox vision is to reimagine the way people come together. The company is making significant technological advances that are enabling deeper forms of communication, immersion, and expression.  Founder and CEO, David Baszucki will talk about how Roblox is creating the new category of human co-experience where people could play, learn, and work together in the “metaverse”– the amazing digital worlds and experiences now coming to life after decades of being dreamt about.

Keynote Dave Baszucki, CEO of Roblox
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

9:45 am – 10:15 am 

How brands can prosper in the metaverse

Lindsey McInerny, lead for technology and innovation at Anheuser-Busch InBev
Cathy Hackl, chief metaverse officer and CEO of Futures Intelligence Group

10:15 am – 10:45 am

Anastasia Staten, executive director of the ESA Foundation
Three speakers TBD

10:45-11 am break

11:00 am – 11:30 am

Building massive digital spaces

Brendan Greene changed gaming with the creation of battle royale, and his PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has sold more than 75 million copies to date. His next plan at PlayerUnknown Productions is to build an ambitious planet-scale virtual world dubbed Artemis. His team hopes to use game design, user-generated content, and machine learning to fill out the vast open world. In the meantime, he is creating Prologue, a 64-square-kilometer single-player space where a player must survive in a big wilderness. We’ll talk about the challenges of building something so ambitious.

Brendan Greene, Director, PlayerUnknown Productions
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

11:30 am – 11:50 am 

There are no WIMPS in the metaverse

For 48 years of game GUIs, WIMPS reigned supreme. The dominant paradigm of Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer, and Solo play has made gaming (and the rest of computing) accessible to the average person. Now enter the Metaverse these flat screen 2D relics feel like wet newspaper stuck to the face. Supplying only a pancake layer of interaction in what players expect to be an immersive 3D world shortchanges a player’s Metaverse Dreams. After upgrading to Metaverse friendly technology, platforms, and business models; join us to understand how to design UX that immerses the player in ways that only the Metaverse can. Come learn 5 UX approaches to transform your game’s pancake WIMPS to Metaverse WHOAS. Even if your flatscreen game focuses on traditional mechanics, come grab the red pill and make whatever you’re working on feel more like the Metaverse.

Nicole Lazzaro, president and founder of XEO Design

11:50 am – 12:20 pm

Rewards and brands in the metaverse

If game companies offer rewards, it’s often limited to a single game. But what if you could collect rewards across a number of games? Or across the metaverse. How do we set up ways to cash in the rewards across exchanges and games? What are the metaphors from the real world, like coupons or Happy Meals, that work online? And how do you create rewards players will actually use? How do you also do this and stay in good graces with regulators? This talk will focus on putting gamers in the driver’s seat when it comes to rewards in the metaverse.

Nicholas Longano, CEO of Scuti
Zach Stadlin-Robbie, head of strategic brand partnerships and business development at MiniClip
Seven Volpone, CEO of Subnation
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

12:20 pm – 12:50 pm

Real world regulations in the metaverse: What do you need to prepare for?

Everyone likes VR/AR to escape the real world, but you can’t escape regulations when doing business in the metaverse.  How do you monetize user experiences?  What are the legal and taxation requirements we need to deal with?  How do you account for inflation/deflation in a virtual economy? Leaders from venture capital, monetization, blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors will share some of their insights, predictions and what they’re doing to prepare so game development can thrive in the metaverse.

Moderator: Chris Hewish, president of Xsolla
James Gatto, Shepherd Mullin, co-head of blockchain and games team
Evan Kaylin, CEO of Grilla
Emily Stonehouse, Linden Lab/Tilia

12:20 pm – 1:20 pm (Roundtable)

Roundtable: Making the metaverse accessible
Michele Landis, cofounder and CRO at Accessible360
Paula Jones Blind Chihuahua, chief creative officer

1:20 pm – 1:50 pm

Bringing the metaverse to the tabletop

How do you bring people together in the metaverse? Many technologies have promised this very thing and left us with only the illusion and a fractured social experience. We need to start with the familiar places consumers already feel comfortable in. Tilt Five builds on everyone’s favorite pastime, game night, and sprinkles in augmented reality (AR). Blending physical presence and the virtual one, Tilt Five’s holographic gaming system allows for users to interact with not only one another but the holograms on their table. Jeri Ellsworth joins us to talk about how we can delight, engage, and motivate users of all different backgrounds to experience the metaverse together.

Jeri Ellsworth, CEO of Tilt Five
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

1:50 pm – 2:20 pm

The metaverse: past and future

A lot of the current conversation around the metaverse is around the transition from 2D to 3D and the hardware to support this transition. But maybe the metaverse is more about engaging people.This was the core principle when Philip Rosedale launched (one of) the first metaverse(s), Second Life, nearly 20 years ago, and it remains the focus of Second Life today. This session will discuss this original vision, what the company has learned after nearly 20 years of Second Life and – most importantly – where Philip and Brad  Overwage see the future of the metaverse in what they believe will be an always live internet. They will cover pseudo versus real identities, the fundamental need for people to engage in trade in metaverses, and the importance of an underlying financial system – or economy – within a metaverse.

Moderator: Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent at Axios
Philip Rosedale, CEO of High Fidelity
Brad Oberwager, Linden Lab

2:20 pm – 2:50 pm

Planning for inclusion of new voices in the gaming metaverse 

The “meta” within metaverse implies a larger scope than currently exists with the capability of helping to build connections to shared experiences in new and meaningful ways. As the gaming metaverse continues to expand rapidly, what are the opportunities for diversity and inclusivity of new voices within building and designing the metaverse? How do we create a metaverse that includes all voices? This panel with the HiDef founders, will focus on exploring these questions as well as how to rethink the foundation of the metaverse and all the areas it touches – content, culture, identity, virtual to IRL ecosystem, payment formats and currency, hardware and multi-platforms to name a few – in order to build a more inclusive world online.

Jace Hall, cofounder at HiDef
Rick Fox, cofounder of HiDef
Moderator: N’Gai Croal, founder of Hit Detection

2:50 pm – 3:20 pm

Putting gamers and their rights at the center

The first wave of blockchain games weren’t impressive. Launched amid crypto scams, overhype, complexity, and regulatory fears – they weren’t fun. But game startups like Star Atlas are making triple-A games with more refined approaches to the market. And they’re ready to explain that their focus on gamers is what leads them to NFT technology. Is true ownership not much different from being able to sell your used games in the past, and isn’t selling tokens akin to launching games with Kickstarter campaigns? Can they convince gamers that decentralization, resales, and true ownership are good for them? Or will gamers stay happily working for game publishers like serfs toiling for the lord of the manor?

Mike Wagner, CEO of Star Atlas
Moderator: Miko Matsumura, general partner of Gumi Cryptos Capital

3:20 pm -3:50 pm 

How to run a metaverse economy

The economics of running a virtual world within the metaverse will be a complicated matter. Game worlds and virtual worlds are complicated enough on their own. But what happens when you make the worlds interoperable and users can migrate among them? Dirk Leuth, cofounder of Upland, will talk about making the right choices in designing a metaverse economy in a conversation with Cathy Hackl. How do you get started with experiments? How do you predict user behavior? What stages do these economies have? What are the pitfalls to avoid?

Dirk Leuth, cofonder of Upland
TBD

3:50 pm – 4:20 pm

The ethics of the metaverse

Among all the aspects of the forthcoming metaverse that are often discussed – from the technology and interoperability issues to the business and economic promises – one of the more fundamental and perhaps least addressed is the nature of ethics in the metaverse. With any convergence of people – real or virtual – comes the challenge of navigating diverse worldviews and perceptions of “rightness” that will require a common ethical foundation for long-term success. Join this critical conversation that explores how ethics will affect and be  affected by the metaverse.

Moderator: Kate Edwards, CEO of Geogrify
Kent Bye, host of Voices of VR
Micaela Montegna, Harvard University affiliate and founder of Women in Gaming of Argentina
Jules Urbach, CEO of Otoy

4:20 pm – 4:25 pm

Closing

Kahlief Adams, captain of Spawn On Me

4:25 pm – 5:25 pm 

Online Reception and networking

Day 3 – January 27, 2022  (Into the Metaverse 2)

8:00 am – 9:30 am

Women in Gaming Breakfast emcee Andrea Renee

Moderator: Andrea Rene, cofounder of What’s Good Games
Debbie Bestwick, CEO Team17
Laura Sturr, head of business operations and player experience at Amazon
Tiffany Wang, chief strategy officer Spectrum Labs

9:30 am – 9:40 am

Emcee Introduction Andrea Rene

9:40 am  -9:45 am

Opening Remarks
Mike Minotti, reviews editor for GamesBeat

9:45 am – 10:15 am 

An open or closed metaverse? – And the opportunity for startups vs incumbents

How will the metaverse emerge? Will it be open or closed, and how will that be determined? It’s clear that all parties will need to focus on interoperability to give the metaverse more utility and meaning. How do you enable players to take avatars from one world to another? How do you improve the fidelity of the experience of being in the metaverse? This panel will address the challenges in getting the metaverse’s leading companies to cooperate on their common interests in building a metaverse where both startups and incumbents can thrive using open technology.

Moderator: Luke Alvarez, founder and general partner at Hiro Capital
Ian Livingstone, founder and general partner at Hiro Capital
Marc Petit, vice president and general manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games
Anatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana
Dr. Doom, LIV Inc

10:15 am – 10:45 am

Will DAOs be the path to the open metaverse?

Decentralized autonomous organizations are popular on crypto/blockchain game projects. They allow community members to take ownership of games and other applications, allowing for more open and collaborative thinking as we head toward building the metaverse.

Ryan Gill, founder of Open Meta DAO
Chase Chapman, Decentology
Sarah Austin, Qglobe

10:45 am – 11:15 am

Blockchain powering the new metaverse economy 

Games, crypto and metaverse companies are trying to build the most engaging experience around connecting, playing, earning and participating in the future of the virtual economy. The winning economy will deliver real value, true ownership and opportunity to share in the economy’s success. We will be talking about how to create and build this new economy and avoid the pitfalls.

John Burris, chief strategy & blockchain officer, Together Labs

11:15 am – 11:45 am 

Why traditional advertising won’t work in the metaverse

In the metaverse, traditional advertising just won’t work. With a multitude of options for making money from content, advertising as we know it will go from creators’ primary income to an additional revenue stream. But as audiences and eyeballs gravitate towards the metaverse, brands can’t afford to be left on the sidelines. On top of that, the metaverse won’t draw mainstream audiences without the brands and their engaging content. So what can they do? Brands need to quickly adapt to being present in virtual worlds. They will need to work with passionate creator communities to deliver seamless and engaging virtual world content, which is both meaningful and adds value for creators and audiences alike. This panel will discuss how brands can take their first bold steps into new worlds of opportunity.

Admix CEO Samuel Huber
TBD

11:45 am – 12:15 pm

Launching NFT games in the open metaverse: Decentralized gaming guilds as a channel strategy

Valve’s decision to ban blockchain games from Steam renewed concerns about the power that centralized platforms hold over developers. NFT game makers, however, are already leveraging a range of Metaverse-native distribution strategies that bypass the traditional gatekeepers to go straight to the player community instead.

Nicolas Gilot, Founder & CEO, Ultra.io
Bozena Rehab, CEO, GAMEE
Sebastien Borget, chief operating officer of The Sandbox and president of the Blockchain Game Alliance
Moderator: Andrew Green, head of developer relations, Yield Guild Games

12:15 pm – 12:45 pm

Curbing toxicity in the metaverse

Tiffany Wang, chief strategy officer Spectrum Labs
TBD
Moderator: Rachel Kaser, writer for GamesBeat

12:45 pm – 1:45 pm (Roundtables)

Roundtable: The VR metaverse
Moderator: Stephanie Llamas, chief analyst at VoxPop
Louisa Spring, CEO of Sam Immersive
Jessica Ochoa Hendrix, CEO of Killer Snails

Roundtable: Forget Snow Crash. The real metaverse won’t be like sci-fi

From Snow Crash’s Metaverse to Ready Player One’s OASIS, the dream of a “do anything, be anything” virtual world has persisted. But while mega-corporations build new virtual spaces that they can control and sell advertising space in, a freer, more open metaverse is being built with parallels to the open source movement. This roundtable will discusses how utility NFTs will be the building blocks here, why user ownership and governance matters, and why the revolution will be decentralized.
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat
Witek Radomski, chief technology officer at Enjin
Cliff Cawley, Lost Relics

12:45 pm – 1:15 pm

Transacting in the metaverse

The metaverse opens countless new ways for brands to advertise, monetize, and evangelize their products. Transacting in the metaverse will rely on a mix of new and existing technologies, combined with modern infrastructures to facilitate payments, e-wallets, trading, and more. Join our session to learn about:

• Innovative businesses leading the shift to the digital world
• Integrating your back-office to support new revenue streams
• Facilitating payments to partners
• Predictions for how commerce unfolds

Chris Smith, Founder, BIG Esports
Josh Marcus, COO Rumble Gaming
Moderator: Dean Takahashi

1:15 pm – 1:45 pm

Making the real-time internet in an open way

The metaverse won’t be real unless it’s real-time. Everything from games to video chat needs instant snappiness and a feeling of immersion. Today’s internet can’t deliver that, as it was built for redundancy, not latency. We’ll talk about how we will get there. It’s going to take an industry-wide coalition to tackle the tough problems. Subspace wants to create an Open Metaverse Forum to discuss the issues and bring the right parties together.
TBD
Moderator: Dean Takahashi

1:45 pm – 2:15 pm

TBD

2:15 pm – 2:45 pm 

From the metaverse to the simulation/matrix

How we get from the metaverse and then get into the discussion about whether we’re living in a simulation already. Video game metaphors make sense in this discussion, but it can also include as questions of ontology (what is real) and epistemology (how do you know what is real). Will glitches tell us if we’re living in a simulation? Are we building the Matrix already? Are we building a computational multiverse? And does Riz really believe we are living in a simulation?
Riz Virk, head of MIT Gamelab

2:45 pm – 3:15 pm

How to enable massive virtual worlds
Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable
Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat

3:15 pm – 3:35 pm

Enter a user-led, reality-based metaverse

We are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the way we use technology to interact with each other as multiple cornerstones of the metaverse have begun to emerge. Varjo will share how it is creating a reality-based metaverse where users can interact with each other, not as avatars, but as lifelike human images in a real-time 3D digitized world of their physical surroundings can transform both professional work and personal lives. Hear how mixed reality technology is already bridging our physical world with the unlimited flexibility of the virtual world, and why the future of the metaverse should be user-led, not controlled by tech giants.

Urho Konttori, cofounder of Varjo

3:35 pm – 4:05 pm

Title/description TBD

Moderator: Wes Levitt, head of strategy at Theta Labs
Marc Thom –  Senior Investment Manager, Sony Innovation Fund
Ibrahim AlSuwaid – Investment VP, DCM Ventures
Nick Birnbaum – Partner and Head of Research, Alpha Sigma Capital

4:05 pm – 4:30 pm

Non-game industrial metaverses

The Omniverse is fully launched as a way for enterprises and consumers alike to simulate worlds and test new ideas like self-driving cars. Using Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) standard, 3D artists can now share their creations with each other and build the digital objects that all companies will need to make the metaverse seem real. We’ll look at all the ways that the metaverse can prove useful as companies big and small plant their stakes in the virtual landscape. And we can explore whether games and industrial simulations will help each other out in fleshing out the metaverse.

Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat
Nivedita Ojha, VP of Platform and Data Strategy, Autodesk
Richard Kerris, vice president of Omniverse development platform at Nvidia
Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games

4:35 pm – 5:05 pm

Finding your place and your meaning in the metaverse

Not everybody can be the hero. When you move into the metaverse, you’ll want to find something to do. These worlds will need farmers or blacksmiths. How can we make role-playing fun in a vast world, without bringing the doldrums of the real world to online life. And how can we make a living doing it?

Moderator: Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat
Benjamin Charbit, CEO of Darewise

5:05 pm – 5:25 pm

Real talk about a real metaverse

Lots of people are promising a metaverse real soon now. Raph Koster has actually built one before, so he’ll tell us why it’s harder than people think, and what is required to actually fulfill those dreams. He’ll talk about the difficulty of interoperability, how people behave, the importance of creating standards, and the need to focus on fun.

Raph Koster, CEO of Playable Worlds

5:25 pm – 5:45 pm

GamesBeat crew podcast

Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat
Rachel Kaser, writer for GamesBeat
Jeff Grubb, staff writer for GamesBeat
Mike Minotti, reviews editor for GamesBeat

5:45 pm – 5:50 pm

Closing

Dean Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat

5:50 pm – 6:50 pm

Online Reception and networking