Metaverse: A Young Gamer's Perspective

TL;DR

This paper explores young children's understanding and expectations of the Metaverse, highlighting their perspectives to inform user-centered technology development and multimedia signal processing challenges.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into the young gamers' perspectives on the Metaverse, a relatively underexplored demographic in this context.

Findings

Young children have unique perceptions of the Metaverse.

Children's expectations influence design considerations.

The study links user perspectives to multimedia processing challenges.

Abstract

When developing technologies for the Metaverse, it is important to understand the needs and requirements of end users. Relatively little is known about the specific perspectives on the use of the Metaverse by the youngest audience: children ten and under. This paper explores the Metaverse from the perspective of a young gamer. It examines their understanding of the Metaverse in relation to the physical world and other technologies they may be familiar with, looks at some of their expectations of the Metaverse, and then relates these to the specific multimedia signal processing (MMSP) research challenges. The perspectives presented in the paper may be useful for planning more detailed subjective experiments involving young gamers, as well as informing the research on MMSP technologies targeted at these users.