PlayerUnknown reckons he can take back the term 'metaverse' because 'It's just been co-opted by certain people… like, I still use Twitter because f**k [Elon Musk]'

Remember, hang on a second, let me check… three years ago? Back then, our entire executive class was possessed of the same mental malady: a curious fixation on words like "blockchain," "NFT," "Web3," and "Metaverse."

Those dark days are behind us now—the execs got bored and decided to make RAM cost $1,000 a stick instead—but you still sometimes hear a few of the words. Metaverse, for example, is a word I most recently heard from Brendan Greene (aka PlayerUnknown), whose game Prologue: Go Wayback is a sort of blueprint for 'the metaverse, but good.'

When I chatted with Greene for the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, I asked why he continued using a term which has, for many of us, become deeply associated with companies no one likes. His answer was pretty simple: "We can take it back, right?"

Greene said that "The promise of the metaverse was this multiverse of digital places," where users could turn up and mould the space to their whim. "I think we shouldn't be afraid of using it. It's just been co-opted by certain people."

Greene compared holding onto the term to his continued presence on X—which has become a very different place under the ownership of Elon Musk—"It's like, I still use Twitter, because fuck him. I was there before him."

The vision of the metaverse Greene is working on at PlayerUnknown Productions is not quite Zuckerberg's dread prophecy of everyone working in a virtual office and pulling products from virtual shelves (capitalists have a limited imagination). It's a bit weirder, woolier, more freewheeling and open-source.

"I want to create spaces with the openness and unpredictability of real life," says Greene. "So here our goal is to build that new layer, a foundation on which anyone can create their own virtual world and connect it to a larger whole, where they own what they create."