Digital twinning cities

Chyung Eun-ju

Joel Cho

By Chyung Eun-ju and Joel Cho

News outlets have been buzzing about "Metaverse Seoul," as it became the first municipal government that offers a full-service on the virtual platform. Metaverse Seoul has been part of Seoul mayor, Oh Se-hoon's 10-year push to build the city as a global hub and at the same time, manage and offer various municipal services. The city project is estimated to cost around $34 million until its consolidation in 2026.

This project aims to offer public services such as consultation of official documents, filing of complaints and information on government-related matters. The government also plans to virtually program lost historical sites, reviving and recording the important cultural history of the city.

Metaverse Seoul is not the first of its kind. Other countries have also launched similar projects such as Sharjahverse, in the United Arab Emirates, and other cities like Dubai and Hong Kong are on their way to developing and launching their own metaverse cities.

The launch of the project, however, has drawn mixed reactions from the public, concerning the cost and accessibility issues for older residents. Although South Koreans are known for their digital fluency, due to the popularity of gaming culture, this new channel of communication still poses a high barrier for the older and disabled population.

We delved into Metaverse Seoul a day after it was announced, and as we walked around Seoul Plaza, we got to meet and randomly talk to some users who were there to explore the app.

However, from the start, we noticed that the tutorial was not very useful as it went through an ethics guide, buttons tutorials, and a tutorial on how to navigate around your own room. It took a couple of minutes of frustration to exit the room into Seoul Plaza and find our way to the mayor's office.

In addition, not a lot of options were available to make an avatar, making everyone look quite similar with identical attire, so making our avatar was not such a fun process like in Zepeto and we really did feel the absence of personification of our digital avatars ― an issue we had already experienced in Meta's virtual reality.

Currently, the platform is only available and accessible on smartphones, but eventually, the plan is to make it available on goggles and controllers, so, as of now, the experience is not as engaging as we would like. Our experience in Metaverse Seoul, however, was definitely useful and efficient, in terms of getting access to information on the government's plans and intentions.

Although a very innovative and bold move from the government, we honestly felt that the older population or anyone who might be less digitally adept, will not be able to use the application. Upon asking some older colleagues to try out the app, they gave up quite quickly and said they would resort to a phone call rather than go through the "annoying" process of downloading each room you enter, and trying to figure out how to navigate as an avatar.

"The MZ generation is already unconsciously adopting the technology that is being developed, so there will not be much of an issue in their adoption of the metaverse," Choi Hyun-bee, a research engineer at Ivitt Research Center said.

"On the other hand, older people already struggle with smartphones, to the point where they need smartphone classes. So, just as older people take time to adopt new technology, they will face a huge barrier to accessing the metaverse, but they will follow the social flow. Programs to help with the adoption and understanding of the technology will help just as smartphone classes did. As the news is highlighting the importance of including the older population, as much as it will be a challenge, it will be an important core to form an age-inclusive technology."

Gerontech, a compound word for gerontology and technology, refers to the technology dedicated to improving the livelihoods and safety of older people, such as medical technology, caretaking services and services to assist in locating people. According to the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs in 2019, the global older population will amount to around 1.5 billion people which is double the current number.

However, although inclusive technology is important for the aging population, we do believe that even after 2026, the year the city plans on finishing the metaverse project, the digitally "inarticulate" will be left out. They will not be able to keep up with the pace of technological development, such as when other countries make their digital twin cities, the aging population will live in a separate world from the digitally fluent.

We predict that once Metaverse Seoul starts adopting VR hardware as part of its platform, the same issue of inaccessibility that has been raised in other similar platforms such as Meta's will become a reality.

The simple truth is that today not everyone has the capital to invest and purchase VR hardware to connect to the metaverse. Additionally, the graphics on most of the metaverses we have experienced are subpar and a far cry from what most people imagine when thinking of the metaverse.

This is not to say that we don't see potential in Metaverse Seoul, but while it seems like an innovative and interesting project, in theory, it is, in practice, quite exclusory when considering the general population. The obstacle today is to captivate users and get them to participate in the virtual ecosystem and remain there, where they feel the desire to connect to the metaverse to access municipal services, rather than relying on the access forms that they are already used to.

Our experience in Metaverse Seoul has definitely intrigued us and left us wondering about the potential this project could have if implemented correctly. It is important to recognize that this project is still in its initial stages and there are a lot more features to be incorporated into the virtual platform. So although it may seem that this virtual city has still a lot of room for development and improvement, it is still a deserving project of great importance for Web3.

Chyung Eun-ju (ejchyung@snu.ac.kr) is studying for a master's degree in marketing at Seoul National University. Her research focuses on digital assets and the metaverse. Joel Cho (joelywcho@gmail.com) is a practicing lawyer specializing in IP and digital law.