Leaders in the games industry have spoken at length about how video games are the original metaverse, which is quite convenient for the games industry. But now Avengers: Endgame director Joe Russo agrees that if the metaverse comes to fruition, gaming will be the leader.
“I think the revolution comes from the gaming side because that’s where the technology is,” Russo says in a conversation with Epic Games chief creative officer Donald Mustard at the annual DICE Summit.
In a talk titled, ‘The Future of Media: World Building and Universe Expansion’ the two spoke at length about the future of technology, especially in media and storytelling. Russo in particular is convinced “The future is going to be virtual.”
Russo says that the technology for the future of storytelling is in the games industry, not film saying “traditional film studios do not understand [the technology] nor is it part of their business plan to curate technology, house it, pay for it, pay for its development, hang on to it.”
Later in the talk, Russo doubles down and says, “It’s a gaming company in my opinion that is going to be the most potent entertainment company in the world.” Russo also took some jabs at tech companies like Meta, formerly Facebook, saying gaming will “pull the world forward in a way Facebook can’t. They destroyed the world and now they’re going to create a Metaverse we can all escape to.”
The metaverse has been a popular topic at this year’s DICE summit. The keynote speaker EA COO Laura Miele also spoke about metaverse and how it needs “some world order and no industry can do it better than ours.”
In an interview with the Sway podcast, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that tech’s metaverse is “an extension of what gaming has been doing” and that a whole generation of people has grown up through social connections created in video games.
While this has been a popular talking point among gaming execs, to hear a filmmaker as Joe Russo agree is certainly a boon for the game industry’s claim that they are leading the field towards the metaverse.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.