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Welcome grapple fans to another fascinating instalment of “Lives of the Tech Bros” - think Sunset Beach meets Tomorrow’s World, I’m pitching it to Netflix. Can you believe that it’s only the third day of a new year, let alone a new month and already the world of the metaverse and all its bits and pieces are looking like a 1kg box of broken biscuits from Iceland. Don’t despair though, there’s a lot of hope around the corner and this year in Metacrun.ch we’ve got some awesome sauce of top guest blogs, salt-tastic articles and interviews with some of the coolest and clueless in the world of metaverse, web3, blockchain and everything. Let’s get this year started! Virtual Insanity I don’t often open my news feeds to a WTF news entry because let’s be honest, Metacrun.ch only send me WTF news to report on. I have to say that I was more than surprised at the downturn of VR headsets over this previous quarter. What the hell is going on? I’ll tell you what, choice vs purchasing power. It’s obvious isn’t it? You’ve either got loads of dough to blow on a headset you will use twice, or you have not enough choice to suit your limited budget. VR headsets are seriously expensive and for 20-mins-at-a-time action, it’s really not cutting it is it? I think that this emergent tech craze needs to take a long look at itself: 1. Do we need more stuff? 2. And is that stuff any better than the last wave of stuff we had? 3. What happened to AR FFS? It was supposed to be so much more than Pokémon Go. 4. And Apple glasses? Do me a favour. The metaverse is so much more than VR. We can have one without the other and we should have more choice. Who gets to tell us that without VR we have no metaverse? The shortsightedness of these supposed tech *leaders* is not lost on me for I have been surrounded with such madness since we started using this term. Why don’t we start listening to use cases or leaders who have strong use cases in this space like Esther O'Callaghan (she’s building a metaverse for future careers) or Yahaha which is a low-code and free UGC builder — no headset required to get going, just a load of passion. That’s much more news than a 2% drop in sales. You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) It’s so weird that the metaverse is going through a weird Schrodinger's Cat phase. Unknown as to whether it is dead or alive, speculators are both betting on it and casting it into the sea at the same time. It’s very refreshing that one really good thing has come out of it: gamification. When I first started talking about it back in 2019/2020 my hope would be that the metaverse would be a kind of gamemeta, a world that you can live in but not exactly be forced into playing inside – a narrative construct that lives alongside the action. I had always created game worlds with the idea that the player could do both, it’s game design 101. However, lately, the metaverse being this behemoth of ego and vanity rather than what the purists believe it to be, has been a wasteland of failed ad campaigns. Why? The tragedy of the metaverse is that the ad-revenue needed way more cowbell than advertisers were willing to pay, and in the end, as Digiday states in this excellent overview, the metaverse is becoming the Leo Johnson of technology, when it should be “A safer, more understood space, where this is scale and opportunity,” says Sarah Salter, global head of innovation at the WPP agency Wavemaker. Unless developers embrace the gaming aspect that powers the metaverse (the meta for heaven’s sake) it will be an empty husk of what was once opportunity. Most brands don’t get gamification but in 2023 they will have to get with it or die trying. A Good Year For The Broses Living with my parents was a kind of weird Royal Tenenbaums hell until I was able to take my entire grindcore collection and myself into a small house in the middle of Mansfield. I was 19. I had tried to leave home several times before but no dice. They kept finding me. However, I was not a billionaire. I am still not a billionaire, I’m a billionaire of treasured death metal possessions but you get the picture. Darren Nguyen however, loves living at home with his folks and we love him. The 25 year old has just posted after-tax profits AU$10.41 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021. How did he do it? Well, he traded AU$2.98 billion worth of crypto over the 12-month period. Not too shabby, but did he tidy his bedroom? Did he sweep the drive? Did he take the dog for a walk 3 times a day, once before school and the rest on a stalking exercise to check out the hot guy with the VW beetle down the road? No. He’s a billionaire. I still have all my Napalm Death records, but I hunger for someone to do my laundry. I Want It Now It’s the New Year and already there’s some thawing of this dreadful crypto winter (even if we’re stuck in a strange winter IRL). From the perspective of Metaverse and gaming tokens, it could be a kick ass year. Let me rephrase that. If I have my way it will be a massive year for game currencies. If I tell you that APE and AXS are having a moment, it’s nice! Let’s just enjoy it. I actually half-love it, like when you say you love chocolate but you’re on your eighth bar today. To be honest, neither coins excite me massively. This type of coin or token associated with weirdness and instability can’t sustain, that’s just my opinion. But in contrast, according to this article, at least, the market cap is only up around 1.6% in the last 24 hours anyway. So what's the big deal? Well, ApeCoin recently finalised its special council elections, which was to give five people, five Willy Wonka-style golden tickets to an empire that's already like the Chocolate Factory but this ApeCoin represents the utility and governance which underpins Otherside, which is the metaverse project from those fun BAYC folks. How is that going? Meanwhile, we're all really really excited for Square Enix who have doubled right down on blockchain and web3 gaming in their annual New Year letter. A bit like when Jean-Claude Van Damme and Jean-Claude Van Damme starred together in that kickboxing flick. Square Enix’s news has got to be one of the biggest things that has happened not only in the last few days, but in the last few years. That’s not all. A bunch of incredible game studios and services are going to release all manner of tokens, currencies and joy to show these stupidheaded corporate console nutters what they are missing. Watch what Nefta.io (who was one of our Metacrun.ch 2022 winners) and Oasys do with their IP this year. Hopefully this will bear fruit enough to change gaming forever. We live in a time of hope. Call Me I've heard recently about how people want to call NFTs by another name, like biscuits, maybe not disco biscuits. But anyway, the point is, NFTs are on dodgy ground name-wise. Thanks to all those douches who connected the scammy nature of pump and dumps to the wonder of utility driven experiences. Look, cryptocurrency was really unstable and a little bit weird last year but it’s 2023 now. People don't want to pay money for overpriced pictures of apes, and they want to use NFTs as something of use. This beautiful article in Hacker Noon is ace. What gets covered in this article is everything I harped on about for ages, however, it takes a man to tell it to us straight I guess. I have had 2 conversations about NFTs this week and it;’s only Tuesday. If you don’t know, well, I’ll tell you that as well as being Salt Cellar In Chief at Metacrun.ch, I have a great little NFT consultancy which has produced some of your most favourite collectibles of yesterday, today and tomorrow with everyone worth a shit. Do you know why? It’s because I believe in the awesome power of how NFTs can leverage everything. So let's start the year with something really beautiful, and explore the prospect of being able to earn that Dolce & Gabbana bag rather than just going out and buying it and then assuming that we're going to get the NFTs. Then, let's think a little bit further about how we can integrate those NFTs into something that's more interoperable because I think that's what's really lacking in what is being created. Sign O' The Times I promise that 2023 is not going to be a year of kicking Meta when it's down. But let’s be really honest: Meta had a terrible 2022, financially and in the press, it has suffered greatly as a brand. I can't pinpoint just one case of suffering. I think it’s fairly obvious to everybody. What I think is important is that Meta still has something that is really important: TECHNOLOGY. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it. $10bn getting wiped off your valuation doesn’t detract from 20 years of tech from platform, to ads to data, to AI and VR. Don’t be silly billies, think like business people. Meta is a mine of knowledge, not a person, but a hive of thousands. Though I don’t believe Meta can deliver an internet future worthy of our hopes and dreams, I suspect we’ll be building it on some of their technology. I would love to see Mark Zuckerberg taking some responsibility for what happened in 2022 like a good CEO. It's always a big disappointment when you over promise and under deliver. However, wake up sheeple, this is a sign of the times. Too many technology companies are doing this these days, and they're getting away with it too. Especially at VC levels of pitching. I talked about it in my final 2022 article for Metacrun.ch, and I stand by every word, so if you haven't read it, you should probably take a look at it. It's so important these days that we don't find ourselves in a situation where we just bullshit through what it is that we have developed to try and get to the good stuff because we think that's what it is that you want. That isn't how it should be. What we should be doing is focusing on what our strengths are and doing them well. That’s how you stop haemorrhaging employees, profit and product.What Mark Zuckerberg needs right now is probably some very good advice than a good kicking. That's enough metaverse for this week.

Welcome back pop-pickers to the only news site that counts when it comes to matters of er, meta(verse). It’s my job to go deep like a navy seal into the sometimes absurd world of the metaverse and web3 then report back on it. I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some solid work in the metaverse this year - as well as some absolute pony. So here we go! Our inaugural Metacrun.ch Awards: just in time for the hot, sweaty mess of climate change holidays. Seasons greetings crunchers! BEST METAVERSE Spatial.io Here’s why: A good metaverse is a versatile one. Anything that can be plugged in without breaking the scene should be plugged in. As with all these experiences, of course, there is always room for improvement. The one improvement I would beg for Spatial is a bit more UGC beyond Sketchfab please. ONE TO WATCH AWARD YAHAHA The rise and unstoppable rise of YAHAHA this year has been amazing. This is the metaverse that keeps on giving, Yeah, they're young and new but they are coming for you. Next year it would be great to see more connective experiences but with the amount of low-code joy on offer, we’ve got plenty of time. COMING SOON AWARD Byte City This metaverse is sooooo top secret and anonymous that I can’t even find a contact there willing to give me more info. So sadly, there’s not even a link to tempt you. Stealth is always a great sign isn’t it? Well, here’s something to take away with you - Byte City has gamified their entire experience in a way that I haven’t seen for quite some time. Get to know. BEST GAME NFT Nefta.io Land NFTs and Tokenomics for Medieval Empires Straight out of the traps before we could say web3 games, Nefta.io was everywhere this year. The great thing about what they’re doing with Medieval Empires is taking the headache of the backend away from the wonder of design. Medieval Empires is a wonderful web3 game, in my opinion, because of the finesse of the land NFT and tokenomics system by Nefta.io. BEST WEARABLE NFT Virtual Gear From Adidas This is the best of the best from a company who is clearly not afraid to experiment. Children, look, this is how NFTs become sustainable in a jpg market. Okay, okay, Adidas have a way to go - that’s why I’m here - but the Hype Williams styling of PFDs (Personal Flotation Device) for your PFP is where it’s at. Luxury has so much to learn from streetwear - the more things change eh? GOLDEN SALTPOT AWARD FOR WORST NFT NFTiff by Tiffany & Co. Speaking of luxury. This is trash. It’s derivative hokum from a company desperately trying to stay relevant. First we had the #notyourmotherstiffany campaign and now this? It’s bad enough that NFTiff featured cryptopunks which are soooo 2020 that we were also subjected to it selling out in 20 minutes. For what? Selling out is the word (to your mother).

A Reflection Of A Year In The Messaverse What a mess this year was! Crypto crashes, scammy messiahs, useless fashion, and NFTs with an identity problem. The metaverse has had a few growing pains it must be said. I wanted to go over some of the highs and crashing lows of a year that was much the same as 2021 and 2020. What’s the problem with everything metaverse? It’s obviously not you, dear user, you just want to dive in…. It’s ego. And ego is killing the metaverse. Deja Vu-lnerability We started 2022 with a great deal of hope. The hope, centred solely on the fact that we were going to do something really special this year, the likes of which have not been tried before. My tongue is planted firmly in my cheek as I write this because only one or two things happened in actualité. As I sit here in December, I'm still waiting for that special thing to happen. What started in January, which was hopes and dreams, managed to get crushed massively. My take is that a lot of it was focused on overreaching expectations, and those expectations were literally too great. When you're developing systems, mechanics, and gamified experiences, they don't just come out of thin air. They have to come from a place of a great deal of thought after all games are borne out of the metaphysical. Late 2021, early 2022: I was working on a platform that was destined to fail because of leadership. And because it wasn't that good, everybody had to walk around with shit-eating grins, pretending that this thing was going to be amazing. Ego is the albatross around the necks of everyone trying to build better social spaces because social is such a Palo Alto buzzword isn’t it? Previously it was simply CEO psychopathy, in games at least, the industry was (and still is) filled with psychos. Men, mostly men in my experience, who, drunk on VC money, trail a blaze (that’s the right way to say it) through the world of games like Dexter: killing projects and hiding bodies in the name of brohood. But now it has bled into the world of the metaverse because everyone wants to announce their project as “the first metaverse to raise abandoned ponies” or “the first metaverse to use walkpads to power the adventure” (yes, this is really a thing). If you have been following Metacrun.ch for a while now you will know that I’m salty, and a bit bitchy about your silly metaverses, but I don’t have an arrogance especially because I don’t know everything and I want to learn. Of course, the things I do know about I will fight you over until you die on that hill. I like the things that I really like and I am impassioned by those things. So it's always very shocking to me to come across experiences that fail, just on account of someone's blind unabated ego. And this is becoming more and more habitual in technology, some might say it was always so. Tony Montana's Living Room As tech lovers and visitors to this space, we've seen quite a deal this year of projects that have failed catastrophically. Did they fail because of the value offering or because the leadership was weirdly messianic? How did FTX go for a burton? It was scandalous and really unnecessary after the “lessons learned” from TerraLUNA. It was already too late. I regularly joke with a close friend of mine in technology about an event we went to at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year. We found ourselves gathered in a small room where the bar was free (YASS!) and the wine was awful but flowing. This was an NFT launch for a wine brand, or, as I joked with my friend, was it really a wine launch for an NFT brand? As it turns out, the latter was true. The wine tasted awful, but the CEO’s announcement was the worst. He referred to his employees, some of whom are POC, as Sherpas. I asked my friend, “did he just say that?” My friend nodded. Suddenly the wine tasted even more disgusting. It was the same day that a semi-famous TV presenter actually disappeared into the toilets mid-conversation with me because she had an offer of coke. I wonder what she needed to do to access the goods? This is the metaverse, crypto, web3, games and all that and all of us mere mortals feel like a square peg in a round hole in here. We’re just trying to make it fun and accessible for our users, but wow the coke, the wine, the egos we have to cut through to get there is wrong. The FTX scandal (and that weird wine experience in Davos) follows and will lead to just another load of experiences in this industry vertical that seem to be nothing more than vanity projects. I myself created a Spatial room for Thinking Heads, but for sheer fun and to learn a bit more about integrations, I turned it into a bit of a vanity project. However, I see a growing concern of so many projects in the metaverse burning up server space to satisfy someone’s LinkedIn post or comment. They have no idea how they're gonna get people into the experience. They have no idea how they're going to retain the user. When I think about what it is that we create, I lean on really fantastic words from marketers, growth hackers, and ad campaign managers, and I try not to listen to the words of CEOs or thinkers who have created absolutely nothing but words in this space. I'd rather spend some time fucking up with a great deal of strong evidence that supports my claim, rather than fucking up off the back of something that has crashed catastrophically because a CEO was banging one of his assistants at a Christmas party and she just happened to mention that she’d love her own metaverse. That IS a true story. The View From Nowhere How do we get out of this weird groundhog and what is happening right now to help us grow our (excuse the pun) horizons? Some really great metaverses launched last year that will develop over time to be really functional I think. And it’s the functionality that we have to put first here. Metaverses should offer the following: Integrations - can I plug things in? Flexibility - can I take it anywhere with me? Open - can I just enter without sign-up? (there will of course be natural limitations such as age restriction) Interoperability - can I move my inventory between worlds or metaverses? All these things should be possible. The latter is a difficult one to surmount, but that’s nothing more than an ego to climb. Most metaverses, games studios and publishers are jealous gods with walled gardens the size of their egos. What are they making up for with size I wonder? Anyway, I’ve done so much research into this space that I can conclude this is about networks and money rather than scenes and dimensions. Look at Ready Player Me, they have had an incredible year but what are they actually doing to drive interoperability forward? Well, quite a lot, but what is holding them back are all the platforms that wish they were Ready Player Me. And while MetaMask is sitting pretty now, their model and UX are both ugly and limited to crypto bros only for the most part. We expect some mainstream products next year that allow us to move seamlessly through e- and g-commerce, cloud storage, games and fashion. Fashion, that has to be interoperable doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? For a few years now, I have been oft-quoted and have banged on and on about digital clothing, fashion and wearable being interoperable and more importantly less wasteful. I’ve told you a million times that I have always been too fat for a Chanel jacket but I can rock one in the metaverse. I’ve waxed lyrical about wearing digital fashion for a while before buying them, and you are telling me these things like you just thought them up? Yes, we know you have a wonderful range of metallic wings that I will never wear IRL but I can’t wear them in Final Fantasy Crisis Core either so what’s the point in buying them at all? Think about it, fashionistas - your designs are mostly crap. NFTs need a rebrand, don’t they? God knows they need something. It’s not actually the NFTs that suck, I mean, they do, a lot of them are pointless but it’s the smart contracts isn’t it? They are simply awful. We need something that provides much more utility but we need to reflect the use case with an interoperable (that word again) smart contract. I developed that standard back in 2021 to explore the possibility of what NFTs could do and how they could be used as much more of a digital asset class, than, say, buying something off your local stock exchange thing. Listen, I’m 49, and even I don’t quite get stocks and shares so why would a 20-year-old? Think about it, financial idiots, and young people want a valuable stock or investment that reflects the hard work they have put in. For them, an MP5 NFT containing the memory of 10m kills from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is going to be way more valuable than a 20c sin stock. We need to move with the times and right now? We’re stuck. What do we think about crypto? At a time when everything has value because the value of everything is dying in real life, it’s great that we have something paradoxical to lean on. I worked in blockchain and crypto years ago, and I remember a colleague of Transformers Universe telling me back in 2011 that he’d invested in Bitcoin. I wonder where that guy is now? My take on crypto is simple, it has to get even more virtual to get trusted. Supercell, SYBO, Rovio, Activision, EA, and Ubisoft are all pioneers of solid game economies. Game economies are the very foundation of banks and financial markets of the future. I stopped using cash for obvious reasons during the pandemic, and almost a year out of the final lockdown, I still don’t use cash. We don’t live in a cash-based system anymore. We live in a world of Revolut, Wise and Neon, these banks rely upon Forex to make dollars on the ETH: as we move forward we will find our favourite game coins listed alongside the Won, the Baht, and the Franc. Is it so hard to believe that we can trade or exchange GP? Casting a predictive view over the next 12 months, the sensible money is going to go into tools, and the silly money will continue to go into vanity. Through amazing analytics we can really measure meaning against money in 2023, it’s pretty exciting, don’t you agree? Finally, the racketeers, ripoff merchants and rogues will be exposed as the charlatans they always were. Yes, we need this analytical system to allow choice to navigate us through what might continue to be a bit useless and messy. A messaverse. The Last Of Us We absolutely have to change our thinking about the metaverse and all it has to offer us in 2023. I will continue to be curmudgeonly about everything in this industry vertical because no one else will hold you to account but me. But we will be ultimately left behind if we don’t move the hell away from those things we held so dear during web1 and web2: those gifts are sent from egos. We can’t do that anymore, we have to focus on moving the change toward the people, you know like how much joy we put into music with MySpace? Why did we drop it for another social media site? We did it because that social media platform had evolved beyond MySpace. Why are we hanging on to old things? Why are we so nostalgic about the 00s? Because we’re afraid, because recent egos have proven that their products cannot be trusted. That this brave new vision of the future that they promised was not led by women, but men! How much has the metaverse given us that we can identify with? I don’t recognise a single element of myself in Meta, BAYC, Roblox, HAPE or Metahero, but I can assimilate to Star Atlas, My Neighbor Alice, and ByteCity. Demographics aside, a lot of these strange metaverses require the end user to spend money (or virtual currency from fiat exchanges) before you even get to the joy. In the case of Meta, the end user has to spend actual fiat cash on a headset. No one needs to spend money on getting into the metaverse - Decentraland and The Sandbox are the OGs of this, and Spatial.io is the current mack daddy. The metaverse is free: it always should be, and we will vote with our digital wallets to find the places that we can recognise ourselves in. I like to talk about our identity when we talk about finding the perfect metaverse, whether we are creating a psychological comfort zone for ourselves or whether we are more casual with who we are, the metaverse must reflect these things in all it does from coins to fashion or we will never find it. Exploration is the causality of curiosity, and vice-versa, can we please build experiences that do something? There’s nothing worse than trying to navigate under or over a dead weight. And can we please move the hell away from throwing VC money at just dudes? There are so many other genders doing absolutely incredible things to shape the future. This year I have felt like a Cartridge in a Code Tree, part connoisseur, part savant, part educator, evangelist, and enlightener. I make experiences, I get my hands dirty, but I’m not a CEO. I write about experiences and I live them, but I’m not your guru. I’ve not really been able to fit into anything, and it gave me quite a lot of pause for thought. But feeling out of place, I realised, isn’t something to cry about, in fact, it’s something to celebrate. All of us are out of place in this weird space! We’re not rich kids with impossible dreams that only VCs can make a reality, we’re actually visitors to this industry vertical: we want to be serviced however we desire and if we like you, we’ll stay, and who knows, we might actually pay.

Ah! What a week it has been in Metacrun.ch. Whilst you pour yourselves a glass of Energon or something equally as cyber, sit back, relax and enjoy the weirdness of the metaverse and all it has to offer lately. Things No One Asked For #431 By the end of this year, we're already knackered. Yet here we are looking at yet another web3 startup aiming to build a non-blockchain decentralised network. WTF why? They've also just closed around more than $20 million. Ho-Ho-Hello? Who is putting their hands in their pockets for a new style of cryptography that no one actually needs? The startup aims to provide a new internet infrastructure for securing storage and data computation. “Companies and competitors can collaborate without passing on key information.” So what you’re saying is that the current cryptographic system of storage doesn’t need the blockchain to work? Yes, we know, it’s called cryptography: but blockchain simply made this more accessible and inclusive, not insecure. The problem, dear crypto bros, is not the product or the infrastructure, the problem, (can you handle it?) is your ego. Your desire to be some kind of big swinging appendage supersedes the user’s right to ask for what they want - you’re telling us that blockchain is broken. You must be joking. Take your McLaren Supercar and GTFO. Your Name's Not Down, You're Not Comin' In It's the end of 2022 and totally the year of the metaverse, but it's kind of obvious to me that, definitely, from an advertising perspective, the whole metaverse thing has gone a little bit crappy - hey, that’s not my words! That’s the words of Billy Huang, who runs a metaverse advertising agency and knows about these things. Ah, what’s in a name, eh? Billy knows. He wants us to close out this Annus Horribilis of Metaverses by focusing on the possibility of rebranding the metaverse. I lolled a bit, but I think that's kind of a cool idea for 2023. I totally agree with what Billy Huang said, but I don’t agree with Brycent, who compares the metaverse to Club Penguin, mate, Club Penguin was waaaaay better than the metaverse can ever be in 2022. What are you on about? Millennials eh? They have the shortest memories. In my opinion, this is simple. Stop bro-ing up your metaverse shills and start building something that I would like, that any teenager would love, and stop creeping us all out with your weird rebrands from Facebook to Meta FFS. A dead space in any media channel is not welcome. We should invite everybody over, but we should invite everybody over to something that is meaningful. The word Metaverse didn't even make it as Oxford English Dictionary word of the year. Goblin Mode did, which is two goddamn words. Hollowverse At a time where there is abject poverty and a lack of inclusivity worldwide, isn't it refreshing to know that Holoride is inviting people, read bros, to enter their weird ride platform? For €699, apparently this is a “revolution in-car entertainment” feels like it’s the metaverse equivalent of Pinky Gloves, and it's as completely stupid. Here are the facts: 1. It’s a software experience requiring a hardware device to run it. 2. You’re not the driver, you're the passenger (it’s important to point that out) 3. It’s “for all the German little children in a position of wealth and privilege” that’s a direct quote. Musik, Non-Stop Warner Music Group has actually been one of the big metaverse movers of 2022. Let’s set the scene: they've got loads of artists worldwide, and they want to be able to find new and interesting opportunities to bring that to the fore. We used to do this back in the day with transmedia and it worked, oh, how it worked. I think it's really fascinating what WMG has planned. So it’s nice to see that they’ve partnered with DressX to bring wearables into their multiverse. That’s nice. To be honest with you, I don't quite get it. I kind of feel that what they've created here is an opportunity to have a bunch of brands in a limited platform. What you should be creating with branding is something that's really interoperable. A brand is something you should be able to take with you. If brands can only exist in places like The Sandbox, but not anywhere else, then we've got a massive problem. Also, and I'm gonna be totally honest with you as somebody that comes from the games industry. The quality of the stuff I see in this article is not that great. Are we saying that the WMG metaverse is akin to Animal Crossing? Because that’s the vibe I’m getting here. Flat 2D items that are aimed at tweens and anime lovers. Not a bad thing, but definitely not interoperable. So I would not really be that interested in augmented reality clothing or anything else in this particular metaverse - give us something open and actually wearable. A little like what we do at Nak3D. What Warner Music Group is doing generally is awesome, but this? Maybe I'm not their demographic. Top Trumps First up, I’ve always wanted this headline. I have a B-headline that is something related to farts, but this one will do. Last week, Donald Trump dropped the b-oh never mind. He launched a massive and hilarious NFT collection. This series of collectible cards are maximum Donald: from Super Don to JR Trumping to Chuck Donnis; he’s delivered. He’s delivered everything we wanted from an NFT collection because it is the most ridiculous collection of all time, and it sold out in less than an hour, making The Donald a wondrous $4.5m in sales. He’s trolling us, and we’re loving it, but what’s really going on here? The NFTs have utility, so there is absolutely no room for me to sledge the former POTUS for being a scammer. Quite the opposite, people have bought these cards for utility. From a round of golf to dinner at Mar-A-Lago, there’s something for everyone if that’s your thing. Of course, it’s annoying, it needles any non-Trump lover to the max, but no one, no one, is more annoyed than Ben Shapiro. To be honest, Ben Shapiro getting annoyed actually makes this story even better, because Ben Shapiro (of all people) has suggested that Donald Trump's NFT collection is “painful and cringeworthy”. Ben, mate, how can you say that The Donald has made something painful and cringeworthy when we’ve not only read, but sat through the podcast of a take down of your work? Sighhhhh. That’s enough Metaverse for this week. Or is it? Whilst I figure out how to put the batteries in this thing why don’t you hang around and pour yourself another glass of something virtual? I’ll be right back!

I’m Kelly Vero, your friendly neighbourhood robot lover. Today, I want to take us beyond the famous Raymond Carver short story collection, the chicken sludge for the soul, from 1981. 1981, of course, was a very good year for science fiction. It was a typical Saturday afternoon when Jack sat down at his computer to catch up with his old friend Tom. Tom had always been fascinated by artificial intelligence, and he was eager to tell Jack about the new chatbot he had been working on. "It's called ChatGPT," Tom explained. "It uses natural language processing and machine learning to converse with users in a way that feels natural and intuitive." Jack was intrigued. He had heard of chatbots before, but he had never used one that was as advanced as ChatGPT sounded. "How does it work?" Jack asked. "It's actually quite simple," Tom replied. "You just type in your message and ChatGPT generates a response based on its understanding of language and context. And the best part is that it learns and adapts over time, so it only gets better as you use it." I asked ChatGPT to start a love story about ChatGPT in the style of Raymond Carver. Could I be more meta? Everybody loves ChatGPT, don’t they? Not forgetting Midjourney or Stable Diffusion. Dall-E? Yes, you lazy gits. But also, everyone loves a good love story - especially at this time of year. Here’s mine. Why Don't You AI? Mostly because you don’t know what it is. So let's start at the beginning with ML. Machine Learning is a field of inquiry that understands a series of questions or commands to improve the performance of something. It’s part of the artificial intelligence fam, but in my opinion, much more of an oracle or database of information storage like a data lake, waiting to be channelled into whatever you want or need. What you are supposed to do with ML is ask questions. Any questions or prompts. From what is Kelly’s favourite colour (it’s not actually pink) to What is the secret of the Grail, who does it serve? (only Sir Perceval knew the answer before he was found, eyes pecked out in a forest). What pops out at the other end of ML is entirely up to what you design for it, what your outcomes are - we call this AI. I like to simplify this further when I talk about AI and ML thus: ML asks the questions, and AI writes the answers. These two work together because they have to, they're stuck together for eternity. Therefore, when you open your chat GPT, what you're effectively getting is a bunch of answers, no wait, the entire world of answers, that relates to whatever it is that you want to write or know. But I have some beef. ML and AI is fascinating, of course it is, but this ChatGPT thing is a bit fascinating, frustrating, and cautionable. It's fascinating because we have made an entire life's work out of creating information. From being born, to AncestryDNA to tax returns. You may turn your nose up at your Fitbit or the GPS locator inside your mobile phone, but this is an information creator. Your footprint from birth to death goes somewhere, usually a database, and though it may not be interesting to everyone, it’s interesting to someone or something. For some websites and social media platforms, they might use this information very wisely to tell you about stuff, and that’s frustrating. The cautionary aspect of how ChatGPT is evolving, is that it's using this information to make you. Or, an unconscious version of you to some extent. Don’t believe me? Read my paragraph about how ML works. You are essentially ML. Let’s at least argue that by asking ChatGPT to create a Raymond Carver inspired short tale about ChatGPT, we have created a query about Raymond Carver and his style of telling stories. Now let’s replace Raymond Carver with Kelly Vero. ChatGPT wants to know everything about how I write before it can produce anything in my style of writing. Therefore, ChatGPT could as easily be me. You’ve got to want bitchy, salty prose though. You’ve got to really want it. Mr ML and Miss AI Can we therefore conclude that ChatGPT could eventually be used to build the most perfect picture of you (or me!) as an instrumental or distanced body and mind? Why not? All of my information already exists in databases and engines worldwide because I wrote the query to the ML by being alive. I also wrote: write this in the style of Kelly Vero, for this Metacrun.ch article, but I’m simply not famous enough, yet. You can be afraid of AI if you want to be, but I think the lid on Pandora's box should have been replaced when the hinges fell off 20 years ago. Remember that ChatGPT is an open system for learning language (and much more). AI is so much more than that half-Kubrick, half-Spielberg monster, and yet the form of AI contains both in equal merits. Artificial Intelligence is completely and utterly malleable and tactile, it's durable and visceral: it is exactly as you want to use it, nothing more, nothing less. Created by the non-profit OpenAI, ChatGPT’s story begins in December 2015. “Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and other investors announced the formation of OpenAI and pledged over US$1 billion to the venture. The organization stated it would "freely collaborate" with other institutions and researchers by making its patents and research open to the public.” Open. I love things in this web3 age that are open and transparent. When everyone is free to use tools, everybody gets control. Everyone is in the driver's seat of knowledge. That’s powerful, isn’t it? It's also recyclable, because don't forget that information creates information. So when AI is developing and creating the answers to the questions that machine learning asks; AI is also capable of creating new questions for ML. This might be the thing that keeps me awake at night actually. You know, AI isn't wasteful. It doesn’t have to be dangerous. As meatsacks, we waste so much of what we create. We leave crap behind on servers, we clog up drives with careless memories, and we don’t move forward. We are the vanguards of nostalgia. If I had a wish for ChatGPT or OpenAI generally, it would be to destroy as it creates, because we can’t let you do that, Dave. We want to control everything, why on Earth would we do a Frank and Dave and destroy everything that we’ve created? What we're doing really with ChatGPT, is just creating more of an opportunity for us to be able to build more servers for more information for HAL, ChatGPT, to read. We’re effectively allowing ChatGPT to the untidiest bedroom in the world, where there are rotten bananas under the bed. That stupid query that you created on a whim in Midjourney, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion, what are you actually going to do with it? Viewfinder Into The Future You are creating crap. No, wait. You are asking bots to create crap. What are we going to do with it? All I've seen so far with Midjourney is people putting stuff on Twitter and LinkedIn, what's the point? It's not exactly going to change the world. It's a crap generator. I read someone extolling the virtues of Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion by saying that Leonardo da Vinci or even Pablo Picasso would have lost themselves in AI art. Really? Really? How? It is the end of times if we start thinking this way. Creativity comes from within, from us. People go to university or art schools to study this stuff, on both sides of the canvas: from either enjoying what it is that they view to creating something that everybody should enjoy. I don't really see that happening with Midjourney and its contemporaries. The best use case for these AI art engines (when the dust settles) is possibly something akin to procedural art environment generation for game and metaverse development. That will enable studios to get to market quickly, and well, because I need more Final Fantasy VII spin-offs than Tetsuya Nomura can currently provide. But what I don't really see is that we will be going to museums of the future, and enjoying some old shit that someone created whilst drunk during their office Christmas party because no one takes their trousers down to photocopy their arses these days. It’s inappropes. After The Algorithm ChatGPT should enable us to create more discoverability through language, culture, inclusion, and accessibility. Remember Yahoo! Babelfish? From 1997 to today, AI has been learning all about language. I have learned to speak Japanese, Maltese, Italian, and even Welsh since 1997 so imagine what AI has been doing with my throwaway chat-up lines? Siri doesn’t listen to everything you say anymore, however. So I’m safe to say “Ich würde gerne mal mit dir frühstücken. Darf ich dich zum Abendessen einladen?” [leave your best vomit gif in the comments]. Let’s be serious, Duolingo has been a runaway success over the last few years. We are a human race, we need social elements and knowledge to survive as well as food. Our brains eat through what we say, hear, write and see. That sounds like something Richard Matheson might write, but you get the idea. I have talked about the opportunities of accessibility and inclusivity extensively through the development of VR and AR, but I do think that there's definitely room to be able to utilise GPT (it stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to enable us to encompass much more accessibility. That way, software will be the ultimate adaptive device - but we have to let it in, trust it, and we have to use it. A lot. The questions have to be asked, and those answers have to guide us. A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to invest in, work on, and later buy, a GPT-3 product, which originally for gamers, allowed them to connect their gameplay progress to a knowledge base. It was like a huge walkthrough that you didn’t need to endlessly scroll through. What we didn’t know at the time was how useful this product could be for enabling people who had visual impairments to be able to truly feel and see and understand how the environment worked inside the game, from checkpoints to game design. If you haven’t heard about the great work that Blind Burners do to help developers create accessible VR/AR and much more, you should check them out. So, what we talk about when we talk about bots is us. What we are prepared to give over to allow machines to understand is probably already transacted upon millions of times, and what we are prepared to pull from that data lake is as far away from Megatron as you can imagine. Robots are not taking over the world. We are. Our dreams, our wishes, and even our deepest darkest secrets are a mere click away from us creating the vision of ourselves in the future. Is that so monstrous?

Everyone is losing their collective minds over the metaverse and reports of its death (which are greatly exaggerated), is it true, or is everyone suffering from a bit of metaverse fatigue? To get to the truth, I’m going to take you on a journey – so if you don’t want to learn anything today, come back another day. But if you’re a thirsty knowledge seeker, read on… Love (ft. Marriage and Divorce) This goddess Venus arrived at the shore after her birth, the shore of which we don't maybe really know. But what we can definitely say about The Birth of Venus by Botticelli is that it represents the context of wedding celebrations. That's generally agreed by art historians worldwide. As one of those dicks who believes that the metaverse is all around us, why shouldn’t that also mean Renaissance art? The reason why I think this painting is so poignant to our current machinations within the metaverse is the wedding; the wedding of stuff and of things. The connection between the seasons, The Birth of Venus, and Botticelli himself. All of these things are married together in a beautiful piece of canvas. Why is that important to the metaverse? It's really simple. This is painted at a time when we're going through a complete load of change in Europe and Italy. Commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici for his cousin Lorenzo de’ Medici, the one they call “il Magnifico”. Lorenzo, the Magnificent one, “was groomed for power, and assumed a leading role in the state upon the death of his father in 1469, when he was 20. Already drained by his grandfather's building projects and constantly stressed by mismanagement, wars, and political expenses, the assets of the Medici Bank reduced seriously during the course of Lorenzo's lifetime.” During this time, many countries were aligning themselves with each other, and many countries were at war with one another. 1474–1477 Burgundian Wars, 1475–1479 War of the Castilian Succession, and 1477–1488 Austrian–Hungarian War. Where kingdoms align, provinces and principalities also fall. The Big Bang Moment Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening inside the metaverse right now. This idea of divine love (or as we call it worship) that is envisioned by these Neoplatonic interpretations (or as we call them, religious philosophies) is now being played out through technology. So the metaverse itself has, in the last 24 hours, found itself lost at sea. Everyone’s favourite metaverse, Roblox, “is still not profitable.” Why? There are plenty of users, that’s not up for debate in this article, so why isn’t it profitable? Is it dying? Is it at war? Any product with competition is always at war, whether they want to admit to it or not. The truth is way more boring than the amount of guys, yes, it was only guys from the VC world chiming in with their opinions. The truth is that it’s probably going through a Big Bang moment. I predicted this months ago, but, as these warring factions of metaverses and money - and these allies of crypto bros and VCs hunker down for their weird winter of scandalous doom-laden messianic tax losses - UGC is crawling, slowly, like one of Zuckerberg’s legless avatars, out of the primordial soup of Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Roblox, to make something bigger and better than we could have ever imagined. And it is through UGC that Roblox might be having a dip in revenue. If you imagine Roblox being Italy in the 1400s – where it isn’t even a country yet – then you can imagine that some of the UGC gaming platforms inside Roblox are probably the Kingdom of Sicily, Piedmont, or Florence. All governed by their own leaders, all controlling their own people and finances. It’s feudal, it’s final. The banks of the kingdoms and city-states are full, ready to fund a war, ready to feed the monarchs like overfed geese. All these little moving parts, all inside something that's bigger – but that doesn't mean that something that's super big is not going to swallow up other things around it: that's just how the universe works. Mappa Mundi The Italy that we know today came to be on 17 March 1861. 384 years after The Birth of Venus. The great general Garibaldi led the inking of the history books following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, “the political and social Italian unification movement, or Risorgimento, emerged to unite Italy, consolidating the different states of the peninsula and liberating it from foreign control.” That’s real life. How do we work to bring the metaverse into a unified place? I have a few ideas. Some metaverses will die. That’s a fact. Some metaverses will die because they can’t sustain a living. Platforms that provide nothing, (or provide an obvious entourage of idling NPCs – keep pretending they are users, guys). Platforms that are devoid of story, activity, or raison d'être won’t survive, and I won’t shed a tear. My criteria for a good metaverse is retained by the basic stuff of life that every video game has had to live through: Solid User Experience - is it aimed at me? What is this experience bringing to the brand/client that they haven't in other tools and collaborative experiences? Highlight these things. Do they keep the community alive outside of the in-metaverse experience? Where are the users? Are they measurable? Are these numbers easily communicated? So which Metaverse is doing really well? Which Metaverse is on life-support? At Metacrun.ch, we’ve started a weekly top ten to try and find clues and seek leads on how the metaverse will evolve. That’s not all, I believe that the metaverse has to change, or it will die, but it isn’t ready for the use case that UGC brings, not at all. Why aren’t you ready, guys? It has no plan for interoperability. And it’s greedy. The VCs want a return for their $50-odd million, in order to mint that cash fast, it’s going to have to attract big names that it can’t deliver upon but that it will promise to the VCs anyway. The ouroboros will continue until the snake has eaten itself whole, and the metaverse will collapse in on itself. In this week’s newsletter, I wrote about the financial opportunities of the metaverse through the eyes of Mckinsey – depending on who you ask, it varies between $1 trillion and $5 trillion – so there’s plenty of money to go around if it’s greed you’re feeding. But you will fail if you don’t or refuse to understand two key things: UGC is the most profitable business case for any metaverse, so why keep trying to build one when there are so many that have literally nothing going on but prettiness? Or, you could use my argument that a platform without a game development roadmap does not make a metaverse make. Merge with any current metaverse and you can bet that the metaverse CEO, who will most definitely be a guy, will be glad of the business – god knows they have no users and zero content. With a little care for the users, and some tools to develop action, the metaverse can stay with us, just like Botticelli’s masterpiece of devotion, through the power of people, and the rise and fall of kingdoms until the end of this world.

You might be forgiven for thinking that absolutely nothing is happening in the metaverse this week. You would be WRONG! As I fiddle around with sticky bits of code hanging off the edges of my digital gift box and glug the last remnant of this batch of Glögg (as opposed to glog), there's a load of stuff happening this week, and it’s all stitched up like a snuggly patchwork quilt (you’ll see). So like that scene in Pretty Woman where Richard Gere opens that box of Harry Winston diamonds for Julia Roberts, I'm excited to trap my fingers in the metaverse and giggle. Location, Location, Vocation Hear ye, hear ye! Crypto is cool…. All of a sudden. Trusted publication The Motley Fool wants to take us on a weird journey through the investable bits of the metaverse. Most investors, it appears, are turning to the passive income opportunities of letting digital real estate in Decentraland to make a few bob. Mmm. But, MANA though. It’s taken a bit of a kicking of late - why should we care about this? Well, who doesn’t love passive income? Since the early days of FarmVille and its subsequent siblings, there is nothing finer than making money whilst doing nothing at all. Especially if you’re a game developer. But this is 2022, and the game developer is not as savvy as they once were. In fact, metaverse builders (but not all of them) and even UGC creators are the new gods. McKinsey reckons that the metaverse will be worth $1 trillion in terms of market opportunity within a few years. I definitely believe that it will be, and I'm very excited by quite a lot of stuff that's happening inside this space at the moment. So if you have digital land ownership in DCL or any of the other metaverses, you can rejoice, and start making some sweet sweet MANA (or whatever) by letting it out to folks who want to set up a short-term presence. Noice! Side note: I have a little spot in Spatial that I created for Thinking Heads to host speaking events and mixers, so I get the idea - I’ve made literally no money from it to date. Festivals, product launches, or community events all spell massive passive income opportunities for owners of land parcels, but can I be a bit salty too? Because MANA has tanked this month (and last). Could it be that this massive passive income opportunity gives DCL a much needed end of year glow-up? No? It’s just me then. I'm not entirely sure whether it's a good idea to invest anything into any of these metaverses whilst they're behaving like silly children. More on that later this week. The Metaverse For Dummies I’ll keep this short. CustomerThink, which is a website, took great pleasure this week in inviting us to their time machine and taking us for a spin back to 2019/2020 to explain to us what the differences are between VR and the Metaverse. When I read this “story” the first time around, I was like ok, people are still excited about the possibilities, but then after a second read, I thought, wtf is the point of explaining or should I say bizsplaining something which happened 3 + years ago? This article sucks worse than my writing about it. Dear CustomerThink, please stop filling worldwide servers up with your weird Business Insider drivel, I want to fill servers worldwide up with all the NFTs that I can’t sell, kthxbye. Celebrity Squares Imagine a world where anything is possible. Bieber, Madonna, Serena Williams! WOW! I could really be somebody - should I write a book? About the metaverse? I can’t be bothered, perhaps I could get into a secret club by buying NFTs? Look kids, we know that for the most part, the metaverse is unregulated and for web3 everything should be open. So how is it that Yuga Labs, better known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club creators, are being sued? According to the allegation and claim, investors in (presumably) BAYC accuse Yuga Labs and manager-to-the-stars Guy Oseary (and MoonPay) of failing to register celebrity endorsements and brand alignment to upsell BAYC with the SEC. They state: “The unique selling point of Yuga Labs' NFT collection, called the Bored Ape Yacht Club, is that NFT owners become members of an exclusive "club" that included these celebrities.” Plaintiffs Adonis Real and Adam Titcher have cited the SEC element possibly orthogonally because, “any celebrity or other individual who promotes a virtual token or coin that is a security must disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation received in exchange for the promotion” a recent ruling which caught Kim Kardashian out. However, this is more about whether or not the celebrities are in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, a club that doesn’t exist in anything but the minds of elitists who want to repeat the Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby meme a million times over. Holodeck Inn, Shoreditch You don't have to be a mega forward-thinking futurist to discover that there are opportunities through the power of web3 and digital twins to be able to create a whole new bunch of different innovations inside the space that we call the metaverse. Well, you know, McKinsey has said that this area can generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030. $5 trillion in value? But didn’t we just read that they also said $1 trillion in a few years just a few news snippets ago? So what do we think about the hotel, hospitality, and events sector? I know a few folks from this vertical who were absolutely destroyed by the pandemic. It was sad to look at an industry we rely upon for expos, holidays, and fancy meals to discover that they literally had no innovative muscle to pivot towards a grounded client base. The hotels and events sector is worth $1.25 in the physical space. 33% of all hotel revenue generated through events has also risen to 75% in sector-specific hotels. What I know is true is that investment into the metaverse space is big. So let's think about where the potential of the metaverse can level up the hotel offerings. If any of you have ever read my book Prince of Tokyo (a Christmas stocking filler plug), you will note that I created a holodeck inside the Holiday Inn in Shoreditch. So it is definitely relevant that we're having a conversation right now, about meta events inside hotel spaces. I mentioned my Spatial bureau that I developed for Thinking Heads, but more than that, for hotels, this is about conversion. Walking around a meta hotel or being inside a meta event may create good opportunities with or without a pandemic, for hospitality businesses to go that extra mile and create small experiences inside metaverses. What do I always say? Go where the people are. Show ‘em what you’ve got. It might not result in a conversion every time, but like the Guccis or the Balenciagas of the world, they’re not looking to sell an item of luxury, they’re banking on brand awareness to sustain a community. Finally, I would say that this is a much cheaper alternative because you can take millions of people on servers, and you can get a limited number of visitors to a land property. I love testing products live, and this is a wonderful way to test the holodeck hypothesis. I can’t wait to see what happens next. Fish Of The Day Another week in Meta means another dig from The Guardian. Is Meta ok hun? Suggesting a #fail is a big mood here because failure is a fairly relative concept when we’re talking about billions of dollars. Meta, one of the biggest tech companies in the world, has been suffering from a massive identity crisis since it changed its name by deed poll to something that it could hide inside of. But the thing with hiding in plain sight is that everyone can actually see you. Do you feel seen? Poor third-quarter results: check! Share price wiping value: check! But let’s be honest, it’s not gonna go down without a fight. This company still has a heck of a lot more value than your local Chip Shop, and that is a place where loads of people congregate. It’s social but nowhere near as social as Meta in terms of numbers. So if you think 10 people chatting in the queue for some battered Skate is representative of people in the metaverse and on social media, Mark Zuckerberg is still frying tonight (and every night). The titans of the metaverse might well go to rescue him, they might also run for the Santa Cruz mountains; but I'm thinking to myself that it’s not a bad thing that's happening here and now. Meta is going through a bit of a dip, Meta has speculated poorly. And now Meta, or Mark, is naturally ill-prepared to be able to give that up. If I had $1 for every time I worked for a CEO who refused to give up on a crap idea, I certainly wouldn’t be pouring my heart out in Metacrun.ch. Here’s the why of this particular issue - we’re not in the pandemic anymore. Everyone is either in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis or out on their yacht living their best lives. People need or want to do IRL things. Meta and quite a few other tech platforms understand this, but they have a board to serve. Whatever was promised back then still has to be followed through. An expensive VR headset and legless avatars in virtual meeting rooms are no fun for anybody who has Teams, Zoom, and Meet. Give us something to do that behaves like Facebook then! The Zucc is missing something really important about what he’s doing and has done with Facebook and Meta; and that my friends, is tech. Meta does tech really well. I am the type of person who does not believe that just because a piece of technology is not perfectly profitable, it should therefore be consigned to the bin. Instead, what I see is technologies and platforms as tools. And just because my mum, the Facebook aficionado, hates Horizon Worlds, it doesn’t mean that the 3D motion and audio tools or plugins that have been used in Meta aren't usable in other places. In fact, in order to draw back some of that loss that Zuckerberg has made; now would be a really fantastic time to start licensing products for third-party use. I think that's the only way for him to be able to get out of this shit show that he's found himself in at the moment. Meanwhile, rivals such as Minecraft, which has 170 million users per month, Roblox, which allegedly has more than 200 million visitors a month, and Fortnite, which has 250 million active players, are actually doing way better and kind of less social than that which we might consider as the OG of social. Social has changed. A lot. Even VRChat is doing amazing, which actually does require you to have a headset in order to be able to have a conversation with people. It is perfectly possible that people just do not see the social connection between Facebook and Meta because it’s not there anymore. Have you checked the Metacrun.ch top 10 metaverses yet? Each week we select the latest and greatest of everything metaverse for you to dive into and explore. Note that this chart changes - weekly! So keep checking back to find your fave. That's enough Metaverse for this week. I’ve set up a tripwire wire in front of a vat of Sherry.

It's the great holiday getaway and pretty much everyone is doing work drinks or end-of-year award ceremonies for the purpose of Linkedin posts rather than any work. I myself have been accused once or twice this month of lollygagging at a private event whilst I was in reality trying to nail some end-of-year VC reserves. Ah, the world of technology! How refreshing it is therefore to read the highs and lows of everyone in the industry as we close the year out. Don’t forget that the news doesn’t stop, it won’t stop, and neither will Metacrun.ch. 24/7, 365, we bare the ugly truth for you to dissect and generally lol about. The Sony Show Pony I’ve been Sony since January 31, 1997. Last week I even pre-ordered a game which will take me through at least two days of the holidays. But I have a lot of beef. In fact, there’s always beef with me and consoles who refuse the call to modernise, from Project Milo in 2009 to Mocopi today. Mocopi: A little motion tracker or a band that you wear on your feet, hands, back, and head to “track your body to create videos or operate avatars in real-time with metaverse apps like VRChat”. Why? That’s the first question, and no is the answer to another question. The eye-watering cost for this bit of gimmicky hype is around $358, but who is this actually for? Content creators? What does this do for us that Move.ai and Kinetix can’t do? Create talking anime characters? Why? If it’s for consumers, it’s a total waste of tech, and if it’s for game or experience creators, it’s already being done by everyone else. Is it necessary to reinvent the wheel every time when you are a console developer? Form that Namco Time Crisis gun - it may have killed arcades, but arcades were already dying, to Playstation VR - why can’t we use compatible headsets? Sony promises that because video production needs dedicated equipment, you can utilise their proprietary algorithm to create highly accurate motion measurement with a small number of sensors. I can see the interoperability angle, but the price point is flawed. This feels a little bit as usual, that this is just another revenue opportunity to try and get ahead or head and shoulders above the competition which already exists and works really well, thank you very much indeed. I don't believe that these types of things work outside of the tools industry - inside stuff like video games, for example. Why do I want to use Mocopi to generate my face onto the face of a 2D animated character when I could use Voilà? I'm very confused. Let's Goa! We don't talk about growing market spaces in mobile games outside of our own preoccupation with our own successes in the west. APAC and US territory demographics are indicative towards trends, transactions, monetization, etc. Free-to-Play is still doing amazingly well after 10 years (yes, 10 years) - King’s Candy Crush or anything from Supercell, SYBO, and Playrix is doing great business, but web3? It’s a dirty word in mobile. As we face 2023 with the same ol’, same ol’ of positive but saturated marketplaces, could web3 gaming offer an evolutionary alternative? India seems to think so. They are banking on web3 as the new hope of development and distribution, and it’s a perfect storm. VR, especially, is allowing Indian game developers to place more of a target and focus upon the games industry and improve existing monetization opportunities which creates an additional boon for crossing the chasm. In doing so, the previous era of gaming, from the Free-to-Play model to the burgeoning Play-to-Earn model, may be a small stepping stone to a mega transition as companies. As I said, for the west, web3 is a dirty word. We've not really embraced it because we don't put that much of an emphasis on development in a space where we lump the failures of crypto directly against the successes of blockchain and we err more on the weird messianic status of Sam Bankman Fried than the technological beauty of Hyperledger. Also, native adoption of mobile gameplay is not as naturally evolving in the west as it is in the Indian Plate. The profusion of mobile technology here means that phones do absolutely everything, the same can’t be said for phones in the west… yet. So it makes absolute sense that in a territory which is vast and packed solid, that there is an appeal to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff in a marketplace, which you can imagine is even more saturated. My take on this is that a decentralised gaming ecosystem in the Indian subcontinent and its surrounding territories is a huge paradigm shift which will teach the rest of the monetization territories inside the gaming industry exactly how web3 will power the future of games and gameplay. This integrated network will bring in such totally different stakeholders that the current global scene must drastically change as it matures. Template that! It's Called Fashun CFDA, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Incorporated, was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Manhattan. It's a not-for-profit trade association, comprising a membership of over 450 American fashion accessory designers. The organisation promotes American designers in the global economy as it approaches its 60th birthday this year it's reflected on everything it's done, and it's decided that it would like to utilise the metaverse for pure brand awareness and uplift because it’s fashionable to do that right now. But that's my cynical view. The CFDA actually wants to be able to use the excellent utility opportunities of the metaverse to showcase everyone in the family, from Tommy Hilfiger to Michael Kors. I have a great deal of beef with the fashion industry and its relationship with the metaverse. I think the industry is wasteful generally, and I have done so since that reckless Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow crap came out in 2020 - how is Balenciaga doing right now? U ok hun? Look, these experiences are seldom user-focused, and tend to externalise a few people on a platform as a success of virtue, which, tbh, some demographics in the metaverse are not really that interested in. What I would like to see is how the CFDA can show that they are together. And if this particular campaign does anything, it should show how fashion creativity and the implementation of tools and technology have developed over the last 60 years by being part of a council of creativity. Instead, it feels a little contrived, and a resistance to a demographic that will ultimately decide whether 60 years from now, the CFDA will still be in operation. Going Forward In Reverse Management consultants are becoming the gods of the future of the metaverse, and these headless services often direct conversations that are both uncomfortable, yet indicative of the future direction of commerce in this space, companies such as Boston Consulting Group KPMG. And now McKinsey, who has this week, shared information that shocked no one. Here we go: more women have been found to spearhead in Metaverse initiatives than men in the same space. And yet, though 60% of women had put more than two Metaverse initiatives into action, it seems to be the men who are in executive leadership in this space, something that was not lost on me when I reported on it recently on LinkedIn, which was picked up by Jing Daily. More salt than the Dead Sea. But in order for us to really be inclusive inside this space, we need to be able to see a 50/50 split. Not only should Metaverse companies or services be led by women as equally as men, we must look at the funding elements as to reasons why women are not more involved in matters of diverse leadership roles. I’m not even shocked by this nonsense. Currently, year to date, only 5% or $5 billion worth of funding for metaverse companies funded in the last five years have been funded to women. Men? 95% of course! That's $107 billion of Metaverse company funding provided by VCs and investors alike that's been handed over willingly to guys. I have had a great deal of privilege to have worked on various funding bodies and funds. I’m also someone who works hard to produce standards. Women run banks for heaven's sake, I just can't understand why we aren't having women leading creative industry businesses at the same pace and the same equilibrium as men. Also, I am not including spokesmodels or tokenism in this space. I’m talking about hands-dirty women who are leading metaverses and services to glory by being STEM-focused and bottom-line motivated. Because for me, it just feels as though whilst we're trying to reach for the future, we're still being dragged to the past, and that is just not cool, and really has to change. I'm pretty sick to death of having spent the last 30 years working for dudes, and I do not want to be spending the next 30 years of my life listening to complete tools mansplaining what the metaverse is to my tiny weak woman brain. Web3, in particular, has offered me a great deal of freedom and confidence in being able to strike out on my own and leave this ridiculous gender bias to the annals of crapstory. Wall Of Confusion China, a country of more confusion than Confucius, is bringing about more confusion (and less Confucius). The glorious city of Hangzhou has decreed that NFT collections are “online virtual property that should be protected under Chinese law”. WAT? This is a country that has barely accepted anything web3, let alone NFT and let’s not talk about crypto: anything that cannot be controlled, inclusive of the metaverse, cannot be tangible. So for Chinese courts to protect something that the country at large deems intangible seems crazy. China’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies has been huge, and that left NFTs in a massive legal grey area. And it's almost as though we're welcoming them to yesterday because the rest of us, myself included, have created standards to be able to support the development of NFTs and the sale of NFTs. It's only now, from an article posted by the Hangzhou internet court which is a specialist internet court, that the big reveal finally, um, reveals itself. NFTs are coming out: out of the grey area and into a place that should be protected by the laws of their country, suggesting that the Chinese now accept that NFTs “have the object characteristics of property rights such as value, scarcity, controllability and traceability.” What does this mean for the impact that it will have on China as a whole? Well, if these folks ever make it out of their homes, which, you know, is a totally different crackdown. It could be good for them to explore the possibilities of exactly what NFTs can do for them beyond the collectability and the rarity of specific intellectual property items such as the dreadful luxury NFTs that have filled my newsfeed in 2022. Yuck! What I would like to see is mine/ours/their beloved NFTs, providing more utility than we have seen in the west. You never know, more cool things might follow like a lifting of crackdowns on crypto? The wait might not be long after all. In The Kitchen At Parties The story of the week, actually, isn't Art Basel, Miami. It should be because that has just been the worst. But actually, the story of the week comes from the European Union and how it threw a glamorous launch party for its €387,000 metaverse. Oooh the swankiest ticket in town. So why did only six, (yes, six) people show up? I always tell people that if you want to create a metaverse or you want to create an experience inside the metaverse, it's free. Whether you're building or tending to your own apartment, where you're creating your own experiences - you shouldn't have to pay for it. There are really great opportunities to be able to visit or play inside of metaverse for absolutely nothing at all. For my money, I would say a lot of these metaverses are fairly mature: The Sandbox, Decentraland, Avakin Life, and even Spatial. They all provide a great deal of opportunity to plug in and play, so, I don't understand why the EU would spend €400,000 on a venue that was custom-made in order to create a €300 billion euro investment in building brand new infrastructure across a variety of countries. Second Life was pretty active in this diplomatic space. What, that’s not cool enough for ya? This stupid Foreign Aid metaverse space really is a total waste of everyone’s time. What are we doing to enable and empower people to understand what they can bring to the Foreign Aid discussion? At a time when energy is at a premium, Europe is struggling. It is at war with resources that are being wasted in the Barents Sea and the EU parties like it’s 2008? There are better ways to be pragmatic yet diplomatic about how young people should connect and care about foreign aid. Must everyone be so tone-deaf this year? I was trying to corner this marketplace too. So, to add insult to injury, only six people showed up to this metaverse party and it's been reported that other people have wanted to go to the party but are currently on a waiting list. The gravy train continues to travel around the world, physical and metaversal, doing stupid things with stupid people. That’s enough metaverse for this week. I’m off for a vat of eggnog and a virtual mince pie. Also, don't miss out on joining our amazing community on both Telegram and Discord. Until next week folks!

The end of the year is nigh! Our almost nostalgic view of the metaverse and all its accessories and accoutrements remind us that there is literally nothing new under the sun, and that’s not an entirely bad thing. Read on… Max Air This week Yahoo! Wanted to give us a quick refresher on what web3 actually is by using a quote from 2014 and a big name: Sir Gavin of Polkadot. Somehow we are taken on a journey where this titan of Ethereum and a few pairs of sneakers are stitched together in some tenuous segue to bring us .Swoosh. Nike Virtual Studios, led by Ron Faris, has created a web3 platform and ecosystem that lives within the prestigious Nike universe. However, they are creating digital collections having successfully acquired RTFKT earlier this year (which if you ask me is a bigger story). .Swoosh’s first digital collection won't drop until January, so we've actually got to wait for a little while from the announcement to launch. I guess we're going to be sitting on the platform for a little bit not doing anything, which is something I really hate about these so-called experiences. Would you walk into a physical store and hang around for a bit before trying anything on? No, you’d browse first, and to browse first, you might want to play Aglet. Why don't more people play Aglet? It's an actual game, and you can have a really great deal of fun with it, and you don't need to go on a platform to do it. You can browse, trade, and create sneaks in Aglet whilst participating in a fan universe. Sometimes with the metaverse, it's absolutely pointless to create a world that doesn't really need to be created. But hey, as if Nikeland in Roblox isn't enough, you can now go on to .Swoosh and double your nothing. A Rose By Any Other Name This year’s Oxford University Press' Word of the Year is about as strong as a wet KitKat. Goblin Mode: two words! #istandwith is technically three words and a hashtag; so what business does Metaverse have competing for Word of the Year? This is press-hugging pointless annual nonsense. But in reality (or should that be virtual insanity?) We need Metaverse to win to differentiate it from those horror brand awareness adverts currently being peddled by Meta on loop on UK Radio. As someone who loves the Uxbridge English Dictionary (Cardiology: the study of knitwear - anyone?) The Metaverse is apparently going to be a contender, and among three leading contenders I have to say I was really looking forward to these words being something totally amazing. I don't mean to be a pedant, but I'm going to be a pedant. I would choose Metaverse, it’s one word, but even with those credentials, the word itself, Metaverse, is becoming a bit of a boring term. Through my cynical Metacrun.ch eyes, this seems to be less of a story from IoT news about the word Metaverse, and more of a story about Tim Cook. If we’re going to use this word - can we be more evangelical and less brand aware? And in the paraphrased words of Will Smith: take that word out of Apple’s mouth. Nothing To See Here Do people really understand what the concept of an NFT is? If they do, then I am pretty surprised that The Register, my usually go-to favourite publication online, decided that it would be a good idea to host a news story about Europe's first NFT vending machine. Gosh, what's in this story? Not much - possibly much like the vending machine. A story without the utility of pay off is incredibly meta. LMAO (if it wasn’t so sad). Nailed It! Jack Cameron, at Insomnia Labs has nailed everything about web3 that we have been trying to say since 2016 in one beautiful article this week. I can't be salty about it, this is possibly my most favourite article of all time. What he's talking about here is building a seamless NFT 2.0 ecosystem with value creation. You know what value creation is, don’t you? It means stop talking money BS about your stupid NFT series and start making dreams come true. I've been banging on about this since at least 2020 because all we’ve had, for the most part throughout 2021 and 2022 is a useless shower of peddlers talking hogwash about crap they don’t understand. Bear market? Pfffft! Jack Cameron is our hero: “for a brand to be true to its fan base, its digital assets must incorporate audience and community engagement to create a worthwhile experience and keep consumers coming back.” Of course, when I talk about this, no one listens, so, a man, yes a man, splains it, and it’s the greatest thing anyone has ever said? Wow. Well, whatever, I still love his words. American Horror Story Season X Speaking of communities, let’s talk about the great coin collapse of 2022. Terra(LUNA), FTX, damn, it sucks to be in crypto. Creating something that you say is by the people for the people is a big mood but somehow expected when you are reliant upon the success of what you have created by the power of influence. The cult of personality often creates mystery religions - this isn’t a big step of the philosophy of say Dionysian worship to Silicon Valley. It's not a secret why idiot VCs pay millions of dollars for a bag of dog poo. The apple (pun intended) literally hasn’t fallen that far from the tree. Whether you are praying for rain during a drought or praying for gold when you are poor, there is always someone with big myths to take you out of your desperation zone. You didn't think I did a Master’s Degree in Classics for nothing, did you? The power of Demeter is in me. In this week's CoinTelegraph token shock article, Anastasia Kor looks at the possibility of taking down crypto influencers to heal the market. I'm not sure that's the best way of dealing with it because wherever there are new and emerging marketplaces, there will always be influencers, regardless of what the technology or device or platform is, that's just the way it is. I would be interested, however, to figure out where there are good opportunities for people to do better homework, whether that's through things like DappRadar or WeMeta, or, another service, which does due diligence on these absolute shysters. Doing business via the EU might well look wonderfully organised but aren’t we just outsourcing a walled garden? Putting A Ding In The Metaverse Even the metaverse needs some love. I was really interested to have a look at Steve Jobs Garage, which is now available as a game-ish environment on the world wide web. The things that dreams are made of were innovated here. It’s Apple’s original headquarters, and you can go and have a look around. You won’t be there for long though, there’s not much to see, or do. The Woz? He’s not here. Tim Cook? Nope. Jony Ives? Remember him? For something that has actually launched and is live, I’m missing some key places of interest or landmarks that might anchor the user to the story. As with everything Apple, I guess you have to be in it to win it. That’s enough Metaverse for this week. Do give us feedback and thoughts! Also, don't miss out on joining our amazing community on both Telegram and Discord. Until next week folks!

In a guest column for Metcrun.ch, Music Merchandise and Marketing Maven Jacki Vause is here to school us all on the growth of brand association in the arena (excuse the pun) of live music and concerts. Her most recent experience is enviable. Working with mega rock band The Dead Daisies, she came up with the most amazing concept to develop the real-life rock gods into a totally meta version of themselves: The Meta Daisies. Hellllllo Londonnnnn! (I’ve always wanted to say that) Verch will become one of the biggest buzzwords in web 3.0 retail commerce as Web 3.0 grows. As we see lines blurring between music, film & TV, and video games, this confluence is exposing deep veins of opportunity. And one of these is ‘VERCH’ - Virtual Merchandise. Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. In retail outlets merchandising is the display of products in a creative way that tempts you into buying more items or products. But most people associate merchandising with brand merchandising - brand extensions. When you consider brand merchandising in its simplest form, think about a rock band on tour selling T-Shirts, limited edition vinyl and pin badges. This form of merchandise often nets a brand more money than their original product offering. Take, for example, Peppa Pig - the popular children’s stories that started this brand behemoth have been eclipsed by TV shows, toys, theme parks and even food deals. With the advent of Web 3.0 comes a huge opportunity in the digital version of merch - the term gaining popularity is “Verch”. At present, you will mostly see verch appear as part of metaverse fashion with various brand collaborations. But how does it work? The metaverse, web 3.0. and NFTs offer a new shiny revenue opportunity for brands who are brave enough to pioneer their verch. Right now, metaverse spaces like Roblox, Decentraland, Avakin Life and The Sandbox are hosting live concerts or pre-recorded events with music artists. This way of experiencing music burst into the public consciousness when DJ Marshmello and Travis Scott used Fortnite as a platform, but now online and metaverse gigs are becoming increasingly commonplace and most artists are looking at the metaverse as another performance channel. The first and most obvious monetisation of these events, for the artists, comes via digital ticket and music sales. But I predict that soon we will see the physical reality of the value of merch reflected digitally. In my own experience with The Meta Daisies (the digital offspring of the rock band The Dead Daisies), we held a ‘listening party’ for the release of the band’s latest single, ‘Radiance’, in the popular mobile metaverse Avakin Life. For a listening party that ran for a week, we generated over 1 million visits lasting over 7 minutes on average. These were amazing numbers. This blew us away but imagine if even 1% of those visitors spent $10 on a limited edition NFT of the single? Web 3.0, built on the blockchain, gives us the opportunity to create digital verch as NFTs. These digital tokens can be anything - keepsakes and memories or just collectables - that we own that tie us to our favourite brand, artist or entertainment property. We can use them as our avatars, our zoom backgrounds or just keep them in our wallet as we build our collections. What verch comes with is the same old bootlegging that we’ve seen in real life, but the twist is that this form of bootlegging beyond infringement is actually good for the brand. These bootleggers are creators that are taking the music, the merchandise and the spirit of the brand or band and purposing it better than the brand owners themselves ever could. Of course, it carries its own hazards and risks on both sides, but it’s a great case study for how brands might operate in this space. More importantly and far more significantly, verch (as well as the decentralised opportunities the blockchain affords when it comes to digital sales) is an opportunity for the creators to make the lion's share of the revenue from their creations. For far too long, the middlemen (the labels, the stores, the distributors) have taken the biggest cut of the revenue pie. Where the metaverse grows, we have the ability to explore the possibilities for the fan community, our creativity, and our wildest dreams. Web 3.0 may be the Wild West, but there’s gold in its hills, and it's called verch.

Kelly here! I've done a lot of talks recently, where I have explored the possibility of better data practices for web3. As always with these passions of mine - I try to steer clear of what the developer thinks, I focus on what the end user wants, and I cut straight to the meat. I'm happy to say that this article is an opportunity for a larger conversation about everything connected to our data and why it's important moving forward transparently for all people across all web3 technologies, inclusive of video games. The Golden Age It’s 2022. One of the biggest problems that we know about web2 in 2022 is it's very limited. And because it's very limited, there are not always good opportunities for us to be able to get something out of the relationship that we have with that particular web2 application. So if I want to play on my Xbox, I have to log in with my credentials first. That’s so last generation. If I want to go into Steam, the same thing is true. Hell, if I want to go into Meta (as if I would), I need an actual Facebook account to get in. So that makes it nice and simple for me in Oculus. No Facebook account? No play. But it’s not all doom and gloom: web3 is in a golden age, though the road to this supposed enlightenment is littered with BS APIs (dodgy interface contracts). Like dog poo and cans of piss strewn along the side of the highway, it’s disgusting. It would be a good idea to look at where those touch points are and where those pain points definitely are, and how we can get over them. So how do we start the cleanup process? You guessed it - we educate these so-called devs in exactly what we, the user, wants by focusing on really useful existing tools and cool process designs. Safety is the right of all users. It's not a privilege. It shouldn't be something that we shouldn’t have to pay for, no matter what the cost is to the developers. It should be something that we have instant access to. Safety and being safe in a web3 environment (and even a web2 environment) is paramount to being able to do everything from playing to buying. No One Wants Your Data When I think about how that works as a construct inside web3, I do not look at any other demographic apart from children, preferably under-13s, because it is here that this demographic and vulnerable adults become more vulnerable in spaces where they are exposed in terms of their credentials and their information. It is here that they are exposed to poor UX and bad data sanitisation. The number rule of data design since time immemorial, for example, is that the moment something leaves the server, the creator (read data nerd) loses control. Is that a solid basis for protecting our users if we can’t protect the transaction of data as it passes between two points? If we have to log into a metaverse or website or even an app and we're used to 2FA or MFA (two or multi-factor authentication), then that looks on the surface to be safe, right? For children, safety does not always mean safe. In some cases, safety just means anonymised data. Therefore, as we are gleaning data from children who are accessing all of their favourite online games or social media platforms; what's happening to the data and who's protecting children when they're logging in? Blindly, they will be clicking yes and accepting all of the terms and conditions without question. Why would they? They are children. Who writes EULAs for kids? Where is that data actually going? In most cases, it's being sold. That’s not cool. But you don’t have to look too far from your own PC or device to know where it’s being sold to. Whitney Cummings recently joked about no one wants your data, her analogy was simple: in the 70s, 80s and 90s, our names, addresses and numbers were stuffed into something called a telephone directory and then thrown from a car onto your front lawn. Today? We’re horrified by the Cambridge Analytica scandal or revenge porn, and we can’t believe something that awful would happen to someone like us. But Whitney Cummings is right. Nobody on the street cares about data, they’re happy to share it, because phishing opportunities or man-in-the-middle attacks break down the trust we have with the services offered to us, not with individuals specifically. These big corporations of the world are happy to trade your data across various platforms. They don't care about you, it’s nothing personal, because you are not your data, they are happy to sell it, and they're happy to take it, and they don't care about how they're going to protect you because this is not about you. COPPA Tops If none of this is about us, why do I get so heated about children’s data? Because data services tar humans with the same brush and children are not prepared, planned for, or presented to, and no one knows how to protect them, no one. Like, at all. Because if no one cares about you, why would they care about children? There are only two bodies of whom seriously legislate the misuse of children’s online data, and that is COPPA and in Europe, GDPR (Article 8 Amended/Revised). These two systems work together (in post-Brexit UK, the Data Protection Act and CEOP protect and police the act on top of COPPA and GDPR) to underpin not just data protection but loopholes. Could decentralisation provide a better protection strategy for children? Let’s look at the loose history of decentralisation during the rise of blockchain and crypto, starting with the wallet. We started to see a profusion of different software wallets as well as hard wallets - they're the kind of offline storage wallets where you can keep all of your keys and information pertaining to your crypto balance. That was cool. But very quickly, as users and developers, we discovered that these types of things are easily hackable, eminently so. Then a couple of years ago, along came Metamask. Metamask provided a kind of Fort Knox of twelve standalone words that would protect the wallet and lock it down. But as I expressed earlier, no plan survives contact with the enemy. If I have my Metamask open and Open Sea, er, open, and I've also got my Metamask opening Rarible, and I’m using my NFT as my Twitter profile pic, surely I’m putting myself in the same position as I would be if I have 36 tabs open in Google Chrome? The more tabs I have in my Google Chrome of password-protected spaces, the more chance there is to suffer keystroke, phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks that feed on my personal data, and that's the point with which people are always really surprised with wallets. “I can't believe I was hacked”. “I can't believe this money was stolen.” When the truth is, you let it happen. You let everyone in. Protect Ya Neck We should use multi-factor authentication (MFA) more. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is fine. But now we've got an opportunity to do multi-factor authentication, using different devices to verify and authenticate our identity. It’s a data perfectionist's dream. Anybody that works in data, cybersecurity, or any type of transactional business will be really happy to hear that you have multi-factor authentication setup on your machine or device. Multi-factor authentication also gives you a great opportunity to be able to do many things across different devices. And so, for you as the user, it's also very good for protecting yourself - a big win for everyone! A small study recently published the big MFA turn-off, the user could not be bothered to ensure that they are protected. I know because I am very guilty of that. When everything is down to the user, and the developer has to trust them, it's quite difficult for them to get to the meat of where they want to be with all the burning hoops they have to jump through. It breaks UX. Nothing breaks UX like a crappy API. Therefore, and until Solo Wallet launches later this year - which promises to do some serious security, Metamask, though a crappy UX in and of itself, will suffice. Other wallets are available. My point is that we must start to use wallets the same way that we're using login and passwords and MFAs right now. If the wallet has already acknowledged and authenticated, and verified our existence as a real person, then it should act more like a passport to enable us to go through websites and games and anything else that we want to do with ease so that we don't have to do that all of that MFA crap because we can't be bothered to do it. Do You Know CIAM? Simply Customer Identity Access Management is something that no one ever thinks about. It's the subset of a larger concept of identity access management which focuses on managing and controlling external parties' access to business applications, web portals, and digital services. What a mouthful. In short, it’s a headless distributor: controlling how information about the user is distributed across platforms from user to service, and everything that's in between. It handles the customer identity, identity management, login experience and authentication. Still not sure? Then take a look at your Google Pay. Additionally, Google has got a really good authentication system which people really enjoy, which is CIAM-focused. So let's hope it doesn't go to the graveyard where everything else seems to go in Google. RIP Stadia. Google has an authenticator too - an MFA, if you will, as does Microsoft. I like to use Twilio’s Authy and SwissID. For CIAM, Google has something called Identity Platform. With the Identity Platform, you can just look at both CIAM and multi-factor authentication to integrate into Google's (or whatever’s) everything. Is Google trying to get into the scene where Metamask and everybody else have both succeeded and failed so far? Maybe. I find it interesting that Google and Apple and all of these folks that handle data transactions of any description have aspirations to go full banking organisations and any fool knows that you never go full banking organisation unless you are a bank. We've got enough banks. But we haven’t considered that the future of currency is actually transactional data. That’s quite funny for Google, a web2 leader wanting to play in our web3 world. KYC Is King The reason why I think KYC is one of the most incredible tools that we have developed over the course of the last few years, is because KYC is the literal DNA of all of these other things MFA, CIAM and safety. You know KYC, don’t you? KYC is famous for its relationship with AML. KYC means Know Your Client or Know Your Customer, and AML means Anti-Money Laundering. Together these work in crypto (and a few other systems such as banking) to ensure that people are protected. Where there are big swathes of finances or money that are moving between one place to another and transactions are happening; there is a feeling of satisfaction or reassurance that everybody inside this chain of transaction (excuse the pun) has been identified and is known by both the transactors and with the end destination as well as at the beginning. KYC usually happens at the beginning of an experience. So why have I left KYC until last? It’s because I believe that KYC is one of the most underused tools that web3 has currently. It’s not just to check the identity of someone wanting to use or transact funds. Why can’t it be used to supersede MFA or wallets? Can we use it to anonymise all data pertaining to children on the blockchain? When children and vulnerable adults become more vulnerable in a space of play, or in a space of purchase, or being able to access information or not access information, it is important to ensure that all parties inside that transaction are protected. The only way to be able to ensure that a complete transaction is authentic is to use KYC. And if we use KYC, then we become able to green light young people, vulnerable people and ourselves to be able to play within the confines with which it is safe to do so. Doing It For The Kids In one of my previous metaverse projects where I was CTO, I helped to create a KYC layer as a tool that would ensure that only under-13s were allowed to play in that space. The KYC, in this case, was a normal KYC process flow. However, it was focused solely on the guardianship of the child, and they were the only individuals able to provide information about the child in their care. And because KYC does not discriminate, the guardian could be a parent, a custodian, a caregiver, or even, in this case, a teacher! Our metaverse was educational, and therefore it required a KYC layer that lived between chaos and order. When dealing with educational applications, safety is for everybody, it’s the priority and the right of all users. Schools want to know that their students/learners and staff are safe when they are entering into the metaverse, whether it's a learning metaverse or whether it's just a fun metaverse [insert your metaverse here]. But definitely with this KYC layer that I created; guardians, regardless of their side of the education system, could keep their children safe, that means responsibility. I designed the layer so they were responsible for their children's identity, but not necessarily responsible for their children's play. Because play means autonomous access, inclusivity and discoverability for kids: these are the most important things. There isn’t a kid alive who wants their parents hanging around watching them in a metaverse. Therefore parental KYC gives children the freedom to be able to do so much more. But it also gives parents the reassurance that where they're playing is safe - because it is within their rulesets, guidance and importantly their decision. The parents (at home) or teachers (in a school setting) are the ones who enable that first transaction for the player or metavisitor, and in doing so, it is they who decide the safety level of play. Safety and data have to go hand in hand. And web3 is a fantastic opportunity for us to put everybody together on servers worldwide to experience lots of things all at the same time and feel inspired, but more importantly, feel safe. So if we're not utilising KYC, MFA and CIAM correctly, then we're not really doing web3 fairly - after all, this space is open, persistent and interoperable. It’s transparent and it is here. So if we’re only using web2 tools to fix what’s on the horizon for web3, can we really say we’re making metaverse memories for decades to come? What do you think? Let us know!

In a week where everyone was hanging on to the metaverse by their fingertips, hanging off a cliff whilst a spider crawled up their collective legs; it has been scary and frustrating. A few interesting bits and pieces happened inside our wonderful metaverse, and by interesting I mean the same old repackaged nonsense (is this my raison d'être?) with a dollop of something magical. All your base are belong to us Picture the scene, it’s Paris, it’s 2022 and we’re living our best life in real life? WHAT? Linkedin posters lost their minds about this last week, and I’m just going to hold back a moment, and congratulate NFT Factory Paris who decided to officially open their doors by creating a three-storey web3 (there has to be a pun in there somewhere), education and cultural hub next-door to the Pompidou Heritage Centre. If you've ever been to the Pompidou Centre you will know that this is filled with art and installations. So naturally, placing something that is focused heavily on NFT art makes total sense. But IRL? (Listen, I'm still holding back here.) This public NFT art exhibition featured the usual suspects: anime faces, weird apes, cats, just general alien-type pixel art, the like of which hasn't been done well since Zero Wing. But they seem quite happy with it. (I’m still holding back by the way.) They have great ambitions at the NFT Factory in Paris too - they want to create 40 million wallets in France alone from their factory and philosophy. My take is two-fold: in a world where energy prices are going up and interest in the metaverse is going down, do we really need a carbon footprint-making physical space to show the things we can see in Decentraland? Just go to Sotheby's there, it’s awesome. Just visit Art Week there. It’s amazing. It feels fairly bourgeois to just present something physical, expensive and aloof to an audience without putting in the time to educate them. We have to work hard to fix some of the wrongs of NFT and web3 created and perpetrated by idiots over the course of the past few months and years. If 2022 has taught us anything at all, it's taught us that nothing is safe, whether it's businesses, or whether it's our crypto balance. So it's time to start cutting through the crap and focusing on what's real. Back to the drawing board, guys. The fashion game is lame I'm pretty bored of seeing Gucci. I'm not gonna lie. If you grew up in the UK in the 70s and 80s, we didn’t have dog poo bags, so dog poo was everywhere. Like Gucci. They’re opening the Gucci Vault in The Sandbox, and no doubt all the weird fashionistas that have never experienced the metaverse will literally be losing their minds about how incredible this all is. Bringing luxury fashion to the metaverse is ok I guess, if you are really sure your audience is gonna lap it up. But how are they going to price this? Because didn't they already bring out some kind of digital dress for $10,000 that you can’t wear? The pricing structure of luxury is literally bonkers. So I’m reaching for my popcorn, because it’s going to be really interesting to figure out exactly how in the hell they're going to price this in a way that is not creating hyperinflation, or negative inflation inside the metaverse. It's this type of thoughtless pricing within luxury that destroys any opportunity that people have to be able to dress themselves. Instead. My advice to luxury labels worldwide is to double down on digital pricing unless somehow you’re doing the phygital, or, why don't you just bring luxury fashion into the metaverse by virtue of games? Oh, yeah, I remember it's because Gucci can't get into video games. That's why you had to make your own video games academy. Oh, well. Mr. Crowley What a Halloween treat for my eyes! My old boss and Decentraland have teamed up for a virtual Ozzfest. Wow! You read that right. Ozzy Osbourne is bringing his cryptobatz concept to the depths of the metaverse by curating a mega concert for the world of rock. In case the last 6 months have passed you by, I created, with Dimoso and Lockwood Publishing, a wonderful listening party experience in Avakin Life for supergroup Dead Daisies (who became the Meta Daisies) back in June which saw over a million visitors to the experience. If that’s so, imagine how big Ozzfest is gonna be for rockers worldwide. Not only that, if you’re a cryptobatz owner (9,666 were minted, of course!), you will get VIP viewing access and wearables for your avatar, which kind of beats the sunburn souvenir I got when I was at Milton Keynes Bowl watching the last ever Pantera set. In all seriousness, we’re not getting any younger, and rock gods can attest to their own mortal coil. If they’re not already doing the 27 Club, then they are definitely growing old disgracefully. Fortunately for us, that means a metaverse near you. Crazy Train or not, the Prince of Darkness is quite evidently stepping into the light. Upping the game If you're a massive Final Fantasy fan like I am, then reading the actual word Avalanche in a sentence about a web3 game is not lost on you. I'm just first of all gonna leave that nerdy in-joke right there. The Andreessen Horowitz funded AVA is going to be the software company providing support to the Avalanche ecosystem. Final Fantastic. BLRD, which is a subsidiary of Japanese gaming powerhouse Gree, has partnered with the Avalanche network to launch this first web3 game in 2023. What is it about? I can't actually see anything to do with Square Enix. Although BLRD has a history of working with these top gaming companies, it's as much a creator of Final Fantasy as I am. So I'm kind of confused as to how that continuity is going to travel and travel well. If you were one of the few who played Gree’s Final Fantasy Artniks Dive it might remind you of this year’s weird Team 17 NFT disaster. You will also be reading this knowing just how discerning gamers are compared to, say, luxury fashion collectors, for example. Gamers are not quite ready to adopt the whole NFT methodology just yet. Not every gamer wants to be able to be in a space where there are active and available NFTs. So what I think will happen is a kind of Final Fantasy Tactics-type experience where the casual or hyper casual, rather than mid- or hardcore gamer will fall in love with this new way of play, where the developers will reach an entirely new audience. It's going to increase the opportunities for people who are not your typical gamers to be able to come over to an interesting new space. "The road we look back on goes far. Nor is there a place to return to." - Hatsune Miku If you know anything about me, you know that I absolutely love Chinese dramas (and Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese dramas too) and so therefore I love Chinese idols. So when I read the headline that in a collaboration between Zebra Labs and Chinese celebrities, there would be a golden opportunity for Chinese celebrities and influencers to be able to enter the metaverse and for us to get closer to them I fangirled. Creating something that is very sort of Gen Z styled (rather than Gen X cougar style - hello!): their first virtual character has been created for NFT buyers waiting for a bull market. So a waiting room for NFT buyers who love Chinese pop idols, actors and influencers? It feels a bit contrived. My take on this is that it feels a little bit like everybody's late to the party unless they're gonna get loads of celebrities from Austin Li, and Jackson Wang all the way to Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, Dylan Wang and Victoria Song. I don’t see this being super successful beyond what these young influencers are doing right now. Why add a layer of cyber on the top? There seems to be another two-fold problem in our wonderful metaverse where I keep reading a) “we are the first this” or “this is the first that” has anyone actually heard of Hatsune Miku? Hatsune Miku and the famous Vocaloid phenomenon is the reason why in my opinion we’ve got Tones and I. And then b) the output issue concerns content because that has to be number one. So with Austin Li, the Lipstick King, it’s a given that he is constantly talking on his Tik Tok, Youtube or on his WeChat or about the various lipsticks and how to wear them. This is his job. This is how he found his fame and we stan him for it. If we take those individuals out of that space and put them into a metaverse space, then the movement of content has to be 10 times faster. And I think that's going to be really difficult for developers worldwide to be able to create a kind of platform for virtual idols and celebrities in this space where digital content blinks faster than the human eye. But I have been proved wrong a million times. So let's see what happens. If this works I’ll write my next article in Chanel's Rouge Allure Luminous Intense Lip Colour, blood red, of course. Happy halloween, babies. That’s enough Metaverse for this week.