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Welcome to a week of exclusives, mayhem and wild gameplay as BYTE CITY joins the METACRUN.CH family for one week only. I’ve been in love with BYTE CITY for a while now and I’m so happy to share a brand new way of meeting friends and playing games in a futuristic world of adrenaline-fuelled fun! Coursework The Hundreds, everyone's fave cult fashion brand is opening its Metaverse shop. Nestled inside some.place–better known for Brie Larson's personal gallery and NFT platform—it’s a twin of its store in El Ay but with added exclusives, NFT drops and more. I'm not going to be really salty about this, but it probably seems like I might be—because this looks like a school project. If some.place handles brands and labels like this in the metaverse, I’m off to Decentraland because they’re doing a really pedestrian Pride event. I liked it when Avakin Life did theirs, but now everyone is getting in on the game and still no one is doing anything to improve user numbers (it’s certainly not MVFW and it’s not this either) So come on guys and girls of The Hundreds—why don’t you go some place where the people are? The Theme for Great Cities Fuzimiao. Ming Palace. The Porcelain Tower and the Jiangsu Art Museum. There are so many things that Nanjing is famous for. And now: the metaverse; for it has been declared that Nanjing—the capital city of China's Eastern Jiangsu Province—has thrown its hat into the ring by inaugurating their China Metaverse technology and application innovation platform and their strategy to bring metaverse research and development across the country. Academic institutions and enterprises will create, collaborate and imagine the future in carefully developed workspaces. Other Chinese cities are participating in this “competition” and I can think of one good reason why this is the best thing that could happen to China. As you’re reading this I can hear you nodding loudly. You know. I’m here for Sister Milk Tea. Send Me the Memo Improbable has launched something called the “Metaverse society”: it’s a think tank. It’s a think tank that I didn’t get invited to. I’m okay about it. Because this think tank is a result of “refocus” of the business which is trying really hard to do infrastructure as a service since cancelling their military and gaming project(s). Listen, Improbable are ok. But since everybody's trying to kill the metaverse, it seems like a really interesting time to explore what the possibilities are of creating a think tank that's focused on blockchain tech and Metaverse and all that kind of good stuff. Again, I wasn't invited—but I get it, it’s a sales pitch—doubling down on the metaverse by creating a think tank is the same as taking out a full-page in MCV/Develop (Metacrun.ch is available) to advertise your services. They want to “accelerate their path to profitability.” So that’s how you say think tank. Dr Meh Another week, another absolutely weird brand activation in The Sandbox. This week comes from the BBC and Doctor bloody Who or Top bloody Gear, who cares, it’s this week’s story. Together they are teaming up to do some interactive, immersive content. Listen, guys, we've gotta get down to what the brass tacks of these activations actually are so I’ll be the first to ask: where are the users? What is the point of doing this stuff without them? If you're just going to create an expensive press release, it really is getting pretty tiring. No wonder everyone's moving away from metaverse because it's totally pointless to just go *Oh, yeah, we're doing this brand activation*, and then a few months later, it disappears without a trace. OMGOMGOMG It's a Space Mission Finally, some good news. Space Launch Delta 45 is going to use the metaverse to create a simulation twin, which is brilliant. They're doing it at Cape Canaveral. Yay! They're creating a digital 3D Metaverse, merging virtual and physical worlds to create an actual digital twin of takeoff. Wooo! I'm so excited that this demonstration—which has been funded by Space Force, the spaceport Integration Office—is going to simulate launches using real world telemetry data from commercial rockets and high resolution satellite imagery from Maxar at Cape Canaveral, they're using Cesium visualisation, and Unreal Engine (I don’t know which ones, I’m guessing 5) and… Nvidia's Omniverse collaboration platform. Jensen Huang be praised! Finally, we can be a part of something we can understand, that will inspire people to want to travel into space. That's what the metaverse should be doing. It's not about showing off your latest flex or whether you can do some nonsense brand activation of Doctor Who. These guys and girls are not scared to take risks. That’s enough metaverse for this week. Or is it? We’re so giddy (like goats) to welcome BYTE CITY to the family this week. We will be doing some awesome collabs—so why not stick around? Keep an eye out and even participate! Also, if you’re even more in the mood—I’ve just recorded my latest Metacrun.ch meets with Jean-Philippe M.L Schepens co-founder and CEO of AxonJay. Want to know more? Head over to our Metacrun.ch Meets section of the Metacrun.ch website now! Feeling FOMO about our BYTE CITY collab? Get in touch to find out how you can feature your business in our massively subscribed newsletter.

Last week we guffawed at the idea that the metaverse might be dead and as I scrape the bottom of the virtual platform barrel for new and exciting platforms to add to my weekly top ten I am starting to believe the hype. In what open universe do we force folks to sign up before they can go in? I’m thinking about doing a name and shame chart of the worst platforms based on users, aesthetic and data. What do you think? Byte-sized Bellinis Mariella Frostrup’s passions for G&Ts aside, I am partial to Bellinis (more than one). So I was clapping my hands wildly about The Sandbox’s latest thing. The Sandbox is a decentralised gaming world under Animoca brands and they’re partnering with classic drinks brand Cipriani. The Sandbox is unashamedly brand-focused and that both puts them front and centre of press releases, but I always feel a bit sorry for them in that some of the brand choices seem so short-lived and a bit mercenary. This story is a bit of that. But Venice is mega! Have you ever been? GO! Or go virtually. Working with a metaverse, like The Sandbox is, one might think of as a stroke of genius to preserve a city which has been falling into the sea since it was built. But no, booze comes first. The average sea level in Venice is today “32 centimetres higher than it was in 1872—and 61 centimetres higher than it was in the 1750s”. And folks are leaving the main island city in their droves to set up affordable homes on the mainland. It has lost “more than 120,000 residents since the early 1950s.” So rather than make a brand-facing short-lived experience, wouldn’t it have been better to preserve the heritage of the city, using Cipriani as a sponsor or an exposition for this space? I think so. As always, the success ratio of anything The Sandbox does depends on the appetite for folks wanting to be there. User motivation, in my opinion, is the best lesson they will ever learn. Desperately Ceeking People Is the future of metaverse entertainment based on NFTs? Decentralisation? Headsets? Lately, it feels like the future of the metaverse is based on macular degeneration because the amount of Getty and Pixabay images involving purple, blue and pink Ready Brek kids in headsets is giving me a headache (and maybe vertigo, I’ll let you know). Business Insider clearly did not get the memo for how to add images cleverly. Ah well. Look, CEEK is looking to corner a marketplace which is currently owned by Meta, and I wish them well. I think it's really great that they want to do this. But as I always say, the entire approach to creating any type of entertainment brand hardware or software product is to find users—and there was no mention of how many users there are in that particular PRarticle. It's nice to give big tech corps a scare, but stop trying to bait tech corps! Instead spend that time ( and anger) building community because that’s what will ultimately make tech bros soil themselves. But if creating an “inclusive and connected future” means that your consumers have to pay to play, I think Meta, Apple and co will be just fine. Lend me $3000 (I can’t pay you back) Apple's new mixed reality headset can just do one which is completely the opposite to what this Crypto Times article states. After becoming the most jealous god in the world over NFTs, Apple is starting to embrace the world of the metaverse. They want to approach a more holistic and open system for getting people basically to adopt their hardware. Cool marketing, guys. One of the things that they could really focus on is making their hardware more inclusive and therefore making their software more inclusive. Who actually wants to buy a piece of equipment for $3k? Not me. I just don't have that kind of money. I’m not an Apple person, but I do have an interest in the metaverse. I also have nothing but time to go deeper than a Navy SEAL on how the metaverse industry is becoming an ad aggregator or monetisation tool and that’s too soon, too soon—it took the internet a long time to get there and the metaverse got there in minutes; so what’s left? The World that Data Built Ohio State is going to use the metaverse to train first responders. That’s exactly what the metaverse is for. You know, I'm writing a book at the moment, because some of the things that make me get out of bed in the morning are data driven environments and digital twins. I’m not some kind of fluffer who came along to make the metaverse the money shot, I’ve been working as a game dev for 30 years. I don’t care about your marketing schtick and how you see yourselves as gurus of nothing. That’s between you and your therapist. I want to change the world and I believe the metaverse will change how we do everything. Whenever I hear that Meta advert about how fire fighters will use the metaverse to do this or that I shout at the radio “THEY ALREADY ARE, MARK”; because it’s true. Using metaverses on platforms like Breakroom (where you can also fly between incidents) or Nvidia Omniverse are dedicated to creating simulations and models for us to practise and experience everything in an educational capacity. If data can bring us to the truth of anything we can train for then the time to money, or the time to success, and dare I say, safety is going to be shorter and more efficient. Should we be basically creating digital waste by virtue of crapware that no one's showing up to? No we definitely should not! So initiatives that involve training or that use measurable workflows are worth doing in our precious metaverse. Korea is the Metaverse (and so is Japan and Taiwan) Metaverse education is a major trend in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. I worked on a children's metaverse, remember? I know what the implications are, but also what the benefits are of being able to transpose Metaverse technology into schools as a tool for instruction. Whether you're using VR, and gosh, I hope you're not just using VR, one thing is certain: we have to move as far away as we possibly can from traditional education, it does not make for an innovative future. Instead, let’s help young people to build a world that they want to live in because let’s be fair, they’re inheriting every single mistake we ever made. Sad Trombone Metaverse Beauty Week, ugh, you know what I’m going to say. I did Metaverse Fashion Week and it sucks more than Bad Bunny mansplaining to Kendall Jenner. I want to see what the use case is for beauty beyond the POAP. God knows they suck right now, but when Avakin Life did their thing at O Boticário it was brilliant, but this? The point is that beauty should be really interesting; but each time someone tries to do something “beauty” in the metaverse it comes off like a tactical facepalm. It's bad to try and suggest that what you're putting on your face is something that you can feel when we don't have haptics in any of these platforms. Phantom touch aside it feels like an expensive press release which is exactly how Metaverse Fashion Week went down in the end—some people are still asking “Metaverse what?” but they know, they were there. If you care, and I don’t; this event runs from June 12-16. Cerebros Meta Inc., you know, those guys, well it’s betting big on AI with custom chips and a supercomputer. Well, I did not see this coming. Especially not after the absolutely shitty year that Zuckerberg has had so far as CEO of Meta. For a change, he’s got nothing to say, but I would like to congratulate him on his Jiu Jitsu win; finally he can become Pete Becker. The VP of infrastructure says that they're building their own hardware capabilities to give them control. Quite cool, but they're using generative/AI for workloads, and ad designing creation tools. So again, what this all boils down to is “how can we make our business which is an ad business, more sustainable, streamlined and more profitable?” Step forward a combination of failed CPU projects which never rolled out and instead a custom chip design for accelerating AI algorithms. They spent billions on Nvidia chips and that meant changing their data centres, but finally Meta are really creating an in-house chip, which is due out in 2025. In short, this story is absolutely pointless for anybody else in the whole world, unless you work for Meta. That’s enough metaverse for this week. I’m off to test my new Starlink (thank you SpaceX) from the top of a mountain. See you in hyperspace, losers! Want more juice? It’s a-coming. Until then check out our super Spotify playlist and listen while you work. Or, sample Metacrun.ch meets… where I interview only the coolest people in the metaverse and web3. Want in? Talk to us!

The pace and deliverables of the metaverse continue and vary at different levels. I've just spent a week in London where the talk of the week was not Metaverse as per se, but more focused on gamified experiences and the tools that support that. Meaning that the metaverse, like the games industry, is starting to grow through learning from its mistakes, even if it’s at a snail's pace, it's still progress. Handset Hallelujah If you're reading this, and you haven't watched the Eurovision final yet, SPOILER ALERT: Sweden wins. The UK’s Eurovision Gen Z consumers are embracing the metaverse, 5G and AR to enhance their experience, according to VanillaPlus, the “global voice in telecoms IT”. As if the garish sight of Sam Ryder, the YouTube Jesus, was not enough. We can also look at him in his Glorious Technicolour Dreamcoat in AR. Joy. I live in a country where English-speaking content is obtained through other platforms, rather than the national broadcaster, which is fair enough. English is not one of my country's official languages. It is definitely a non-official language though. How we access language through media, however Chomsky you want to think about it, has been surveyed in the UK as part of the Eurovision “season”. Of the 1000 UK consumers' questions, Gen Z consumers were enthusiastic about last Saturday's grand final with 67% of Gen Zs gripped by the fever and just 35% of people aged over 55 making definite plans. A whopping 75% Gen Zs surveyed were more interested in watching it in the metaverse. (Note to Tim Sweeney: if you are reading this and I know you are one of us, this could be a good thing for Fortnite.) Overall, I think terrestrial television, though important to the EBU once a year, is probably a dying medium for people wanting to access something exciting, visual and visceral. And it’s the viscerality of television that is coming much more to the fore now. Whereas we would simply go and sit in our local flea pit and watch My Beautiful Laundrette. We’re now urged to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in staggering 8k or whatever, with or without goggles. If this survey tells us anything, it tells us that we really have to move with the times quickly and devices are the key to this. We don't need new stuff, we just need better ways of connecting over platforms. The Great Conspiracy I'm not a conspiratorial person. I know loads of people who are, but since the beginning of this year even I believe that there is a slight “conspiracy” over at Metaverse, HQ: wherever that is. Imagine for a second that your bread and butter is the metaverse (it is mine) but you’re a good business person (unlike me). Imagine downplaying the metaverse, which includes NFTs and all that jazz (web3, platforms, devices, blockchain, DAOs, crypto etc) so that it gives you a better opportunity to talk up the metaverse when it suits you. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has made fun of a recent Business Insider article suggesting that the metaverse had run its course. As we all know, this article was written by a person who literally has no clue, beyond Wikipedia, and a book or two filled with stats, what the metaverse is. Their editor told them to just WRITE SOMETHING. Ahhh the beloved and much maligned Metaverse, it’s many things to many different people. I have always tried to describe it akin to a PCB, a layer or a potato that enables other things to happen. From games to wearables, we should be able to do everything on it (I'm not going to preempt my incredible, best selling book unless you beg me to). However, what I will say is that Tim Sweeney spent a lot of last year downplaying a great deal of the metaverse saying that we weren't ready, and this and that. I remember writing an article in this very publication, explaining why the metaverse wasn't dead, and how some of these apparent Metaverse visionaries should probably just shut up and stop it. Some people have even changed their illustrious titles from Chief Metaverse Officer to just Marketing Weasel. It was then that my conspiratorial brain kicked in, I realised that what these so-called visionaries were hedging their bets. The more you play it down, gives you a better opportunity to talk it up when it really needs to be talked up. He’s been dead for 100 years but if he says there’s no such thing as bad publicity, has this style of conspiracy really gone out of fashion? This is not a Metaverse The platform that's only just really found its legs (pun intended), will no longer let creators using its Horizon World Social VR “playscape” make dedicated events. This is weird because over the course of the last year or so we've lost some really good metaverse experiences (looking at AltspaceVR’s landing page still makes me cry) and we've gained some really shitty ones. Or, even worse, we've got shitty ones that have infiltrated our daily lives through things like social media. So this is such a rubbish story, but really quite expected from Meta. Let me make this clear to every single hack in the universe: They are a social advertising platform. They make millions out of advertising. They are not a Metaverse platform. They merely use that as a vehicle for them to do other things. Meta Inc., is their intranet, joining together the alpha to omega of their products and services. Therefore, the creator economy is really not in their favour at all. What is in their favour is people clicking through or discovering different things through their assisted aggregators. Do not be under any illusion that somehow Meta is there to support, help and supply us with the creative economy. It is not. This is a walled garden, made by someone who has built an advertising empire and does not want to see it crashing down. So yeah, of course Meta’s “created not curated” events are going from now on to become “curated not created”. Got it? (Unless you are a high profile singer-songwriter, brand, or someone who's got something to flog and would heartily pay for it to be advertised on that platform, then you are very welcome.) Sowing the Seeds of Nothing Much Chia, you know Chia don’t you? The digital economy people that don’t grow plants out of their heads. Those people. Well, they really would love it if you spent a minute thinking about interoperability. They want to be the power and presumably the glory of a metaverse that uses interoperable assets. First, let's discover what interoperable actually means in this context. And then secondly let's figure out how a Chia who we’ve really only just heard of is going to be able to interoperate across loads of different platforms. Now look, Richard Tsao Chia’s Chief Metaverse Officer, spent two decades working for Microsoft, Ubisoft, and has more recently worked for Riot Games. That's three platforms out of literally 1000s. No mention of the implication in owning the backend has, on an open and transparent future where folks are going to keep creating their own platforms. The exponential development will only drop off when a formidable competitor steps into the arena and sets a solid working precedent. Well until then, Chia are not sitting tight, they’re making stuff. NFT trading cards is day two because day one was infrastructure. Crypto Bros the world over see this as being a super opportunity for them to make bank when actually the idea of interoperability is that we should all make bank. Make Better Games Like a troll meister waiting for a door knocker to come and tell me about my salvation, I always love it when crypto peeps start telling me how web3 gaming should work when I’ve been in the industry for 30 years. Yeah, it's kind of fun for a little bit to hear people talk about things from a financial perspective. But here's how web3 gaming should work: MAKE A GOOD GAME. And then when you've made a good game, get a company like nefta.io, to do all of your web3 backend for you, including the cybersec bit, so you don't need to mess it up. There is literally no need to explain every single piece of governance, passive income, interoperability and security, mass adoption blah, blah, blah, in the way that web3 gaming has been explored in this article to basically shill cybersec. Heed my words: Make a good game. Hire Nefta. Use my wallet. Most web3 games fail because of point 1. So just don’t do that. Dadbod.XYZ David Beckham, former English footballer, man of crisp white underpants, and general tattooed hottie is interested in the metaverse, aren’t we all dear? But is this article really about the metaverse? Nope. This is about David and countless other celebs securing their future by trademarking their (read their lawyer’s) interest in the metaverse. IP is the most important thing that has happened to anyone and any brand in the public eye over the last 30 years. From DC Comics to Reggae Reggae Sauce. There's still a lot of work for David to do in the spotlight of celebrity, the most important thing being getting back into those crisp white budgie smugglers, maybe as an avatar, maybe in VRChat. Make Better Metaverses (Please) I really want to like Habytat but I am really confused by what, in the name of all things Zuckerberg, Datchat is doing with the most basic element of business: the value offering. Is it about democratising access to the metaverse by being available via mobile devices? Is it about creating realistic content? Is it about selling land as NFTs? It could be all those things but here’s the rub for me: Is Habytat being made for users? Have users actually told Datchat Inc/Smartverse that they want this type of metaverse? Because if they haven't, these guys are staring into a pond of their own reflections, listening to themselves in an echo chamber and yeah, making something just for themselves. Add to that there’s this really weird Ready Player Me element to it that doesn’t seem to fit. Gosh, this does feel a little bit like a vanity project to me. I could be wrong, and I'm always willing to be proved wrong. I had an argument about DAOs and polygonal development last week with two separate people and lost both arguments. All I’m saying is that I’m open, which is a damn sight more than what these cats are. Going Lean without Ozempic Being a fan of Roblox applies to no one over the age of 24 and I mean that sincerely. With one caveat: you have shares. Something we can all learn in business is lessons from the games industry: you get an idea, you find some money, you throw people at the development, you launch when you’re happy that your users are (VCs be damned) and the minute you go to live-ops, you scale down. NOT UP. Roblox is doubling down on its record revenues, by taking a long hard look at itself, something which it can now afford to do. All Roblox has ever needed is players: and 66.1 million is enough to cruise. Their revenue is now at $655m and bookings are holding steady at $774m, now is the time to let the players play. Let the creators create. Let Roblox live. I never thought I’d say it but it’s true, they are doing amazing; if you read this every week, you will know that I am 99.9% disparaging about every single so-called metaverse platform or world and I really do have my faves. However, this is a prime example of the metaverse done good. Long may it continue. In the games industry when we go to live-ops, it’s not the end of the story, it’s just the beginning. Roblox knows the challenges it faces over the coming quarters but getting lean is good for business. Who knows? They might even prove that lightning can strike twice in the same place—I hope they do. Great work Michael Guthrie, but I'm still not bought into Roblox. No way. I’m 50. Okay, that's enough metaverse for this week (kind of) I've got a manuscript to deliver in less than two weeks, wish me luck! Until my book comes out, why don’t you check out our wondrous Spotify playlist and listen while you work? Or, sample Metacrun.ch meets… where I interview only the coolest people in the metaverse and web3. Want in? Talk to us!

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, Mark Twain famously said. In the metaverse, this quote is taken literally and pretty much every time I write 'A Week in Metacrun.ch', I have to do so much digging because half of the stories I receive each week are blatant fibs set to confuse the reader into doing something. The “something” that I do is get angry and tell the truth. Here are my truths for this week. Not Much As-A-Service A few months ago, I wrote something right here about the relationship between avalanche and BLRD (Gree). This time it’s Alibaba Cloud’s turn. Le sigh. They want to help businesses to create their own metaverse(s). On the surface this looks like a really optimistic amazing story where layer one blockchain Avalanche partners with Alibaba Cloud (to give its full title and remit: Alibaba Group’s digital technology and intelligence division); but the big question (outside of the intelligence one that no one seems to be asking) is this: why would anybody bother building private metaverse? Or more importantly why would anyone build a public metaverse that functions independently of what the metaverse should be? Infrastructure-as-a-Service implies something spesh and unique. Doesn’t Amazon’s AWS already do this REALLY well? It feels like this is more than IAAS and that it’s software as a service too, because tech is a jealous god. If you’re selling us a VM (virtual machine) and not analysing or monitoring what we’re doing on it, thank you very much we’ll take it. Listen, my feeling is that they've got a lot of competition from a lot of other web3 solutions, and already in operation web2 and web2.5 platforms who believe that they have created something that's metaverse-ish. Unless we have a global platform, a base layer that we can plug everything into, I don't really think anyone has a metaverse solution at all right now. Scouts on a Rollercoaster Let's not get carried away by this article from Forbes about how Universal Studios, the metaverse and the future of theme parks is going to completely revolutionise how we explore entertainment. What Forbes is really describing here is transmedia. Transmedia is where a strong IP proliferates onto other media services and digital technologies. This is not metaversal, and it is barely transmedia when you scratch the surface. STOP Look, I’m happy to call out BS every damn week and serve it up fresh, but can anyone supposedly working in the metaverse, web3 or future tech lay in bed straight with this groundswell of using language as smoke and mirrors in a never ending race to the bottom? How do you sleep at night? Ok. As you were… Scouts on a Rollercoaster Part 2 As I was saying. The metaverse is a universal (pun intended—as in look it up, theme park guys) experience and everyone plugs into it with their stuff so it’s easy to navigate and adopt without the need to keep changing every five minutes. This proposition from Universal is something that exists on a bunch of different platforms. In my definition of the metaverse, Universal fails: 1. It is not persistent because theme parks close. 2. It is not social because though you do tend to go to places where loads of people are, you tend to go with the family and you know those cats. And then finally, 3. It's not online/open and it’s not served by web3. This is a walled digital twin with a physical presence a bit like a moving feast or curated exhibition that they’re calling a “metaverse experience”. No mention of gamification. Literally not much to see here either. Well done everyone. Dude, Where’s My Metaverse? Sotheby’s Metaverse (hahahaha) is getting an upgrade. My first thought was, “oh do they have a metaverse now, too?” and then I realised that was complete and utter nonsense because it’s just a name to them. So, let's just get one thing clear: Sotheby’s don't have a Metaverse, they've got an NFT marketplace called Sotheby’s Metaverse. Semantics. It's also launching a secondary marketplace, which feels a little bit like it's completely two years behind everybody else because people have been selling in the secondary market place for a really long time. Those lovely loves who were on the NFT train from day one have gone colder than a polar bear’s toenail thanks to the crypto winter and the fact that most NFTs are worthless and crap. So it's great that they're pumping more money into allegedly revolutionising how they do sales, but they're not. They're just trying to hold customers, and you can do that with a newsletter. I haven't got anything to sell, but my newsletter doesn’t do too badly, they should try it. Bull Ish When I saw the headline about “Polygon Labs gaming chief being more bullish than ever on blockchain gaming”, first of all, I wanted to punch the monitor. I really do hate it when people use the term bullish. It's just such a dreadful word. It's the type of word that you find on Twitter when people are constantly shilling you shit NFTs. Maybe Polygon could look at how they service language to make people believe in a web3 gaming future that is more inclusive for them and their potential user base? I won’t hold my breath. The head of gaming says that they're going to be on a long journey and it's not going to happen overnight. But trust me on this, there are some absolutely brilliant games that already exist out there that are doing really bloody well without Polygon—so what’s the story here? No one is interested in Polygon? Well boo hoo. Why don't they pull their heads out of their proverbials and talk to game studios and find out exactly why they are successful in web3 and how they can service partnerships before turning the conversation back to them. The Catatafish I'm really not enjoying the whole coronation thing so I'm less than impressed by a free Ethereum NFT for King Charles III’s coronation. Why can't I just have a porcelain plate instead? At least that has utility. I can put cakes on it. King Charles III and Queen Camilla have “teamed up” (let’s be honest with ourselves, do they know what an NFT actually is? No one else seems to either) with digital artist Trevor Jones to launch a free collection of “commemorative” (someone help me) Ethereum NFTs celebrating the event on Nifty Gateway. Ok, so this has very little to do with HM and HRH and more to do with Nifty Gateway, yeah? Let’s make this super easy. These are a bunch of crown jpegs. And really, it doesn't provide any additional utility apart from the proof of attendance protocol to say that you were alive when King Charles III was crowned. If that's your bag, go for it. That I'm going to stick with the porcelain plate because I want cake and I deserve cake. Fancy Footwork Clark's. You know Clark's don’t you? They made shoes for people in the 1970s until recently: they made time machine shoes. Now these guys make shoes for only the coolest people and those people are not you in this story. Those people are kids. Because kids are cooler than you. Clark’s have gone through some really weird metamorphosis over the last few years. One of the things that they have rebranded is the children's shoe space, in a bid, presumably to create a hold in a marketplace which is filled with more affordable but unsuitable shoes and sneaks. They've teamed up with, wait for it—Roblox; to allow people (read: under 13s) to connect, access exclusive content, share experiences and BUY SHOES (if their mum lets them). This is great because Clark’s and Roblox are aimed at a children's demographic. If we're looking at older skewing products then it's a no go. But if your average player is 11 years old, then this is the perfect place to reach that audience. What Clark's are giving us here is a really good lesson in how to reach an audience that they understand. So I applaud the Cicaverse regardless of its stupid name; I think this initiative is great for children and parents alike. The Roblox avatars themselves look cool enough, you know, if you want to look like a big footed kind of bulky peg, then it's definitely for you. Clark’s haven’t stopped at kid’s footwear either. This brand is coming for everyone; because they've also stepped into the metaverse with an afro beats concert. Well, that’s not entirely true, in fact it’s a total untruth. I have to take them at their word and there is no mention of the metaverse in anything but the headline and abstract. Shame. Especially because the previous Roblox thing was full of metaverse and this story seems to have been written by my mum. Clark's originals, which is aimed at more of a mature market traditionally (the shoes that were made for the 1970s massive and crew), is looking at the possibility of being able to bring their brand into more of a worldwide marketplace where they haven't been able to reach before. On 18 May, they're working with Nigerian superstar Fireboy DML who's headlining an immersive event which can be accessed via the Fireboy DML YouTube channel, so, just, a text stream then? Wow, what a confusing end to an otherwise crap week of no news. That's enough Metaverse for this week. I'm going to London to find out if it exists after the coronation. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out our wondrous Spotify playlist and listen while you work. Or, sample Metacrun.ch meets… where I interview only the coolest people in the metaverse and web3. Want in? Talk to us!

It’s a new week in our lovely metaverse, and that means lots of new sad and thought provoking (and also crap) news. I’m writing a book all about it at the moment so you can outsource all your thinking and opinion to me and Metacrun.ch. See? We’re here to help. Diggin’ the Earth I am a really big believer that metaverse, virtual platforms and worlds are predominantly opportunities to engage in social activities, but also can be used for a variety of different verticals. It wasn't until Sweden opened the first embassy in the whole world to place itself inside a digital space. Yes, Sweden. It was as far back in 2007 that I realised I wasn’t the only one who started to think that maybe we needed to explore the possibility of creating digital twins of this entire planet. Every time someone announces a digital twin of something environmental or sovereign I get a) excited and b) realise that everything is fragmented leaving traces around the world, in various universities or sitting in various city engine groups. We can do quite a lot with the data, information and aesthetics that we have made in trying to preserve the planet with this incoming climate armageddon. However, no one feels this more than Tuvalu. It might be one of those far off distant places in our imagination filled with beautiful tropical atolls, and banana plantations, pineapple trees and general sunshine and blue skies from horizon to see yet, Tuvalu is preparing for total destruction. It has seen sea levels rising catastrophically over the last few years; and had announced in the recent COP27 event that it wants to create a digital twin of itself to preserve itself for the future. You know, in case something happens to the island. A lot of people saw this as being a PR stunt, gimmick or whatever. However, listening to Foreign Minister Simon Kofe it’s hard to deny that Tuvalu is going to be the first digital nation. The ocean is rising, swallowing their lands in its ebb and flow. Whilst I believe that this is a good idea, and way more successful other than adopting a process of faith to be able to save Tuvalu and its neighbouring islands; I do feel that the digital twin really has got to be that. The problem with creating these process twins (simulations) rather than product twins (NFTs etc) is that these aren’t for entertainment, which is why you are here. This isn't anything new. Al Gore started talking about Digital Earth in the 90s but from the perspective of knowledge and information, and smart cities exist from here to Singapore and beyond. Don’t you think this is a really great idea? A responsible government needs to ensure that they have a plan in place. Can we help them? There’zelot to Unpack I like to partay, everybody does. When the pandemic came we had to get creative, but it was still possible to partay and for me only two standout gigs happened (unless you count the online Hamlet at the RSC) Event A: I present the Hacienda all dayers. Sacha Lord kept the nightclub scene alive in Manchester by getting us to pay to listen to Mike Pickering, Peter Hook and Orbital. Take my money Sacha. I would do it all over again in different circumstances. It was well organised and just awesome. In my lovely adopted city of Zurich, there was something bubbling under the surface of lockdown too back then. Event B: Ozelot’s Community Stream with DJ Ozerotto. To me this felt like a once in a lifetime moment to go into this amazing hybrid rave type situation during lockdown, and I say hybrid because it was cross platform. The guys were located in a basement in Zurich, and we were watching the event live on Twitch, Youtube and the web. I think I watched it on Twitch and the web because I wanted to see closeups of the ugly/cute Ozerotto. This stream was made in Cinema 4D with the support of their collective and fans. It was 100% DIY and I’m sure they’ll agree that because everything happened so fast, with the exception of broadcast quality Ozerotto’s design was the result of moving fast rather than anything massively funded or thought through. We were in lockdown! So I was surprised to read that Fatboy Slim just did a rave. Not in 2020 during lockdown, he did it last week in not-lockdown. I'm so surprised that we haven't come any further or that nothing happened in between 2020 and now to be able to enhance both what Ozelot did first and what Fatboy Slim is doing now. So I think that it's great that we can look at the potential for business in VR. But I still believe that this approach is very limited, and it's limited by design, because nobody's really looking around and seeing good practice being done in this space (except for Ozerotto on literally NO budget). If this is the first time that anyone's noticed good practices in music events then they haven't been looking hard enough. And sorry to rant about this but that’s exactly what this metaverse crap is becoming. A lazy, poorly thought out ego wank resulting in a long expensive piss down a dark endless drain. WAE Speaking of dark drains, when I see a headline which says “NHL launches dynamic Metaverse experience on Roblox”, I just want to die. I’m writing this because I want the Boston Bruins to win the Stanley Cup this year please. I don’t ask for much and certainly have not asked for an NHL brand activation in Roblox. There are probably 20 different Korean why memes in my head right now and I’m going nowhere near NHL Blast. Like ever. I am not 10 years old. Roblox, why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep skewing your aesthetics down to Ben10? This virtual hockey themed community space NHL Blast will connect fans around the world, but not this one. I really like high sticking and sin bins so it’s simply not going to feature in my playoffs strategy. Will anybody want to do this apart from a bunch of kids? TV, Beer and a foam finger or two, read into it how you will. Walls and windmills No sooner than I wrote an article about the role of AI in China's industry 4.0, did a new article appear. This one is about turning our attention towards the Chinese government who are being strategic and setting rules to govern what can go on in cyberspace. Listen, the point about the metaverse is that it should be open and decentralised; what it does not need is another set of goddamn rules that creates, effectively, a walled garden. But China's version of the metaverse is aimed at putting tech to work in supporting the economy. It’s no bad thing. So therefore, it's understandable that they will want to put some kind of rules and specific business cases in as to how their Metaverse is going to be built, but it's also obvious that it's going to be very much a government led concept. It's not going to be something that can be ambiguous, and it was never going to be something that's socially ubiquitous either, because in December 2021 China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, defined the metaverse as consisting of three elements: digital twins, mixed reality and the blockchain. However, the authorities effectively banned crypto currencies in September 2021 and really just helped to decouple virtual spaces from digital assets. Gaming plays a really important part of what happens next in the metaverse as a whole (not just for the socialites) and I think China is going to find a great deal of pressure moving forward in terms of how they are going to be able to operate gaming tools, processes and experiences inside virtual platforms; and inside virtual worlds and universes. But the 14th 5-year plan, which is Beijing's economic strategy document from 2021 to 2025, includes digital twins as a priority. So perhaps I see this as being a rule driven Nvidia Omniverse style set up with Blockchain being the powerful force of tech behind the more creative digital twins and mixed reality. The Wafer Thin Mint Effect Last week saw the UK Competition and Markets Authority the CMA block Microsoft's Metaverse related purchase of Activision Blizzard. I’m happy about this. It’s ok that Microsoft had started to build a metaverse before the pandemic, because that much is very true. But any acquisitions that they make inside this market space is very, very important to them going forward. Cloud gaming for them is huge and the acquisition would have made it even bigger. I, for one, am sick of it. In terms of their front facing, consumer focus of what they will build on the tech side, they pretty much have this wrapped up. They're engaged heavily in building digital twin platforms and mixed reality platforms using voxel. However, Microsoft cannot change the decision of the UK CMA. In my opinion, the games industry including Activision Blizzard (a video game holding company), has got to be monopoly free. It's hard enough trying to make a game without trying to find a destination or distribution platform for it. Thank the gods for people like Gabe Newell, who gave us Steam, because it was so difficult to apply to distribute anything through Nintendo, Sony and yes, Microsoft back in those days. See, these consoles have been incredibly elitist, look around you at GDC or Gamescom and it’s guys backslapping guys and signing contracts. The games industry is one of the hardest markets to crack on both sides. But Steam was the first platform that allowed us to be truly creative in what we could make and if you cast your mind back that included middleware. Something that Epic’s Marketplace does now. Steam would greenlight games, and because of that, there is much more autonomy in the spaces, allowing people to be able to create indie versions or wish lists of their games. It’s my fear that the spirit of creativity will be completely destroyed if Microsoft swallows up yet another game studio and controls the gaming market by percentage points. I just think these huge console and publishing related companies are just becoming jealous gods. How on Earth we're going to be creative in a future where the push back on even decentralisation is evident because it doesn’t serve the shareholders is a massive backward step. Statistics, Statistics and Headlines Recently I found out that I'm 47% Irish. I was really surprised to discover that I was 47% Irish because it was a very clear 47% Irish on one side of my family that I didn't even know had Irish roots. The other 53% is metaverse, so that’s good. But it is quite interesting to read that half of Irish adults don't even know what the metaverse is. However this factoid was obscured by a strange pivot to the Zucc and Meta. Here’s the news; half of Irish adults are oblivious to what the metaverse is according to a survey and the abstract or sub-header reads: Meta founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insists project not shelved in favour of artificial intelligence. Dear Irish Times, the metaverse is not Facebook and Meta is not the metaverse. Kthxbye. We Need to Talk about Mark (Again) I am not here to defend the Emperor of Analytics. I will defend the Zucc over shit headlines though, every time. Let’s get this straight. Meta Inc., is a multinational technology conglomerate. It is not your whipping boy for whether or not the company spends on the metaverse or on XR. This project is not shelved in favour of artificial intelligence. These are two cheeks of the same arse. It’s true, he publicly went off the metaverse a bit because he gambled on it at the wrong time and shot his business load way too early (that’s gross) but as a CEO, he has to answer to his board and all his shareholders. So he’s half in the metaverse and all in AI, this financial year. But every financial year for Meta Inc,. will be the same—it is a service to be able to engage in online advertising. Nothing more. How it does that is through the various platforms and devices it has acquired but there is nothing more to read here. Meta’s Reality Labs “news” reports a $3.99bn operating loss in the first quarter of 2023 after losing $13.72bn last calendar year, the future of Meta Inc,. looks alright. You know, not that many startups do great in their first few years, and Facebook has changed its name to Meta Inc. That's true. Meta Reality Labs are not as mature as Facebook itself, and if they are a bi-product of Facebook buying Oculus, so we've got to give them a bit more of a chance to be able to develop what they believe to be the future of VR adoption. The one thing that will never change about Meta Inc., is that it's never going to stop being a service to generate revenue for their business and shareholders. And that does to some extent, make business sense. Dark Crystal is Better than Willow “The middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.” This is the metaverse! Not really, this is the Twilight Zone, but if you read it again you might be mistaken for reading something deeper. That’s exactly what two dudes have done with sewing up how we’re all going to hell in a handcart because we’re foolish meatsacks (or should that be metasacks?) The emergence of this new darkverse (oh please) is surely what we all expected. This is not some kind of Twilight Zone story where we should all be running for the hills. Merely this is the shadow to our wonderful metaverse being the light. For many years since the advent of the Internet and probably before, there have been lots of opportunities for people to do nefarious things, and security and privacy threats might likely emerge and evolve in the metaverse and more people begin to use it. But this darkverse scaremongering, where apparently criminals will be able to operate with greater impunity and more dangerously than they are able to do now on the darkweb is a bit laughable. It's really just the product of a couple of researchers from Trend Micro, and they delivered their paper at a conference in San Francisco. Very cool guys. Very nice. The darkverse is impenetrable! And that makes headlines. When something is impenetrable, like any good vault or safe it gives us a golden opportunity to be able to test and iterate upon our existing cybersecurity tools and our processes to penetrate that with which is impenetrable. I would go as far as to say that if we're not going to police ourselves when we're in online social spaces, then we're leaving ourselves completely wide open to these types of attacks and threats. The risks that are related to NFTs, cyber threats, etc. are of our creation. So I'm not going to worry about it too much. Instead what I'm going to do is look to the experts, like my good friends Jackie McGuire, and John Wallace, who know what they speak and implement processes inside cybersecurity every single goddamn day. Follow them. This really is not the end of the metaverse as far as I see it. This is more the beginning. That’s enough metaverse for this week, with a king about to be coronated (can someone please say crowned) we’ve got a swamp of royal treacle to wade through, so I will ease my suffering by playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, for research purposes, of course! In the meantime why don’t you listen to our Spotify playlist or catch up with my amazing interviews with Ciara Sheahan, Matthew Buxton and Vince Fraser? Go on, treat yourself.

It's a new week in the metaverse, and naturally, the metaverse chart has been completely turned on its head with a good many platform developers crying into their cornflakes this morning, I'm sure. Just a quick reminder that a true metaverse is something ubiquitous, it’s something developed for the players, not your pockets. Got it? Read on, you animals. Platform Unlaunched: Brilliant Games 🎮 Square Enix. Nexon. Razer and now Krafton. What do they all have in common? They are all massive game developers who are turning to web3. Woo hoo! Finally! It’s all kicking off in Asia right now—making me wonder what the hell the rest of the world are playing at. Migaloo (oh gosh, please keep the name of this project, it sounds like the name of a Maltese-Poodle cross) is the project name of Krafton’s brand new metaverse. The PUBG creator is going to do all the things that MYSTiC Games CEO Matt Buxton talked about in his interview with me last week for Metacrun.ch, did you watch it yet? You should if you want to learn something. All good games have a few solid things. Story, Design, Inventory, UI, Monetisation. The purists among you can argue the toss about anything else. If you were at Gamescom last year you will know that I told you web3 games were coming for you, and back then it was (and still is) Nefta.io, ZEBEDEE and Oasys leading from the front. And now look who else is leveraging blockchain to make a games world powered by NFTs that you create, sell and buy? Krafton and Naver Z that’s who. They have also created a joint venture company in North America and they've put $36.8 million into its development. Not too shabby. So get your Apes in gear, put your pump and dump in the sin bin; then watch and learn. Digital Dame 🏛️ I remember watching the news in 2019 and crying as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris started to burn. I cried again later, happy tears when all that great work Ubisoft did on Assassin’s Creed: Unity, that somehow it may or may not be useful in Notre Dame’s construction. Then the pandemic came and well, we all forgot about actually going to Paris to support the efforts of rebuilding this piece of architectural beauty. Step forward Orange, the telecom company, has developed an immersive metaverse experience at the cathedral. In it visitors can spend 45 minutes in a wi-fi enabled tour of the iconic monument; and it costs €30 a ticket, a third of which goes to the reconstruction fund. Fact: 60,000 people have been through this attraction since January 2022. So they've decided that they're going to develop their Metaverse business a little bit more, I’m not surprised. This feels a little bit like a Fliggy to me. I’ve mentioned Fliggy loads because they kept us culture vultures sane during the pandemic with their tours of European palaces and museums. They kept the spirit of tourism alive in China and in the rest of the world during that time. But how will these experiences survive now that everyone is back-to-normal (whatever that means) Orange are offering a (mainly) VR immersive experience and I am on the fence about that big time. I am not entirely sure that the future is VR. To mitigate that they are certainly experimenting with AR and I believe that this would be a better way to secure short-term gratification. They’re supplementing their experience by being on Snapchat too, which looks ok until you try and put a man in an AR Balenciaga sweater (don’t bother viewing it, it looks like crap) and call it fashion, so ok. City AR is winner-winner chicken dinner: I know, I've worked on some great AR applications over the last few years including creating experiences in boring corners of Zurich and Munich. Using AR is a really cool way of being able to connect people to places so I hope that they don't just put all of their eggs in one VR basket and I hope they spread them around a bit. Sharing technology is caring technology. Betting on the Metaverse 💰 Betting/gambling, it’s got a bad reputation. But the world of gaming houses are turning their attention to the metaverse. First we had ICE Poker and you know, that's ok, but it’s a little too focused on, well, poker. And now we’ve got something else, Unibet, and their fully game mechanised mini-metaverse (because it’s nestled inside of The Sandbox). Players will be able to access all their fave casino games as well as football, tennis, basketball as well as taking part in boxing matches. But what does that mean in terms of gambling? It does carry definitely a huge degree of caution with regards to how Unibet will connect to their audience. In partnering with The Sandbox, which is a French online gaming platform, they say they can offer a unique and immersive experience to become the first betting experience on the popular metaverse. In persistent online and transparent web3 worlds, such as The Sandbox and Decentraland, who watches the watchmen? I dunno about you but I want the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Is it too much to ask for a gambling experience to give me glamour whilst I sit in my sports bra and joggers? I know I’m never gonna actually step foot in a place like that, so rather than create ways of me losing money, why don’t you give me something aspirational for a bit first? I want to immerse myself in something I can never have. Intimetaverse 💄 I hate to be wry, but it’s my schtick so I can’t not say this. When you have spent a fortune on a digital space that might not be the runaway success you thought it might be, what should you do? That’s right, find folks to rent it/use it/bring people to it. In the metaverse, we’re told we can do anything, but focusing exclusively on women's intimate health? Really? Clinique des Champs-Élysées, no, not that one thinks so. The one that does “cosmetic surgery, aesthetic medicine, laser hair removal , hair surgery, dental surgery. We also offer high-end beauty treatments and cosmetics.” Those guys. Together with a selection of top gynaecologists, sexologists and the like, they want to break taboos. They want us to have a conversation (presumably one that they guide because otherwise what’s the point), together. Along with their partner metaverse RLTY, they’ve launched an event to interact our deepest, darkest, intimacies with other participants via chat, video and voice. Purlease! Don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude, I’m Linkedin bffs with wonder women like Calandra Balfour, Jingjin Liu and Dr. Angela Tan you know and they do it better! This metaverse event is a sales pitch. If you want to go intimate you don’t need the metaverse, you need a mirror (advice provided by my gynaecologist). Polishing a Turd 💩 Ugh GameFi. Trust me on this, it has nothing to do with the stereophonic sound coming from your KRK RP5s (yeahhhhh). GameFi is explained through the eyes of the Pikaverse, a melting pot of play to earn, NFT and apparently games, though that part is the least credible of this whole news blast. So what is GameFi? The actual definition is very simple. It's a term that refers to that sweet spot of bringing together game mechanics, blockchain technology and non fungible tokens in a virtual environment where players can participate and earn money. So web3 gaming, yeah? It’s all very Nathan Barley in this space currently, and I’m tired so I simply listen to clever people like Matt Buxton, yeah, him! Was it only a few days ago that he said something like “people who have financial backgrounds have absolutely no business building games”? Pikamoon and the Pikaverse really want to change that by bringing us some old crap on Unreal 5. Everyone is and it is absolutely PAINFUL. Honestly, as someone who has lectured young game designers and artists around the world, “building a captivating P2E” isn’t about having big enough avocados to monkey walk around every single NFT and blockchain event like a Liam Gallagher apprentice on day release. It’s about building a game that people want to play. Making games is really effing hard, listen when people tell you this. What we have here is every single DeFi financier, hedge fund manager, and general Joe dicking about with NFT's. That does not a good game studio make. Game development is something that is pretty specific, refined, defined, and exact. It is a skill and it's something that people go to school to learn. It's also something that people read a lot about. One does not simply open Unreal 5, and think, oh, that looks good. Let's just do that. There's so much that's wrong with this game. It really does look quite ugly. It looks like a school project. I'm not going to lie. I'm an actual expert in this space and if I say it looks like my 5 year old niece has verbal and rectal diarrhoea and still made this you’d better believe this sucks. Instead of this turgid mess, take a look instead at whose business is killing it at the metaverse and business is good…. 👇👇👇 The Pay Off 💸 Square Enix is on fire at the moment, in case you were wondering. They have done some absolutely amazing stuff to shift the needle in gaming, god knows someone has to. Like all eras of Japanese history the Yosuke Matsuda period is over and Takashi Kiryu is in. Fresh blood, a new broom. His background at Dentsu means that he’s been alive before signing up for the kingdom of nerds. And it looks like he gets it—he wants to go to the people rather than arrogantly wait for them to come to him—it’s all conjecture, I know, but I’m an optimist. When I see headlines like this: Square Enix partners with Elixir Games on Web3 gaming platform; I get giddy. So what are they doing? Symbiogenesis, that’s what, and they’re making it using Polygon. This is a fun collaboration. Collabs should be fun! Even more fun is Square Enix leading Elixir’s last funding round, not too shabby at all! Keep your eyes on the east, these cats are doing some fine work right now. Fiddling the Books 📚 Imagine a universe organised just like ours, now replace everything with spreadsheets. And I mean everything. EVE Online is easily one of the most subscribed, open and accurate depictions of geopolitical and socio political bases in the history of video games. It is the closest thing that we have to a living breathing Metaverse these days. And this is a story of betrayal, a tale of a “group” of players who planned and executed a heist within the game. In EVE Online, players can form groups called corporations to work together and achieve goals. In this particular heist, a player named "Dave" joined a corporation with the goal of stealing as many valuable in-game assets as possible. Over the course of several months, Dave gained the trust of the corporation's leaders and was given access to important resources. Dave then worked with a team of other players to execute the heist, which involved transferring the assets to Dave's own corporation without getting caught. They were successful in their plan, and the stolen assets were worth millions of dollars in real-world currency, maybe. They call this game spreadsheets in space, and for good reason, because it's important for the players who play EVE Online to make sure that they're balancing every single thing that they do from collecting assets and items to what they spend to where they go. Also, you have to remember that there are factions and within those factions, there are various corporations that lead different expeditions or do different reconnaissance tasks etc. The big question that Ars Technica are asking is, how did no one notice and who was guarding the safe? It's absolutely amazing to see exactly how betrayal works inside video games and metaverses to expose the strengths and some of the weaknesses of financial systems and social systems inside video games and virtual platforms. That's enough Metaverse for this week. As well as the Metacrun.ch meets… series, we’ve got an awesome Spotify playlist of some of my selected articles and interviews especially the one where I meet mega famous visual artist and NFT creator, graphic designer, backing singer from Curiosity Killed the Cat Mr Vince Fraser. What are you waiting for? Go and listen now! Image by vectorpocket on Freepik

I’m a woman who loves a healthy dose of philosophical beef in her diet. I have just watched the strangely multiversal Beef on Netflix. It’s my second binge. Beef in the metaverse seems to be at an all time high for me. I’m simply losing ways of being able to defend the indefensible. The tl;dr is, there's a lot of crap floating around this beautiful marriage of technology and well, us, the people, our social experiences and all that lovely stuff. Imagine a wedding dress made of used but unflushed toilet paper, that sums up the strange dichotomy of design and output currently. This is a message to you if you are reading this, an open letter; please stop creating vaporware. A Bag of Smashed Crabs 🦀 We all took a collective sigh of relief when metaverse fashion week was over. In many ways, we just felt sorry for everyone involved didn’t we? It was like a slow car crash of people not really knowing what they were doing there and feeling devastated when that vintage ball gown by [insert your boujee lux label here] was squeezed into a 512kb render. Sads. Well, huntys, that was so last month, because guess what? Metaverse beauty week is coming! [GROAN] For the mildly interested, it’s running from the 12th of June to the 16th. It promises to be the first event hosted on immersive social platforms (using those terms so loosely I hope) Decentraland, Roblox and Spatial. The brainchild of the week we haven’t asked for (and we’re still smarting from the fashion one) is Cult LDN. They're organising the week, and they've included the participation of big names whose names include, er, wait, nope. There are no big names here. There are only names of folks Cult LDN have worked with on things other than Metaverse Beauty Week. In the meantime, if anyone wants to buy a bag of magic beans, please drop me a line. Dogs—Wen?🐕 Mar 30, 2022 and the metaverse no one asked for is announced on Twitter. “We are happy to welcome you to SHIB : The Metaverse. An immersive experience that is positioned to become a massive environment for the #ShibArmy to grow, share, and benefit together.” I’m so glad I put my life on hold for this one because great news, Elon’s dog fans, SHIB the Shiba Inu Metaverse will partially open by the end of 2023 developers have said. Yes, we know development takes time and as I always like to say “don’t build your own metaverse” but no one is listening, so here we are. Right, let's see what types of cool areas will we be able to “build, design, play and develop” within? Nope, there’s perhaps one still. Ok. Well let’s see what else is happening. There's going to be 100,000+ plots of land to be maintained by users— that sounds cool, right? And we can create our own avatars “fashioned as humanoid dogs to explore, visit and interact with lands and contribute to the in-game economy”. So more limited fun for people to experience provided they can put their hands in their pockets, great. Is anyone sick and tired of this crap? The Metaverse Through Gary Gilmore’s Eyes👀 AI-driven social Metaverse company Social Future has raised $6 million in funding. They want to create the “future of the social experience with digital interaction, immersive content and self-sovereign communities”. Their product is called MAY which stands for Meet Another You and enables “immersive social experiences via personalised avatars”. How does that work? Let's find out. Well, it’s a one-click NFT space type thing, so, 3D internet/Geocities style digital landfill, then? Since their launch in January 2023 they've grown their user base over 100,000 users from North America, but more importantly more than 20,000 Unique Active Wallets (they, um, abbreviated it to UAW), have been activated mostly to a crypto native audience. Their MPC wallet will soon be launched to “seamlessly bridge web2 to users, allowing them to enjoy the web3 benefits of ownership protection for their social content.” This is a big pitch for the wallets which is no bad thing. I think people should use wallets more. But this limited social internet/geocities thing is a bit amorphous when we don’t entirely know how it will work. Also, creating barriers to entry for new web3 users is social sabotage. This article is a little bit like all of the other stories that I’ve ast an eye on today: immersive needs and explanation, social metaverses need more of a description than avatars and facial expressions. I’m Changi, Fly Me. ✈️ It was over 20 years ago since I flew to Australia to meet my boyfriend who was subsequently knee-capped in Sydney. Long story. Anyway, I stopped over in Changi and all I remember from that 4 hour stopover was I went for a cigarette (I was such a rebel then—what happened?) and passed out, such was the humidity. Even back then I thought that Changi Airport was the future. But today I feel like it’s the future for forgettable brand activations that no one has asked for. Airports, my people, are not destinations. Airports generally, are supposed to be the point with which you depart from somewhere or land somewhere. It's not the final destination of where you go. And, you know, Changi is not even the most boring airport I’ve ever been to* so I’m trying to figure out in my tiny woman brain how in the name of all that is Changi, would a futuristic airport choose to activate inside Roblox (and call it Changiverse)? At least they didn’t build their own. Can you imagine? To be honest, I scratch my head about why anyone activates anything in Roblox but, ok. As a passenger who offsets my carbon, I’m not entirely sure how this activation can be fun. Step forward Accenture and now it all makes sense. So if outdoor dinosaur display attractions, a distinctive Changi control tower and a plane hanger turns you into a horndog, get thee to Roblox. There's even going to be a bunch of minigames in there to support the airport experience. I'm running my hands on my knees just thinking about it. Mmmm, a Antonov An-225 Mriya, pfft. People. I kindly ask you to remember that everyone in Roblox is made out of blocks. Nothing looks good as a block, have you seen my hips? These avatars have weird smiles, this platform is mostly aimed at kids and weekend dads. I just don't know how this is going to persist and be sustainable enough inside the metaverse for people to go, “I would really like to go to Changi Airport just for the weekend to see what it's like” No! That's not how airports work. *East Midlands Airport ChatGPT on Speed Dial 📞 Finally, mind the gender gap. Ugh. Women are underrepresented in the metaverse blah, blah, blah. Girl, women are underrepresented everywhere in every industry with a few minuscule exceptions. Since McKinsey brought that gender report out, every couple of months or so, someone (usually a woman) repositions this “women in the metaverse being underrepresented” as pure fact. So let’s drill down a little further. This article is about 1. “In 2020, women made up just 20 percent of Microsoft tech jobs, and 23 per cent of tech jobs at Facebook, Google and Apple. Over the last two years, total representation of women in big tech jobs decreased by 2.1 per cent – smaller tech companies had an even more significant decline at 5.1 per cent. At the very top, women hold a mere 10.9 percent of CEO or senior leadership roles. And at the largest tech firms, that number is even lower – only 5 percent of CEOs are women.” These are tech stats not metaverse stats. 2. If you can be bothered to obtain a copy of the amazing book Women of the Future: Web3 and the Metaverse, you will read 100 amazing stories of women in loads of metaverse leadership roles (including yours truly). So this article is a bit clickbaity: which is sad. I will definitely refer you to previous articles that have been written about this (Google ‘em), it even appeared in this very newsletter just a few months ago, because anything else feels much more authentic than this opinion-led piece about gender bias. The truth is that every other woman I talk to currently is involved in the metaverse in some way, shape or form. The problem is that managerial and senior positions in these spaces are underrepresented by women because that’s how start-up verticals are: they are always underrepresented by something. Now that is true. But that's true across the board. There are very very few places in leadership where women are in charge, and it is that which has to change. So that’s enough metaverse for this week. I'm off to do my homework on two web3 and metaverse luminaries who I feel privileged to interview for my Metacrun.ch meets… series. Don’t forget! You can playlist us, watch us and subscribe for even more.

I don’t know what it is about fashion weeks that makes me so crazy. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I don’t care very much for either style of fashion week: physical or virtual. I’ve attended both, so let me tell you what it was like from the sidelines and the trenches. If, like me, you grew up being seriously average; the idea of going to London fashion week is an anxiety-ridden experience where, as a 40-something, I continued to be seriously average. In a bid to get my mental health in check and to control the crazy, it was a refreshing advent that the metaverse could provide the anonymity of me being average to becoming a more fabulous version of me. The tl;dr is that this wouldn’t end well. It’s Called Fashion, Look it Up Before it got chavved up, I had a burning desire to do the Met Gala. Squeezing my average-shaped, heavy, old frame into a piece of art was dreamy for me. Someone who loves everything Siouxsie and Seditionaries, and cut my teeth in an era of John Richmond; my desire to be the mysterious bastard child of Leigh Bowery and Rei Kawakubo will continue to be my bane. Anna Wintour would never in a million years invite me to the opening of a Müller Corner, let alone the Met Gala, so where do awkward sartocrats go to fit in? Well, I started my gala experience in Avakin Life. It had everything I needed: social interaction on my terms, dramatic dressage and the technology of snapshots and screen recording. In those days, and they probably still do, they had competitions where players would participate in creating the best look. Think Covet, but waaaaaaay better and more interactive. In the metaverse and in gamified metaverse platforms, the template of design has natural limitations. I wanted to take a deep dive into what this means for developers as we enter an age of choice and user-generated content, whilst also critiquing the experiences of users who want more than metallic wings. I had a fantastic guinea pig in Nak3d, my AI fashion startup, and after a lengthy R&D process, we were ready to figure out how this behemoth of multiversal platforms would work with our interoperable fashion. Being Seen It’s difficult to be fashionable in most metaverses. The choices of outfits and looks are as unfortunate as it ever was. Looking like you either got dressed in the dark or by your mum is tragic really, isn’t it? If the metaverse is about escapism, then the inventory of looks is about as far away as you’re gonna get from sartorial. My avatar in Spatial looks like crap. Yes, it’s Ready Player Me, and yes, it’s a higher definition than I might find in Decentraland or Roblox, but please, it’s not cool anymore to look like Beatrix Kiddo. It was cool in 2003 though. Yeah. It was cool then. So what’s with that? Why is everything so rigid in the metaverse? Why is there a one size fits all approach to the metaverse and a more freeform focus to games like Covet? I say Covet, but that’s only because it was the big mover in the fashion space, there hasn’t really been a better alternative to Covet. Avakin Life is close, since it’s a playable metaverse, but I’m going to stick my neck out and say that even Avakin Life has its limitations. It boils down to stability mostly. I’ve talked about how interoperability works in a previous article, but stability is key to this process. Being able to create and upload your own stuff into Call of Duty or Subway Surfers is dangerous. It has a knock-on effect on every aspect of the framework of development, especially in terms of security. But that doesn’t detract from the fact that default objects inside these metaverses particularly look like crap. My first bit of advice for being seen is like with any social media campaign, plan it. If you know something is on the horizon annually but a few months off, spend some time planning what you will be creating and developing for the event. Participating in events isn’t difficult. You have to a) know what you are developing, sharing, or publishing and b) you’ve read the destination platform documentation. You might also want to think about how you will communicate your “launch” to the various stakeholders, channels, or followers. You will also need to pay some attention to your budget - if you’re a small designer or a start-up atelier, can you afford it? Some platforms that encourage users are neither user-focused nor are they UGC; therefore, if you want to play, you have to pay. The Z List In my experience of the metaverse, there’s the really good (such as Yahaha), and then there’s the really bad (make up your own minds). How do you know what constitutes really good? Yeah, really good is all I care about, because as someone assisting the fashion industry with what really looks good, rather than hyperbolic good, this has to translate into games and metaverses too. The quality of the function of fashion is #1, and I’m not entirely sure most metaverses care too much. So let’s look at that. You’ve got a Dries Van Noten draped top, in its physical form it’s 79% Cotton, 18% Polyamide, and 3% Elastane. It’s short-sleeved. A regular fit. It has a draped neckline. How do we work within those tolerances, or do we develop a wider reach for a new Dries Van Noten audience? If we work within those physical tolerances, we’re effectively working in e-commerce aren’t we? We would be creating 3D photos and models that exemplify the cut of the design and the fall of the fabric. We might use Vizoo or Adobe Substance to get to the core of the textile, we might use Clo3D or Marvelous Designer for styling and presentation. It’s complicated. It’s meant to be. But the complication really starts when we want to build for the metaverse. Let’s take two engines: one uses C# and the other is a part of a JavaScript library family. In order to ensure the stable and smooth running of these two engines, we don’t need a perfect storm of everything coming together, we need to first create the perfect garment for ourselves or our client, then we need to fit it to the engine. The digital fashion dresses the native avatar (we can do some good QA here), and then to keep the consistency of the garment within the visual frameworks of the destination platform, we have to tread a thin line. Our client (or us if it’s our design) needs to know what we’re creating: is that Dries Van Noten level of quality and care between the physical and digital entities in place? We can’t throw a hex code ecru blob on the upper body of an avatar and say ta-daaaaa! That just looks like baby puke. Instead, what we should do is tend to the texture and tick the boxes: Does it look like the original physical garment? Does it look like the original digital version? I would assume this ‘original digital version’ is high definition so we can see pockets, seams or finishes like buttons, zips, etc; but when we start squeezing all these quads/tris down to fit the destination, we have to do the same with textures of the garments. So that crosshatch of cotton linen or the Seersucker detail of the fabric is reduced to, well, nothing. It’s a real gift to get that representation in digital, and if I can’t get it, that rings alarm bells to me. If Maison Margiela needs to see that split toe of their tabi boot, they are not going to see that level of detail in some of the more well-publicised metaverses. I would also add a little salt to the fact that there’s probably no one in those metaverses anyway, so, brands; luxury and atelier are simply forking out for a very expensive press release. What of our C# engine metaverses? Well, C# is good enough for work-a-day graphics rendering. It doesn’t need millions of libraries located in far-flung corners of the web. Sure, it’s not as open as some of the javascript engines (read cheap), but you are playing for quality. So if you want quality, wouldn’t you find a metaverse that is C# focused? Or even C++ based? Roblox uses OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine), and that’s ok. Lego’s new educational metaverse will be presented in Unreal Engine. Yahaha uses Unity (of course!), Breakroom too, and possibly even Byte City. You Can Only Build Something New If You Destroy the Old Marc Jacobs in Animal Crossing. It was ahmahzing for a while, and then it just looked like crap, suffering from the same disease as anything with metallic wings. A collection of 20 items between MJ and Valentino in 2020 I’m sure was no mean feat, but it looked flat, I don’t care whether there is an #AnimalCrossingFashionArchive or not, I love fashion, and I like quality design and these items were neither. Gosh, I’m coming over all Karl Lagerfeld now. What was it he said? “You can only really build something new if you destroy the old”, so when are we going to do something new in fashion? Do we have to go through the meaningless surface of fashion weeks ad-infinitum? Will anyone develop a system for creating on every platform with little effort? At Nak3d, we managed it, but wow, there were metaverses that we couldn’t go to (because those platforms, games and virtual worlds were/are THE worst in all elements of their ethos). So does fashion need to change, or do we need to change for it? I would say both. Here’s the perfect situation for everyone: Establish the rules of the metaverse: hi-def real-time rendering for desktop and marathon metaverse activities and events (though that’s laughable because not a single metaverse or brand has a handle on content). Low-tri high texture quality for mobile. It makes sense because it’s crazy to maintain shitty DIY rules and documentation because your community wants that. Mate, your community had 25 people in it last week. Think about it. Up your game fashionistas! Look around you, everyone is doing it really well in NFT fashion and in physical. Would you drop a stitch in a Dries Van Noten suit? No? Well, why are you dropping a tri here and a quad there? The same goes for your textures. Yes, some metaverses want you to plonk a PNG over a mesh. There will be no plonking. There will only be careful crafting. Heads high people. Put your consumer first, not your consumption. Build a system where stores are proudly community driven (properly, not snobbily), don’t build an inventory for anyone to put any old dog shit t-shirt into. Roblox’s stores are more bloated than me after a big Sunday dinner, and Decentraland’s stores are bloated with the gym pants worn only by netball teachers in 1985 - have some pride! User Gratification (is) Cool So when I ask why everybody looks so awful in the metaverse, you can rest assured it’s because the metaverse makers only care about your money. How much will you give them to sell it in your store? Don’t fall into that trap. They are making a whole load of money from the hard work you are doing in promoting your own stuff. You’re also making your own stuff, and that costs you time. Brands get to work with the metaverse directly, and they make everything look amazing. You might spend 12 hours working on the organza sleeve of an evening dress, and you are still expected to pay to display? Not today Satan, not today. Over at Yahaha, and in fact, any UGC-based metaverse that doesn’t peacock, you will be expected to make stuff and the creator economy is fair so that you can explore all the possibilities that carefully crafting brings. Every platform should have a fashion week, just like Milan, Shanghai, and Berlin. And it’s average old me who is gonna win at Fashion Week in any metaverse because I have the desire to rise above the crap, the sartorially challenged brands who pay to show their crapola vision through the haze of pixelated neon stripes on an otherwise drab old static dress. It’s average people like me who will see Anna Wintour’s Met Gala and develop the Meta Gala, and do you know why? Because fashion belongs to all of us in the metaverse, and beyond I hope. It’s everything we can learn and transfer amongst ourselves to enhance all our skills at once rather than just work within the limits of some chavvy mesh that we have to ultimately pay for and that we can only wrap a disgusting jpg around for a shit sandwich of a so-called fashion week. If you call that fashion, I’m calling the fashion police.

Remember when the crypto winter was the worst thing that could possibly happen to web3 and dare I say it: the metaverse? Well, the fashion industry says “hold my pint” and presents what could possibly be the biggest surfeit of pixelated crap most of us have ever seen: MVFW. I miss the snake oil sellers and the shillers of yore. Those crapcoin merchants look like gods compared to these weasels. Get Inter It 🧑‍💻 I’m half happy and half sad about Tommy Hilfiger’s big announcement at MVFW. As you know, my start-up Nak3d secured the first simultaneous sale model in-game without leaving the experience. Weirdly, Team Hilfiger has just announced something similar and has launched something at MVFW in Decentraland of all places. Not one to preempt articles to come from Metacrun.ch, but of all the platforms to launch this on, wasn’t there anything better than 512kb of turgid sadness? I don’t think these fashion companies know or care about the impact crap fashion has on the populace. It’s all about the headlines, baby, yeah! April Cool 🃏 Sick to the back teeth of shitty attempts at April Fool’s pranks? Yeah me too. What about one which raises money for charity? More importantly, what about one which raises money for War Child? Now I’ve got your attention! My lovely friend Phil Ranta, you know Phil, the guy who has more (and better) opinions than I have about Meta because he worked there when it was Facebook, yeah him. For fun, and to give us an alternative to some of the April Fool’s crap being touted by tech giants (don’t you have better things to do?) Check out his hilarious Lincoln NFT collection detailing through each collectible, a significant moment in the life of Abraham Lincoln: self-taught, long-time politician before he became a president, shot by a famous actor - there’s a lot to unpack about the life of Abe. Each NFT costs $10 and the collection is item generative which means that you don’t know which Abe you’re getting until you, er, get it. VR Sailing, VR Sailing! ⛵ Forget the Rod Stewart classic and the dodgy rave banger; sailing has never looked as good as it did during the Howard’s Way era: shoulder pads, porsches and bigotry in yacht shoes. Thank the virtual gods that Accenture, VR Regatta and The Ocean Race are here to bring us their metaverse e-saling game/experience. Accenture loves their VR credentials, being the only megacorp to onboard their staff through their Nth Floor “world” and I say world because Fortune calls Accenture one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For. I’m a fan of that, but a VR sailing event with a physical “simulcast”? It’s a flex. Sailing has always operated with an elitist touch (see my Howard’s Way dig) but the underlying cause is quite complicated. We’ve got The Ocean Race, supported by VR Regatta, and Accenture, but beneath the surface (excuse the pun) is a mission to save our seas because a part of the virtual and physical space is “The Racing with Purpose tent, named after the organization’s sustainability programme, is an interactive space where visitors can explore how the race supports this goal and how they can get involved.” A mouthful. Here’s how I would have done it: a perpetual space for hyper casual speedboat racing like my lovely friends from Digital Kingdom did with Swordship to appeal to a new and diverse crowd. So This Week More MVFW stories and I’m afraid this one more boring than the last, it's about Hugo Boss and Clarks (but not together) launching some old stuff in the metaverse during MVFW, so I’m just gonna go ahead and let you be the first to know that Nak3d is providing all the coolest fashion from around the world directly into Yahaha, yes, you read it here first. This brand-led fashion start-up which is still in its infancy does not need to do anything other than be authentic. I can’t think of a better destination platform than Yahaha which continues to destroy the metaverse game by keeping it fun, real and most importantly (for tech nerds) stable. Oh Mickey/What a Pity/You Don’t Understand… 🖱️ What the Dizniz is going on in Anaheim? Well, I think it’s called premature virtualisation. The hubris of being the big daddy and blowing your load way too early is not a warning sign to anyone. It’s not a wake up call to anyone: but Disney. I always misappropriate a saying from my other half and attribute it to Gordon Ramsay “stick to what you are good at”, or something like that. Disney has had a great run, but laying off their metaverse team is a symptom of a bigger problem at Disney than it is with the tech community or the metaverse. They gambled, and it didn’t pay off, this works across the board for technology but I’m not sure it’s over. They’re merely figuring stuff out whilst Chapek checks out and Iger checks back in. Their shareholders have spoken, and now they must listen. Like the Space Mountain ride, their Disney Metaverse time may come again. Metaverse 2, Hello Mary Lou. 🧑‍⚖️ Cleggy, the man who launched a million tirades about why any politician should not be trusted is the Chief Metaman at Facebook, I mean, Meta. Nick has been talking about not giving up on the metaverse to a bunch of people across the pond and globally wearing Oculus headsets. As someone who reports on the metaverse a lot, this is horrible. I mean, other VR headsets are available. Did we forget the mastery of Half-Life: Alyx? That got me through the pandemic. Listen, anyone who delivers most of their dictats wearing a suit and tie is clearly not the kind of dude I want to listen to, I will listen to Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria, that’s about it. Will Meta please just own up to the fact that they are interested in the metaverse for the advertising money it can generate and nothing more? Any kind of interest in games, experiences and education is absolutely pointless when you are an online advertising generator/money machine. Be philanthropic, yes, but don’t tell us that you’ve not given up on the metaverse when so many people have woken up without a job in tech this quarter. I’ll wipe my feet on the way out. The Curious World of Interoperability When I talked about interoperability back in 2019/2020 everyone shook their heads, like a plumber who was about to tell me how much this will cost. They sucked in their breath to tell me that I should not say anything too loud lest I come off like a crazy person. I went with it anyway because I believe in interoperability. Peter Van Jaarsveld of Oliver swooped into the Drum last week to share the opportunities for interoperable assets around the world of everything. From branded goods to diagnostic equipment we take things with us as physical human beings, but as other virtual and digital beings we’re allowed to do the same, we should do the same and Peter explores digital twins through the eyes of his own clients at Oliver and encourages us to find those opportunities to make and use digital twin technology to power the future of how and what we buy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, virtual assets are coming for FMCG in everything (except platforms where we can’t sell to kids, you know, like, Roblox or Fortnite—wait, they are doing that? Wow. Ok.) That’s enough metaverse for one week, I’m off to twin Lake Lugano into the cleanest body of water in the world. Don’t forget that we have a Spotify playlist of all my ranty articles from Metacrun.ch as well as our weekly Metaverse Top Ten and regular NFT top 5.

The sheeples of metaverse, web3 and all that have lost their collective minds about AI this year and it’s only February! Rather than do what everyone else is doing, I wanted to take a close look at the art of fashion through the eyes of AI. Or more importantly, what can Yayoi Kusama teach us about lasting creativity in a world of transient crap? Doing the Polka How does an artist move? Is it a graceful process of medium like a swan or is it fleeting like a butterfly tasting the sweetness of flowers and travelling through? Yayoi Kusama, through a lifelong connection from 'rijin'sho', or depersonalisation syndrome, was able to weave together the traditional rulesets of Japanese painting but used the hallucinatory effect of rijin’sho by developing a system of metaphor through self-imposed oppression towards the fluidity of freedom. She compared her unique polka dot style of art as the sun “which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity.” Born in 1929, Yayoi Kusama travelled through France from Tokyo before landing in the US at a time when the avant-garde movement, in New York at least, was on the rise again. Taking her cue from Georgia O’Keeffe and Claes Oldenburg (and following a couple of incidents involving Claes and Warhol) Yayoi Kusama focused secretly on her metaverse. The year is 1963. The Mirrorverse Mise en abyme is an effect where a copy of an image is formally placed onto an identical image to create an infinite sense of a story inside a story, as opposed to facsimile. We want to know why—and we want to know how the story exists on multiple levels or multiverses, let’s call them metaverses. It is persistent. So if we are to take the idea into our 2023 philosophy of the metaverse, not only does mise en abyme tick the boxes, but Yayoi Kusama’s Mirror/Infinity dating back to the early/mid-60s is playing with our spatial awareness. She is giving us a platform to explore an openness or a transparency of vision a little like web3, she is providing us with the tools to discover—in this case, it’s our eyes. Mirrored glass, like a monitor, gives way to “complex infinity mirror installations, purpose-built rooms lined with mirrored glass contain scores of neon-colored balls, hanging at various heights above the viewer.” Are we in it or experiencing it? This “illusion of a never-ending space” is distracting and comforting at the same time. Like playing Journey but living in Flower, or moving through Decentraland but tending to your space in Farmer’s World. It’s a shared experience between the artist, you and those who stand beside you in the Mirror/Infinity room. But the metaverse has to live, and that’s why the philosophy of the metaverse is so integral but almost ephemeral to the growth of connection in this space. The metaverse is social, it has to be, it needs people on it to thrive. Yayoi Kusama’s work stands alone, it is infinite and it exists whether you are there or not, some might say a little like the metaverse; that persistence drives the experience, it’s hooky, mostly because it’s real. Are NPCs rolling burritos in the Chipotle metaverse? Nope, or perhaps they are but we don’t care enough to find out. Me, as armchair art critic, rather than with a deep Brian Sewell-esque perspective, would like to hypothesise that it’s imagination that sustains both Yayoi Kusama’s work, and that of the metaverse. It’s an open communication, mmm, open communication. Like, ChatGPT? Well I don’t see anything wrong with applying that to the metaverse, but Yayoi Kusama’s work runs even deeper than that, because it’s also sustaining her, from her mental health to the commoditisation of her work (which got her into a lot of trouble at the Biennale). Oku-zashiki Yayoi Kusama’s work really became prolific when the inside of her vision came out. From the Matsumoto City Museum of Art to Harrods, Yayoi Kusama went mainstream long before I found her. She established her fashion line as far back as 1968 and her dots earned her the legendary Kusama corner in Bloomingdales. But she wasn’t just into dots or spots, but phalli and holes too—paging Rei Kawakubo. But it is her unique relationship with Marc Jacobs which brings us to today. Like the amount of products and works she had produced over 50 plus years, each dot represents something deeper, perhaps a connection to her mental health, or even her prolific creations. When they first collaborated in 2012 through Louis Vuitton where he was creative director at the time: it was fleeting yet graceful, something of a peppering against the depth of branding (Louis Vuitton) through the element of signature (Yayoi Kusama). It was a success, some say largely because of the relationship between Jacobs and Yayoi Kusama. An exhibition of her work was supported by LV at The Whitney, heralding this new age of collabs and drops that we love so much today. The Oku Theory determines the sense of inwardness that we feel and is unique to Japan because of the relevance of siloed industries in that country through village rice fields. In short, the focus of the cottage industry is to support your locale. For me, the relationship that Yayoi Kusama has to everything feels that it has its roots firmly in oku. Her multiportfolio is the essence of inward creation and sustainable development. She is an automaton where every piece of work is both unique yet derivative to her original style. She is a phrase in Mid-Journey or Dall-E isn’t she? But her consistency seems somehow deeper than the dearth of crap that permeates this new AI culture where everyone simply jizzes at the idea of a computer doing all the work. The Brompton Road Robot I spent a week in London: meeting, experiencing and exploring, no, indulging myself in the things that I adore. Video games and the people who make them, the best ramen outside of Nagoya and an incredible exhibition at the V&A. Something that really pissed me off deeply was how suddenly certain influential speakers are desperate for you to know about the importance of AI and its impact on our daily lives, when I had been lecturing on the benefits of machine learning and generative design for fashion, luxury, video games and back in 2020. No one cared. No one would read about it or learn about it. The games industry didn’t want it (except for these guys and I’m very grateful to them.) I had to fight to get an article in MCV/Develop about it. It was a depressing time to be someone creating in this space and not being understood. I walked down a wet Brompton Road last Friday, I’m not much of a fan of Harrods I guess because I’m a Brit living outside of the UK now, it was always the place to aspire to, but that’s just not me. Besides, I'm more of a Fenwick’s of Bond Street girl, have you heard my Brigitte Neilsen story? Ask me about it the next time we meet. Yayoi Kusama, a woman of small stature and at 93 years old, loomed over me like something I had only ever seen in a film or somewhere like the Flying Trunk in Copenhagen. My heart ached. It was beautiful. She leant into the building, standing some 15 metres tall and painted her dots to “[...] fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art,” she wrote this in her autobiography Infinity Net. “I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.” But here on Brompton Road she was free. She was creating something meta and outward, the opposite of oku. As I walked across the street level windows, all artificially lit, I saw her water digital flowers, they gave her joy and like her installations we felt her joy through the transference of infinite mirrors. I was looking into her metaverse and it filled me with so much euphoria. I had one last meeting with her that I needed to experience, it was her. Or, at least, her as an automaton. Carefully crafted like a physical metahuman, we were separated by glass, and she was looking at me, her wig occasionally swinging against the 8hz pulse of the robotic servos and involuntary movements as she painted her dots on the glass. I looked at her, and she at me. Her uncanny valley was absent for this moment as I felt her closeness. I love robots, everyone knows that; but the careful detail executed at the point of our meeting felt as Yayoi Kusama as anything else she’d ever done. This time, with Louis Vuitton again but under Nicolas Ghesquière we feel a little more of the streetwear influence than in the previous collab with Marc Jacobs and yet this spirit of Virgil Abloh could have been as easily created using AI, no? The current mantel for using AI to design looks and creations is lame and limited and this particular collection simply highlights the importance of using the artist herself Yayoi Kusama as the tools for creation rather than a database of terms. My time in London gave me a unique outlook into the world of artistic inference (AI?) that made me feel well and truly inside and outside of all the experiences I consumed. Beyond her reign in this artistic space, I feel as though this is eternally unfinished business, she has built a platform, a metaverse, an infinity mirror for us to perpetually admire Yayoi Kusama’s aesthetic.

You ok hun? Sick of the latest and greatest from CES? Though there are some super announcements about some interesting technological advancements that will be happening in 2023, CES was mostly a flex. We’ve all got a Dall-E and a ChatGPT hangover haven’t we? Look bae, there are some very cool collaborations that will be happening in 2023 and that is something to get excited about. Sound On So let's get this party started with a huge collaboration between Polygon and Mastercard. Smiley Face! They've announced that they're going to launch this web3 accelerator programme, which is aimed at bringing budding musical artists into the spotlight by leveraging web3 technology and other blockchain-based innovations. A mouthful. But is this a long sentence to spell the end of Spotify? Or is this the beginning of a more fluid approach to how musical artists earn money? I, for one, have listened to just maybe one track repeatedly over the course of this weekend (let’s call it white noise or something) and I wonder how many mechanicals that artist earned? I would say if it's through Spotify, not very much. Perhaps this Polygon/Mastercard collab will give artists the opportunity to develop themselves a little bit more financially. With Mastercard as the wind in their sails? Possibly. With Polygon? Definitely, because Polygon is all about web3 and that means only one thing: disruption and god knows we need it. The rise of Pixelynx and even Oberhasli show us that we can go beyond labels to new purpose built environments and outlets. “Unsolicited” or “unlicensed” music (which is what we used to call unsigned bands) sounds so sordid when you look back but it could be that this is the push music needs. I'm really interested as to what this looks like from the perspective of ownership. With web three, it's really important to know that nobody owns everything because everybody owns everything; so with this being totally open and transparent. My existential question is, does this collaboration even belong to Polygon and Mastercard? Overall, it's fairly obvious. This is a massive marketing ploy for people to get excited about Mastercard, and er–Polygon. In a world where Dylan can sell his entire back catalogue for a few bob (see what I did there?) but solid artists like tstewart/machinedrum need more plays to get paid - it’s stupid. We have to support musicians and artists more than ever before. It's Not Easy Being Green It's always incredibly depressing when you start the year with yet another greenwashing campaign. I don't know how many times I can bang on about this before someone says “stop being a dick”. If you know anything about me you will know how for the past 3 years I have been talking about how digital can do so much more for design than sample production to landfill can do for climate change. Step forward H&M’s Loooptopia (three ooo’s because, reasons) and forget the greenwashing for a minute because this is some fugly shit. I want to tell you that this is a new immersive virtual experience inside Roblox within an environmental twist but I just went on it and I am here to tell you that it’s a dry old piece of crap. Listen, guys, come on. If you're using the metaverse in 2023, you are going to have to massively gamify everything that you are creating in this space, literally up your game and stop being lazy. Kids do not want to get in on your circularity thing because you are apologising for what you have done to our planet and calling it educating the future. That’s just contrived and rude. But don’t take my word for it - here’s fashion guru Amanda Cosco from Electric Runway: “I think given H&M's history of greenwashing, it's rich for them to say they're educating kids about sustainability. It's like Jeffrey Dahmer giving a lesson on human rights.” That’s the tweet. Life In The Mumverse Imagine what happens when you bring together Jessica Fletcher and the BBC well, you bring out what is obviously the kiddy version of what the metaverse is. They've been to see CES this week, and they're really excited to tell you that “where cartoon-like 3D representations of everyone will walk around, and talk and interact with others”, oh, and, “it doesn’t yet exist”. Tired old BS from an organisation who has better things to do than regurgitate Newsround. I mean, everything, literally everything has been shoehorned into this article. From Snow Crash to The Sandbox, Louis Vuitton, Nike, Coca Cola: everybody's mentioned in here. And in 2023, I think after three years of talking about it, everybody should know what the metaverse is now, because they all have opinions about it as well. A lot of people think it's crap. A lot of people think it's the power of good. I think the BBC has to stop talking a complete pile of shit and start focusing on the stuff that affects the business of the metaverse and how it is impacting one of the greatest shifts in technology employment over the last maybe 40 years if not of all time. It’s cute that Tom Ffiske is featured in this article, because he’s lovely. Inclusive, yes, but it’s almost Legz Akimbo levels of inclusivity. Abe Simpson’s, Savage Advice The former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says “crypto is too dependent on the greater fool theory to be a desirable investment”. One of the architects of today’s debt economy, Alan is supposedly the voice of a generation, but obviously, it's not this generation. Thank you for the subprime scandal and I appreciate that you feel crypto is scammy (!) but I think you're conflating various separate points, just like I’m doing now. One important point that cannot be denied is the new economy, and the other part of this is about rip off merchants who pump and dump – that’s the fool theory. But these things are two very different beasts. No one's going to disagree with Alan about FTX, it was a complete sham but other crypto exchanges and economies are available for you to study and understand that clearly aren’t. There are some fantastic opportunities inside the cryptoverse and what Greenspan has done here is combine some sets of information that are either not in line with his thinking or a new economy that he is not a part of. Alan, put down your copy of Atlas Shrugged, you can be a part of this, we will happily have you. But something has to give if we are going to prepare our vision of the future in line with our designs on technology. The Big Four Mckinsey is very keen to have the last word in anything metaverse and with good reason, some of the biggest companies in the word rely on their safe pair of hands approach to business consultation. I love reading about metaverse business. I devour each printed line because it’s my business. So this particular story had me salivating at four key terms “reach its full potential”, I’m just joking, I mean the bit after that: “devices (augmented reality/virtual reality, sensors, haptics, and peripherals); interoperability and open standards; facilitating platforms; and development tools.” Hopefully you lot at the back are keeping up, but this means that your metaverse needs more metaverse. I wrote an open standard in 2021, are you using it? Most luxury creators are. What are you contributing to the inclusivity of this fine multiverse? Please don’t say VR goggles because I swear I meme the lives out of you all this week. But think about companies like Teslasuit, or Nak3d, or even tune into my Metacrun.ch meets this week where I talk to Justin Edwards of Verse Digital where he talks about middleware as being one of the most important things about the metaverse. Make Your Own Entertainment WTF Man City. Let me set the scene. In 2021 and 2022 everyone, yes, everyone built metaverses that no one needed or asked for. It's really surprising that businesses were able to sustain themselves in a world where people can just change their minds and close the laptop lid, because most metaverses are about as fun as wading through a field of wet cow poo. However, slippy hill takes no prisoners. Look, first FIFA and that disastrous world cup metaverse and now Manchester City's having a go at it. They've created an official video with virtual avatars running around the stadium. WTF is this? Surely this is just a pants Football Manager? So why doesn't Sony just commision the good Football Manager in the metaverse for everyone to participate in rather than the partisan footy walled garden of fanship? Isn’t the whole purpose to virtually destroy the virtues of the opposing team? Then WTF is this exactly? Can we get Miles Jacobson on the line please? NOW? That’s enough metaverse for this week, I’m off to compare my DNA with a banana.

Bored though I am sure you are of the latest and greatest blowing smoke up the arses of everything irrelevant to you - you don’t need a brand new god, do you? You need something a bit more focused and covered as well as backed by an actual need rather than something that just showed up via press release to some hack’s inbox. Here are a few of my big predictions for 2023. G-Commerce Everything internet is forming a critical mass of primordial sludge, don’t you think? From Amazon to Alibaba, there’s much choice and not a lot of substance, eh? Everyone worth a shit is going off to do their own thing leaving Jeff and Jack fueled with stodge. These marketplaces are like one big product coma. 20 years ago when life was paced by the sounds of Linkin Park and the last vestiges of Two Guys and a Girl (whatever happened to Ryan Reynolds?)—e-commerce was the god of all things. Fast forward to 2023 and we’re frankly embarrassed by having to scroll through screens and screens to fill our shopping carts with utter gubbins. I always bemoan that I can spend an hour reading Vogue and nothing happens but adverts until page 100-and something and yet I can play COD4 for like 8 hours and no one sells me anything. I think that's going to really change this year. Weird digital only dress design aside for a moment (because no one cares about metallic wings) it’s true that e-commerce is trying to put more investment into 3D images than the Reader’s Wives' grainy and intangible images of yore, but it’s not enough. G-Commerce is coming to change your lives. I talked about her before, but Rinat Homossany Perry is the vanguard of game commerce, even inventing the term G-Commerce. Her company Nak3d is revolutionising how we buy products by creating a solution of not only deep learning but also physical-digital-physical full-cycle product listing and sales. She believes this is the future of products not just for sale but also for development “this is going to change the way we buy forever, but also how we sell: brands have been lazy and gen z aren’t into that style of infinite scrolling to get to the good stuff. Why go to a webstore when you can buy in-game. In ALL games all at the same time?” It’s hard to argue with sense. Direct-To-Avatar through companies such as Ready Player Me has been mooted for a while now, but it’s still so limited because items and avatars are not as interoperable as they could be. And let’s be honest, Jeff and Jack are still doing fine, save for a massive 2023 layoff sesh over at Amazon; they don’t need next gen ideas to make a mil do they? The Dégustation Destination My next prediction is food, and drink! Because we eat with our eyes, we need to get a little bit closer to what it is we're buying. We went through a situation in the pandemic where we're living off bags of rice and whatever was in the cupboard, and we were ordering things online and we were getting them delivered to us only for us to waste those things. Lifestyle is so big in 2023 that I’m not sure this tiddly article will cover everything happening. During the pandemic, which is where you think food and drink would have been massive, was really, really clunky. No one knew what to do. A few big thinkers that I spoke to last year in the Wine in Web3 podcast had managed to keep their heads above water by doing online or Zoom tasting. It was a revolution for its time but it has evolved! Massively. Picture the scene, you are in the metaverse, you can visit a winery or vineyard and watch your wine being made, virtually of course. Or, you can go to a bar, select a wine that you like the look and description of and BAM! It’s delivered to your door as a sample, along with an NFT or delivered to your wallet to redeem the real thing. You can socialise and discuss without the divide and conquer of whatever metaverse you should be on. We, the consumers will choose. That’s not all. Supermarkets are getting into the metaverse too. Yeah, yeah, that Walmart thing was cool, but what I told you that you could examine digital twins of your fave foods before you put them in your basket? And if you could do that without leaving your desk, or scrolling through endless grocery lists and categories, what if it was more organic than that? Look out for Edeka, Tesco and Whole Foods as just three food giants who will take the mantle of lifestyle-to-technology in a big way from this year. Cash/Crypto/Collectibles R.E.A.M Why have we put up with a complete shower of crypto bellends for so long? Following the rules of a bunch of same-faced twits has been a total drain on everything we have done since Satoshi was a mere lad. We don't know who they are, so why have we bought into everything that they are doing? Where’s the choice? Where are all the women? Guys, guys, it’s 2023. Can we please start to look to a future where wallets are becoming a bit more synonymous with who we are, rather than who or what we aspire to be? 2023 might indeed be the year of the fully integrated wallet. I’m banking on it, and you should too. Has anybody tried Metamask? Barf! It's absolutely dreadful (that’s just my opinion, I know). I'm not just an early adopter, I'm actually a user of things and I absorb and use things like you wouldn't believe; so the more you design for someone like me or even my mum, the better chance you have of someone like me being loyal to you. Oh loyalty! Loyalty points, coffee stamps, Shein login rewards: those types of things are really important to me. I want to be able to consolidate everything, whether it's my NFTs, or my foreign currency, crypto or gil balances or whatever. If you’re anything like me, you should probably keep your eye on the next 12 months because there are some killer products coming onto the marketplace to satisfy everything wallet-related. Solo Wallet is the mother of all wallets. I spoke to Andrew Deeley about why he thinks we need this everything-wallet. “Wallets aren’t made for people like you and me, they’re complicated, insecure, unstable and code bloated. We designed something for our mums and sisters, something that will take us through life rather than through next week. Think of the wallet as a passport, to everything.” Lockdown (no, not that) My next prediction for 2023 is cybersecurity. God we’re lazy aren’t we? No one can be arsed to use passwords anymore and yet, every hacker worth a shit has all your details in their watertight database ready to send you penis-enlargement emails until the end of time. When we have been rushing towards getting to a place where people can adopt whatever it is that has been created to make our lives easier: but we’ve missed some crucial steps because we are idiots. And now we've an opportunity, but not necessarily a breather, to refine some of those things from the perspective of protecting ourselves and people online. Some very serious laws that are coming into operation over the course of the next couple of years and as techmakers, we have to get our collective houses in order. We can't go around like we have been for the past few years with this devil may care attitude in the metaverse. The catastrophe over at Epic/Fortnite has taught us that we have to actually care about the types of people that are on our servers: who is in our worlds? How are we protecting and looking after them? So I think cybersecurity is going to be a really big prediction for 2023 or so. Don’t Call It A Comeback My final prediction is the return of the NFT. What’s that you say? It never went away? Yeah I agree. But some folks are snobs. They don’t want to call non-fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens any more for fear of being cast into the world of those beastly crypto bros. The word to your mother at CES is metaverse, and at the WEF last year it was NFT so how about we call the comeback a digital collectible? Maybe. But certainly it is coming back with one sure-fire demand: it has to have UTILITY or it is nothing. Utility, the state of being useful, profitable or beneficial; that’s what it means. Even Donald Trump knows that. NFTs/digital collectibles/tokens/whatever will start to permeate literally everything that we do, and not just metaverse anymore. If the metaverse is becoming something that's more of a service tool (talk to Verse Digital), I predict NFTs are going to be more of a utility tool. So if I go to the cinema to watch the next Avengers movie, then perhaps I get an animated, digital collectible from that meeting, then, viewing that I can trade or gain more utility from as time goes on. It feels very 2022 doesn’t it? I mean, I developed a perfect standard for that which is still being used back in 2021, and yet, people are still trading jpegs. This year is going to be filled with new stuff, a rebrand of some old stuff and more importantly: a lot of us. Because it’s us that makes this stuff survive. The more we use it, the more we want it, and the more we need it, that thing becomes a part of us, and that means great design—it’s a good rule of thumb for any prediction—if we can’t live without it, or we forgot about we used to do things before it, that makes for a pretty good product. What do you think? Do you agree? Why not head over to our Telegram and Discord for a conflab right now? You can also leave comments in all our articles. Happy new you, readers!