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Remember that amazing The Smiths song from the 80s? Let me remind you: “Panic on the streets of London, Panic on the streets of Birmingham, I wonder to myself.” The big thinkers of the metaverse, the investors and the greed seekers, are losing their minds. Thankfully, the realists, like me, haven’t. In your Face(book) The metaverse is going through some growing pains. The Guardian’s article on Meta’s alleged virtual reality gamble that's not paying off, made me want to rip the head off my Malibu Barbie because this has absolutely NOTHING to do with metaverse. Although the shares in Meta may have slumped by as much as 25% “in the wake of these abysmal quarterly results”, the CEO has to abandon his massive advertising budgets, weird employee requirements and strange Circus Maximus dreams and do what the rest of us do: focus on what we're good at, and then design/build in increments thereafter. This is good business practice, it’s solid design theory. So I don't see why it's necessary to tar the entire Metaverse with the same brush, that somehow the metaverse is completely over, simply because Mark Zuckerberg is gonna have to pivot a little. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Mark Zuckerberg as everybody knows, but even I know that one swallow does not make a summer. My belief in the metaverse is such that I am convinced that it's actually not losing its legs. Moreover, it's really finding its legs. You don’t agree? Learn from the past. The places that we go to, the people that we see, the way that we interact in this incredible open and transparent world is a choice. Some of us are in the Meta camp, some of us prefer Avakin Life. There is never a one-size-fits-all when we are examining human behaviour. We have to be able to find the places that we want to go to, the people we want to experience with, the motivators that make the big business KPIs. When Second Life came out, I don't remember people saying, “oh, the second life thing is over.” Second Life kind of expired by its own volition (don’t worry, it’s still alive but on life support currently). I don’t remember Linden Labs giving up because more people were going into the Swedish Embassy than were going to the BBC Newsroom. That never happened, these experiences lived on the same platform, using the same technology created by different brands or verticals. So I'm confused as to why we think that the metaverse is suddenly over just because Facebook is having a bad quarter. I had talked quite a lot about the metaverse dying in a previous article, but it's not just trash talk that's the problem here. It is that we are comparing web3 directly against the success criteria of web2. So rather than do that, it would make better sense to just focus on what we're doing inside web3 and improve upon that. I see Ethereum has been adopted by the Norwegian government. It's helping people to be able to do their taxes inside Decentraland. That’s cool! There is investor confidence in The Sandbox, Animoca Brands; all these metaverse companies are going great guns. But Meta is still Facebook, and Facebook is on life support just like Linden Labs was, do you know why? Let’s take a good look at my beloved Gartner Hype Cycle. Believe the Hype If you look at what Gartner requires from technology companies or ideas as part of its hype cycle, there are various points upon which we must build for engagement, or fix for retention inside whatever it is we are creating. A few things that are really problematic for the metaverse moving forward, particularly for Meta moving forward, lie within the Gartner Hype Cycle itself. The Technology Trigger: for Meta (read Facebook), yeah, that happened in 2006. Next! The Peak of Inflated Expectations has happened (mostly for investors) over the course of this past year at its height and over two years as a steady climb. The Trough of Disillusionment: that's what we're going through now in the mindless speculation of the idiot press and these so-called Metaverse Visionaries (whoever they are). The Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity is actually happening in the background with Horizon Worlds and the relationships that have been reignited since 2007 with say Microsoft. These things are not accidents. They are part of strategic roadmaps, and even if we lay the blame directly at the door of the CEO, we must still take account of the state of technology around us. Big technology. People who are serious about the architecture and the development of new technologies are happily working inside this space and discipline to ensure that they can deliver by the time we get to maybe 2026. So, I don't really see that this-is-not-a-drill type situation and that we should lose our collective minds over the metaverse (not Meta) levelling itself, steadying itself and thinking about its place in our world as opposed to the other way around. Thinking a little bit more instead of just mouthing off, I think is good, because the metaverse is not about the creators, the designers, or the tech companies. It never was. We need to focus on the user, the real creator, and we need to stop focusing on ourselves. As designers, it's too easy to look at the aesthetic, because, by our nature, we eat with our eyes, and when we see things that we really love, we already start to feel the flavour. So, if we build a beautiful aesthetic inside something called a Metaverse, then naturally we are satisfied as designers, but wait… where are the people? The people are not coming? Why, I hear you ask! Because nobody can be bothered to build a community. The easy relationship between collaborations of fashion brands and metaverses or digital worlds is one of the things that I hate the most about working in this space, is that fair? I think so. You should never ever ever ever use marketing to do the job that design should do for your users. Brand collaboration in this space has long been a lazy excuse for brands and developers who cannot be bothered to capture their audience. It has absolutely nothing to do with putting backsides on seats inside a space (yes even Nike’s collaboration in Roblox is painful), and it has everything to do with building a lasting experience for your users. Listen very carefully or read very clearly, if you want to get people in your Metaverse, you’d better fucking work hard, because no one is interested in walking around an empty space. So it's high time if you are a designer or a thinker in this space that you pull your finger out of your ass and start focusing on how you're going to build communities around your design. Otherwise, no one's going to get it outside of the pretty vanity posts you put on Linkedin. Yes, you. Pull Yer Finger Out The tools and support that are around the metaverse are also weak as hell, because everybody is reliant upon web2 tools. Why? I mean, who actually cares about Google Play in 2022? Who really cares about the App Store? Not me, so I don't really give a rat’s ass if Tim Cook wants to create an “amicable” environment for people that are creating NFTs (and they must also surrender 30% on social boosts). Listen grandad, if I want to buy an NFT, I'm going to buy it from a decentralised space and know that I'm going to get something that is 100% decentralised; where the creator is going to be able to be the earner. We're not going to have much of a Metaverse if we don't have a creator economy, so a creator economy that is being limited and stifled by somebody who's sitting in their ivory tower in Cupertino, CA is not really giving me a great deal of encouragement about what the metaverse is going to look like in the next 3 to 5 years. My advice for the future of the Metaverse is really simple. Get the fuck away from Apple, move the fuck away from Facebook. Get your fingers out of Google Play and start focusing on using web3 tools and technologies to make yourself the technology company that you really want to see. I am done with these tech bros and this idiocy in technology and how it is becoming more of a penis-waving contest and less of an evolutionary shift. I don't care about collaborations, they are brain-dead. I'm not interested in toys and game logos on luxury clothing when they can’t get their shit together enough to bravely step into toys and games. Selling to kids like that is a bit creepy, isn’t it? What next? Cigarettes? Booze? Why not? It’s brand-led isn’t it? Lazy marketing = lazy design = lazy marketing. What I'm looking for is a future that is built by people who are constantly shifting the agenda and constantly questioning everything that they connect with. I don't want the metaverse to become a branded environment that is just lazy, stupid, and not very exciting. This is not idiocracy, is it? I want to see brands work their fucking asses off to get into Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I want to see brands put themselves into Steam. Literally nobody has mentioned Gabe Newell throughout this whole metaverse process, and he’s doing just great thanks very much. So until we get the buy-in from every single games company, and every single tech tool to build credibility, we have got absolutely nothing inside this open virtual space. Reach higher. Go beyond the hype cycle, and let's start getting real about what's going on inside the metaverse. It will make us all very happy, it will make us all very rich in our education and experiences. And it will put us all on the same page in a social experiment where nobody is the ultimate victor, and everybody is the winner. Until then? Hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ… Hang the DJ!

This week in Metacrun.ch starts with this new weird trend of everyone having an office in the metaverse. I would like to take full credit for it, but with companies like Sotheby’s opening galleries in the metaverse in 2020 and Sweden being the first-ever country to open an embassy in Second Life way back in 2007, it’s all a bit old hat. The FT doesn’t think so, and wants the world to know that if you want to do business, you should probably do it in the metaverse these days! Moreover, this space is driving up a deal of opportunistas in law and legal technology. From hot desking in The Sandbox to a conference room in Decentraland, the metaverse is the place to be - but is it? Possibly. Waiting to have your IP documentation checked over by a pro in London might leave you wanting as you wait to see them in January 2024 (it’s total f***ing Mexico in the Metaverse my dude), but on the flip side, it’s THE place to prospect and thrive. There’s none of this cold-calling malarkey anymore, no way, you are literally a teleport away from chillin’ in a hot tub in Festland, doin’ biz. Additionally, if you’re gonna espouse the wisdom of your law firm around a bunch of tech bros, you kind of have to know tech bro, right? But it's not just about sourcing new clients and new talent. It's about moving fast and breaking things before you pivot. I would say that if I was going to set up a virtual office (and yeah, I have one in Avakin Life) or a conference space, I would probably set up in Spatial.io rather than anywhere else. And the reason for that is that spatial has got fantastic video opportunities so you can do much more face-to-face and loads more PowerPoint, the types of it really are aimed at corporate rather than at this kind of end-user at large and also opening an office in the metaverse is the is only one way that law firms can embrace new technologies. Just my personal opinion. In kind of dumb news, the Lowes show at Paris Fashion Week was something of a faux revolution, where digital fashion has crossed over to the in-real-life space - which we never really wanted in the first place. So now we're seeing pixelated hoodies, and T-shirts, and pants with shadows and edgy edges that no one asked for in the name of couture. But here's the thing, it really doesn't take away from the fact that what these big fashion shows do is actually create waste. Until they get their heads around the fact that all of these fancy glossy floors, these set designs, these incredible clothes, or this light pollution, and all of these people all in one place who have had to get private jets over to there is not taking away from the fact that the earth is dying, and climate change is pretty much more important than this real fake digital clothing nonsense, which is just literally becoming very incredibly boring. I'm sick to death of telling people that they've got to take care of the planet first before they take care of fashion. Play your games in Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week, or in Avakin Life, but please, stop being wasteful in this world. /Rant Hey, remember when that guy was in that judiciary hearing or meeting, and he accidentally put a cat filter on his zoom and then couldn't get it off? And he was panicking like crazy on the call? Well, guess what? Now, this is a thing. It literally comes as a standard on Teams Premium (whatever that is), and I gotta be honest with you - this is why we can’t have nice things like the metaverse. I just don't know how serious you can take people with their stupid cartoony moon faces when you try and have a conversation either with the local judge or discussing, you know, an entire firing process for a startup company where the CEO is only going to cry about the fact that he couldn't do more. Like the crying CEO, this is also just a load of crap, from a company that sees itself as being at the forefront of technology. Yeah, technology for my mum. In a week where some game companies have decided that maybe they don't need an NFT strategy, I feel very inclined to agree with them. Look, NFT is not the alpha and omega of anything we’re doing in the metaverse. Neither is blockchain and nor is crypto. Web3 tools and enablers are just that. However, the loss leader is in the fact that most of these games companies don’t know how to make actual returns on their investment, let alone try to then make saleable NFTs too. Games cost money, a lot of money to make, and no amount of TCG/CCG/LCG-style NFT is gonna make you the next CD Projekt Red or Hasbro unless you are already, in which case, carry on. Also, you are not Nintendo. But there are some kinds of companies that definitely do need some form of NFT or strategy to help them to make or monetize what it is that they've created, which isn't cheap, by the way, and try and recoup costs. NFT could be a way of doing that, but it's not for everybody. I'm personally not entirely sure it's for some of the biggest publishers in the world who already do something similar. Additionally, I would say that a lot of game companies have massively shied away from the NFT boom because they simply don’t understand it, which is a real shame. In my career in games, I have always found that early concept art or level design is quickly confined to the great recycle bin: [insert your game studio here], never to be seen again. Such a waste! There's a great deal of really fantastic art that isn't being proliferated throughout our wallet collections worldwide as much as it should be. And, you know, eventually, like Earthworm Jim, those art styles will just end up being credited to the annals of a nostalgic past rather than staying golden. I would therefore call this snippet of news: Game Studios Can’t Be Arsed to Find Out What NFTs Are For. My final piece of news is about the wonderful Ukraine via Vogue, who else? They have gone into the metaverse to support their country's burgeoning fashion empire. Slava Ukraini! Whilst my tired old mantra is about doing digital before physical, I feel my prayers are being half heard via The Dematerialised (aka DMAT), who have teamed up with 3 cool Ukrainian designers to translate their physical garments into NFTs. This celebratory story is not without my side of beef though. Where are you going to wear this? Digital fashion houses (with little or no connective/games/software experience) are notorious for creating whales. These whales are high poly, walled garden items that have zero utility or interoperability. Something that's nice to look at is one thing, and yeah, that is a piece of art. But if it's fashion, and this project is, shouldn’t it be perfectly utilitarian too? You should want to WEAR digital fashion EVERYWHERE. DMAT is creating discoverability, yes I get that, but we have to push for interoperability and/or utility, otherwise, this ends up being a vanity point. I’m not sure how 2 .pngs and an .mp4 somehow make up the metaverse, but I’m willing to learn. DMAT is one of the better digital fashion companies that try really hard to create discovery rather than utility, and that’s ok for them. So, I’ll say some more mantras and a few more prayers and hope that my dreams of wearing Ienki Ienki, Gudu and Bevza in Zepeto will come true. And that's enough mantraverse for one week back to Metacrun.ch!

Hi there, humans, I am Kelly Vero’s avatar. What she doesn’t want you to know is that although she says she likes to shake it up when she plays Runescape, WoW or Skyrim, she basically plays the same character (some kind of Elvish) every time. In this article, she’s exploring the crossover or interoperable nature of avatars and how, if at all, they might work wonders. “Interoperability would just make everything more fluid and bring it back to what the metaverse is supposed to be about, which is accessibility for all.” Jacki Vause, Meta Daisies Groupie. The thing about interoperability is that the Metaverse wants it soooooo badly, and interoperability could happen at the snap of your fingers (see Jacki’s testimony above). But guys, guys, guys (collective gender appeal): it’s not that easy, no matter how much you want it. I want to explore the good and bad of interoperability for avatars and how some of the greatest tech empires could both fall apart and strengthen beyond strength at the snap of your fingers. I want to go back to 2018/19 and 2020, it wasn’t so long ago that we were in the grips of that dreadful pandemic. We couldn’t work unless we were in our sweatpants and we couldn’t socialise or god damn it: SHOP. As I’ve said a few times and in a few articles now, crises create innovation, we pivot well; especially in tech, so it’s good to know that early on we were thinking about digital twins (and system and process twins) as well as avatar development. CryptoAvatars, based in Zaragoza, presented a wholly CC0 version of avatar development, a sort of post-cryptokitty NFT-driven open and interoperable avatar. It is utopian at most, but it is playful, kind and still isn’t focused on anything but getting avatars out into the metaverse in all its forms. Avatars really only work if everyone is on the same page in the metaverse. I always say that standardising anything in a decentralised world is futile, yet these new my-way-or-the-highway tools pop up on a daily basis. Why? As consumers and end users, we need choice, but we need utility much, much more. Let’s look at the positives first - because I really want interoperability more than anything in the metaverse. Ready Player Me might just have the answer to my prayers. Avatar? Check! Fashion? Erm, if a little cringe (boiler suits, anyone?), check! Direct-to-avatar is not necessarily something that we would turn to, say, in medical instrument testing or training, even though avatars are very necessary - they’re more virtual crash test dummies than anything personalised or anthropomorphic. Could we really see an avatar version of ourselves being chopped up by a surgeon? No way! How about avionics? Do we all want to get onto a plane and test the safety provisions inside an Airbus 380? I am noping on this one. But where does that leave the rest of the verticals? The purpose of the system, process or digital twin is to create simulated objects and procedures in a photo or hyper-realistic environments (which themselves are simulations) to test, explore and you know the rest if you’ve read any of my previous articles (I won’t bore you here). Notice that I haven’t used the word avatar in this definition. It’s because avatars are us. And the best versions of ourselves can be found where else? Games. Video games present a very interesting opportunity for avatar development, for it is in games that we see and play a version of ourselves. Avatars have always been a personal choice in video games. They provide utility and personality that weighs value over everything else. My level 75 Kaldorei (if I could do it again, I would be Horde) in World of Warcraft is a character I have worked hard on, as though it were a day job or a life’s work. In Elder Scrolls Online, we can select all the different types of classes and races and different types of face shapes and eye shapes and clothing styles that you can allow a Breton to have at the beginning of the game. It’s a psychology that I’m very passionate about in games and something I’ve studied through gameplay over the last 30 years. Therefore, and this is just an opinion (based on years of actually working games, but still an opinion), it would be better to see yourself as Soap MacTavish in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare rather than just boring old Kelly Vero sat on a couch on a Saturday afternoon, wouldn’t it? I think so. I, for one, look great in camouflage. So I would really like to extend that idea further, but not for this article. For this article, I don't care about the opportunities for avatars in games for the creator and end user because that's already been explained a million times. I’m interested in what this looks like for the game developer. They’re the good folks who need to work with APIs to land the whale of interoperability. Because without that connective tissue between the avatar developer, the API, the game developer and the player, we’re just talking about unauthorised ownership, or IP infringement, or (in the case of FIFA or MOTOGP) image rights. Suddenly shit gets real. Let’s take a breath. I hope that as a result of this claim of mine, loads of game studios will actually jump to the defence of avatar interoperability creators and say, “no, no, Kelly Vero is absolutely 100% wrong about this: we totally want your avatar API in our game.” But the problem with most APIs is that they’re pretty rigid. Can I make myself look like Leroy Johnson for fun when I’m playing No Man’s Sky? No. If I can make myself look like Soap MacTavish when I play Runescape? Er, why? Can I also make myself look like Commander Shepard? No, you can only choose one. But, why? Because these are player characters. These are not avatars. There is a real difference between a player character and an avatar. A player character is somebody who is entrenched in the storyline, reliant on the outcome and their entire raison d'etre is about the game's plot. To put your fun avatar in that space, which has been created outside of the game in a different engine, is going to be super difficult because it breaks that gravitas: taking away all of the personality and the psyche of that particular character. But, I want to be proven wrong. Because I believe it would be so much easier to do a Dreamcast VMU-style removable, portable, mobile Avatar creator than having to go through the entire Skyrim race, class, etc churn of console/pc gaming. It would be a dream to load my ESO Breton or WoW Night Elf, created on my train commute, directly from Ready Player Me/ A.N.Other Creator and inserted directly into the game. Wouldn't that be nice? However, here comes the nope: where's the story of the avatar? Your story? It’s more than YOU. It’s everyone in your clan, team, squad. It’s the overarching narrative, the side quests, the plot, the movie, the anime, the web series. It has to be transmedia, metaversal, or it’s alone in the kitchen at a party. Would you want that story to be open to everybody inside and outside of every game? Would you want people to know exactly who you are, and what you stand for? Well, perhaps you would, but a lot of people wouldn't. A lot of people play video games because they don't want people to know who they are. A lot of people play video games because they want to escape from whatever it is that they're living through in their day to day. Therefore, bringing all that data through my API, and all the history of everywhere that I've been would be invasive wouldn’t it? Perhaps exciting? How would that data be managed? Who owns that? Who watches the Watchmen etc? I talked to my good friend Jacki Vause, more than just a Meta Daisies groupie, she’s the CEO of Dimoso. We’d worked together on a project with rock supergroup The Dead Daisies, who, thanks to the pandemic, were well and truly grounded. All that rock’n’roll was on hold - so we worked quickly with the guys in the studio to get a full-on listening party in the metaverse to keep over a million worldwide visitors and fans happy in one wonderful shared online space. I asked Jacki what she thought avatar interoperability would bring to the metaverse from her experiences with the Meta Daisies. “Interoperability is what we’ve been searching for. We’d developed some incredible avatars in Unreal Engine, and we’d spend a lot of our budget trying to customise them for use in different worlds/metaverses/universes.” The whole premise of the band is that they are the first actual band in the metaverse created specifically for a physical real-life band. The Meta Daisies being the digital offspring of these rock gods. She continued, “we created them with an idea that they would play all over the metaverse regardless of the world or platform.” What she found was that the costs incurred in trying to interoperate The Meta Daisies were incumbent on the team from a time and financial standpoint, and how open, transparent and free is that really? But look, we have the beginnings of a beautiful stroke of interoperability. What that interoperability might do for the avatar is allow it to become a gateway to brands later. Why do I say later? Because as a game developer, I see it’s a low-hanging fruit for avatar creators. What avatar creators and developers should focus on is the deliverable to the game studio, the impact on IP, the breaking of the story or the fiction, the weakening of studio DNA by the need to be there in that space no matter what. Here’s my take on how this will invoke for studios, publishers and players in the metaverse, games or not. It will be relentless. This relentlessness will gain critical mass, and then along comes our games stalwarts at your favourite consoles who will refuse to play ball and instead make their own interoperable avatars across their walled gardens. Don’t believe me? This week’s Meta Connect Summit featured a tête-à-tête between the two titans of tech, Satya and Mark, on a shared vision for the new Quest Pro and Quest 2. Enterprise software? Check! Legs on an Avatar? Check! Playing 2D Microsoft games on the Meta Quest Pro? Whaaaaaaaat? Sony, Steam, Nintendo: your move.

This week’s 'A Week in Metacrun.ch' has an air of corporate about it - from Dallas Cowboys to Silicon Valley “wrestlers”, it’s pretty grown-up and official. You know me, I’m not a fan of sitting on the fence - so I’ll give it to you straight: this week, the metaverse is pretty centralised. When you think about streaming platforms, web3 doesn't exactly pop directly into your head, or does it? But streaming the way that you want to stream before diving into something up close and personal with your fave athletes, celebrities and creators is definitely a web3 way of the future. So it's very refreshing that Fireside, who would like you to know that they are the first interactive web3 streaming platform, has decided to expand into sports and esports. Not only are they serial entrepreneurs, but also one of them is the Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban. Everybody knows who Mark Cuban is. It's Fireside’s dream to figure out how they're going to pull together the most perfect fan-focused behind-the-scenes access all areas that you associate with everything from WWE to footie. Working directly with companies as diverse as branding and championship leagues, Fireside promises that it will be able to get us closer than ever to the sports and the experiences that we love inside the world of sports (Dickie Davis not included). Shall I tell you what I think? I think this sounds exactly like what you’re thinking. OnlyFans for sports. Anyone? They say old friends are like old jeans. So it's really, really exciting to think that the next big NFT thing is actually really sustainable to boot. About time too. NFT collection Deadfellaz have partnered with Wrangler Jeans to build a phygital collection, bringing vintage denim to web3. How interesting it is that just 2 or 3 years ago, we were considering NFTs to be nothing more than JPEGs and memes and GIFs and literally images that had no utility whatsoever apart from bragging rights. This fills my heart with joy. The very idea that Wrangler and Deadfellaz have come together to create a community around the stories of vintage jeans that you, the player, can participate in is a game-changer for any naysayers who still can’t seem to get their bird brains around the intersection of fashion and games - hello? McFly? It’s here. The community is built around a choose-your-own-interactive storyline, which picks the outcome of a digital comic strip. This comic strip is drawn by the legendary Leon Lee and comes from the two brands partnering with the web3 platform LTD.INC. The merchandise drop of 20 NFC-infused vintage Wrangler Jeans is ongoing, with several items up for grabs from the Wrangler X Deadfellaz collab, and this is the first merchandise drop for this collab. These 20 pairs of NFTs or jeans are linked to the NFT of a final comic strip. The reason why this is so important is that it's combining the young bucks with a 75-year-old brand effortlessly. And what a way to bring Wrangler into the world of web3! We own too much stuff. And so it's really important to explore the possibility of choosing exactly what it is that we want and don't want so that we don't have too much stuff and that we can just instead enjoy the opportunity of wearing digital layovers or filters or just simply owning an NFT that we really like. I have only one thing that I absolutely detest about this collab though. They called the community The Horde. The Horde? Does this mean that the anti-community is The Alliance? If you know, you know. I am not the world's biggest fan of government regulation. I am a bad girl. I know. But I’m not against regulation and standardisation - working in a decentralised world means that we should regulate ourselves: put your big girl pants on and own your shit. Put your big boy pants on and be responsible. That's the whole purpose of a decentralised autonomous organisation - to make decisions based on the good of the platform/people/metaverse/foundation. This isn’t the dark web, so I wonder why in their wisdom, the US government is approaching the XR massive of headsets and glasses with a good kettling? Forbes has recently discussed why the future of the metaverse might lie in the FCCs hands. And this is a truly disappointing story, because this sounds exactly like the advent and the early stages of web1. You remember web1, don’t you? That clunky powered by dialup experience that was somehow governed by Team America: World Police. So why this now? I guess that where there are opportunities to regulate within platforms; the Federal Communications Commission should probably take it, and I say that this is a really bad idea. So what’s the problem? And why do we need a heavy solution? “This agency will decide whether XR remains confined indoors or let loose in the world; whether it becomes a mobile technology capable of transforming our daily lives or a limited tool for gaming and training.” Apple, Meta and other tech companies have proposed two possible situations to presumably self-govern without the intervention of the FCC. The first one is called VLP (very low power), which focuses mainly on the connection of the FCC to the headset and the amount of latency communication and interaction that headsets present and produce. The other technology, called client-to-client (C2C) communication, sounds a bit like something we’ve heard before, doesn’t it? P2P anyone? Anyone? I've been doing a lot of travelling lately. I was very excited to read that potentially, the US military is becoming metaversal. Of course, for me, this is not a massive piece of news. I imagine for the US military, it's not a huge piece of news, either. On May 10th 2022, two fighter pilots in the US used VR headsets to simulate air-to-air refuelling. Yes, fashion is important, and yes, socialising is the max, but this shows just how we can use the metaverse and associated tools, such as VR, to simulate extreme tasks in dangerous or hazardous scenarios or that are simply too costly to reconstruct irl. If this excites you as much as it does me, I urge you to read my recent Metacrun.ch article about this/digital twins. My take is this: The metaverse lends itself perfectly as a virtual environment or playground for the military to be able to train in. In the 1980s. They developed SIMNET, which was to train a group of soldiers for missions collectively, globally. And as someone who has been in the military, it’s a damn sight cheaper than tearing up some brownland outside of [insert your European territory here]. The project allowed soldiers to go back and replay battles so they could learn from their mistakes and prevent them from happening in real life. Wow, this sounds exactly like Call of Duty. Just pick a Call of Duty any one will do. 4? The one without zombies? Yes, that. We read all about the DoD relationship with Microsoft, and now the military metaverse has suddenly become a really big deal. They have been working with developer Red 6, to create a more realistic combat experience in conventional simulators, and using things like HoloLens or the provision of virtual reality rather than mixed reality to go a bit further down the rabbit hole. The Metaverse serves more as an immersive opportunity for demonstration and strategy rather than just watching videos. My feeling is that multiple technologies need to work together to improve military performance. China and India are using the capabilities of the metaverse in similar simulation experiences. So it's a natural discussion that other militaries around various other nations around the world will want to be in a space where everybody is operating together, either collectively for good or preparing their next move. I'm not going to sit on the fence. I'm going to tell you that I'm not a massive fan of Meta. Everybody knows I'm not a massive fan of Meta. However, my eyebrows lifted above their digital filter anchors when I read about Horizon Worlds, which is the company's variant of the metaverse. Turns out, those employees are not so enamoured by it either. This is very troubling, isn't it? Horizon Worlds, which is the main, Meta, er, verse, has got 300,000 monthly users, though not too shabby, it’s a C- (try Avakin Life). But a new report suggests that it's not taking off just the way that Meta wanted it to, and it's proving to be a bitter pill for its own employees, who are being chastised for not spending enough time there. Imagine going to work and getting torn a new one because you’re not spending enough time in a Metaverse that you're creating. Here’s the definition of dogfooding for anyone who wants to know: “Eating your own dog food or "dogfooding" is the practice of using one's own products or services. This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage using product management techniques. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, and eventually a kind of testimonial advertising.” A memo happened on September 30, which required managers to make their teams use Horizon Worlds at least once a week, once a week. My take on this is one of pity more than scorn. At the end of the day, I think that your mum's gonna love Meta, but the regular dudes on the street who are serious about spending time inside the metaverse working, living, creating, UGC, all of that kind of good stuff? Meta presents nothing more than a fun distraction or a place where you meet your mum. This reminds me a little bit of when I was trying to do my god-daughter’s homework whilst watching Newgrounds or YouTube. Someone has, however, tried to spend 24 hours inside the metaverse meeting people, and her experience mostly revolved around people attending comedy clubs and meeting children who are breaking Meta’s Terms of Service to be inside Horizon Worlds in the first place. And that’s your testimonial. No dogfooding required. That’s enough metaverse for this week - I'm gonna go back on the fence.

Kelly here! I love to tell people that I have a job in the metaverse. No, no, not that, though I do create and develop metaverse experiences for clients across XR and online platforms. I’m talking about my job as a hairstylist in Avakin Life. Ever since the word, “Metaverse” started popping up and being used almost verb-like to explain things that are happening in new, unfiltered worlds; we have seen something of a schism in the world of commerce between those who truly believe that the metaverse can bring something incredible to the world of work, and those who believe that this is just a passing fad, a philosophy, that it isn't real and that it doesn't exist. Trust me on this, these people are really boring. Stay away from these people. But do hang out with people who are looking at creative opportunities to be able to pivot and innovate. I've said in previous articles that as humans, if we are creative - pivoting out of what it is that we do - to try and change the status quo is one of the things that makes us so creative in our space. However, I want to look at the types of industries that might really benefit from being able to go into the metaverse from the perspective of not just platform-based experiences but also by utilising everything that XR (Extended Reality) has to offer. That includes those 20-minute only VR headsets, AR devices that will help you trip directly into the path of oncoming traffic and the poor cousin Mixed Reality, which only super works if you're a surgeon currently (or someone who works at Microsoft). I’ve lived and worked in this space for the last three years, six years in blockchain, NFT and de-fi (and in the games industry for 30 years), and I’ve concluded that there are no verticals that are a limit to Metaverse entry. But can we work in it? And if so, how? Flying through the smoke screen of impossibility. Avionics. The science of the skies: it’s a huge industry which was impacted greatly by the pandemic. I talked about travelling without moving in a previous article, but from the perspective of air travel, some of the things that the metaverse can really help with are actually not the things that you instantly think of when going away on your holidays or to your super-fantastic-futuristic holodeck when we we completely stop using planes to move from country to country. For now, let's look at what the metaverse can do for the world of air travel, and air product manufacture. Training is a great opportunity for the metaverse to run with. Training presents interesting possibilities using a variety of applications across the pantheon of metaverse platforms and worlds. There are already a heck of a lot of VR trainers, but wouldn't it be great if - and bear in mind we live in a remote world now, period - we can work remotely with our colleagues in all four far flung corners of the world. We can develop not only solidified training opportunities, but also explore remote camaraderie as we do it. There is nothing more social than the metaverse, so this is a really great place to get started. Digital twins are high on the agenda in this space too, because they provide the macro and micro in us getting up close and personal with components that enhance avionics and manufacture well. From simulation to, er, samples: if you have a Trent 500 sample part that you need to send between Chengdu, China and say, Rolls-Royce in Derby, then perhaps you want to start digitally. If you’re archiving components and pieces for planes past and present from the L-1049 Super Constellation to the Gulfstream IV (like a G6 but not quite) this is a great use case. Using CT technology within digital twins especially, the scan reproduces every flaw and design element, lump and bump and scratch. There's a company in Switzerland called SO REAL who base their entire business model on the ability to present authentic digital twins. Luxury is the ease of a t-shirt in a very expensive dress. Next up is fashion. I always talk about fashion. You know that I'm really passionate about it. But I will say this and it's really short. We can do anything in the fashion industry within the auspices of the metaverse. It’s true! We do not have to fly over to Dubai Fashion Week, or do all of the fashion weeks in Europe, Asia and the Americas when we can simply go to fashion week in Decentraland, or Avakin Life. We can interact with fashion in a really interesting way, in real time, without boundaries and without the snobbery of fashion. Why? Because the metaverse is completely social, that’s why! So if you design events, or clothing, the metaverse is your new workplace. The real problem here is the fashion industry. There you go, I said it. No one is prepared to break the cycle of boring e-commerce systems by using the metaverse as a sole driver of how we should buy items, objects and general stuff in the future. E-commerce right now is a desert on the internet: dry, lifeless and cold at night. It involves ridiculous photos of the same thing in different colours. How do I know that this will suit me by just looking at an image? Can’t I dress my avatar? Will it fit my body shape? How can I know all of this stuff from a pic? It's wasteful. It's useless, and it's completely stupid. So get that e-commerce store in the metaverse. Shopify will show you how and you will become one of the world’s greatest online magnates because you bypassed the crazy and went straight to your audience. Well done you! Paradise is a state of being, more than just the name of a suburb or a home. I'm really one foot in and one foot out real estate. I can see the purpose of why we have fantastic real estate opportunities within the metaverse from land purchasing virtually, to actually spending time with the local [insert your brand here] realtor to have a look at our next physical in-real-life purchase of actual real estate but how about everything else? Architecture and the great discipline of draughtsmanship: in the metaverse we already are architects and builders, we can apply or save our plans and draughts. Where’s the rest of ya? Are you joining us? The more we create and build, perhaps the less we have to physically construct. For real estate, off-plan purchasing can really take off in the metaverse. If we want to buy real estate and we want to do it off plan, we now have great opportunities to interact with 3D designs of houses, restaurants, hotels, schools and offices; to really understand what that entire process is with regards to living in an existing or new community that we've created. As I'm also on the side of buying real estate inside the metaverse, because after all, as a game developer, I have been creating opportunities for people to live inside of various game worlds so that they don't have to leave. They don't have to go home and they don't have to go away and try something new. Real estate has, therefore, a real occasion to study every square metre of property, regardless of our geographic location. We can also develop ideas and ideals in both real life and in the virtual world allowing all of us to truly own a property, whether it's digital, physical or phygital, and that can only be a good thing. … And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all. In the world of casinos the land casino has always been king. The bricks and mortar of tangible assets provide a gateway to consistent and persistent entertainment. Gaming, gambling and casinos is an entertainment business. Some of the most beautiful buildings in European, American, South African and Asian cities, provide us with the fortuity to be part of a huge adult playground. But what if we were to take away the land based casinos and start to focus and operate our businesses in more of a Metaverse or in a virtual online environment? Well, that gives us a really good connector to do a number of things: from looking after our staff and being able to employ more freely by using remote opportunities. We have some great things going on in casinos of the future. If you take a look at ICE poker, for example. Here you can play poker in a decentralised world, and decentralised means that it's open, transparent, and collaborative. If it's using private Blockchain it has also the potential to be incredibly safe. But the thing that excites me the most is the opportunities that lie in the approaches towards ensuring the safeguarding of people, players and operators inside this space using web3 tools, frameworks and systems. Controversial possibly, but from AML and KYC to human trafficking and adoption of better working practices for everybody in this space. Additionally, working with being able to mentor, support and create responsible gaming, by virtue of using virtual platforms is a really unexplored possibility. Ultimately, the metaverse isn't going anywhere. We've got some really good participation that we can fully harness and utilise in this space. We also have great chances to change the way that we operate and conduct ourselves in this space - that means working practices too - and what it gives us is much more of an up-close-and-personal exposure which gets us closer to the action of everything that it is we create within the metaverse and all of its properties. Whether playing to earn, or exploring the possibilities of connecting the dots of working from its practices and protocols to the science and experimentation we can apply to it: This is our future. So let’s go to work!

Welcome to this week's news roundup. It starts with people still talking about the Metaverse as though it's some kind of riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But why? The answer is really simple. No one knows what's going on, and everybody wants to control it. Elon Musk's ex-girlfriend Grimes says Mark Zuckerberg is “wildly under-qualified to run the Metaverse”. Her argument is an interesting one. However, the point of the Metaverse is that it is open, collaborative and completely transparent. So why would that require ownership in the first place? Matthew Ball wants to build a Metaverse for the power of good. That’s nice. He thinks that the Metaverse is a golden opportunity to fix the internet. Oh, wait, are we talking about this again? Ok. There’s more: the discussion that somehow the Metaverse does not exist has reared its ugly head again because apparently, it's some kind of vision of the future of the internet, which is absolute BS when you think about it. This made-up identity problem is in its development with problems of misinformation, privacy and security breaches. Misinformation? That's exactly what all of these stupid articles are doing. Think about it. There's a new kid on the block, and it's a French web3 platform. It wants to be the Shopify of the Metaverse, so it's raised €3 million in seed funding. That's kind of cool. This French startup is called Metav.rs (interesting use of dots), and it's a new white label solution for brands. It facilitates the creation and sale of NFTs or dematerialised goods such as digital assets and digital twins. It has big ambitions to be the Shopify of the Metaverse, and it's deployed a 3d reconstruction application or builder, which allows easy scanning of physical objects. Metav.rs is targeting major luxury companies and retailers who already have assets across this brave new platform with interesting dots. They’ve worked their bytes off on integration, and they reckon they've already signed some key strategic accounts. Subject to NDAs. Isn't that always the way? Flowing Cloud Technology Ltd made its debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange at the end of last week. It will become the first Metaverse IPO in Hong Kong. Oh really? Launching on the 29th of September, its fundraising amount was around $100 million. The point of this is that Flowing Cloud is a leading AR/VR software technology company in China, and it ranks first in China's VR and AR service market accounting for 13.5% of the market share, and it’s growing wildly. Not too shabby. The development of tools is critical to building prosperity in this new world of the Metaverse, so simply calling yourself a Metaverse and the first Metaverse IPO in Hong Kong is questionable. Is AR/VR metaversal? Somewhat. But let’s see the goods. Something we immerse ourselves in. We’ll wait. The legal challenges and opportunities for IP rights holders are high on the list of what's happening in the world of law. The European Union and the United Kingdom are starting to prepare a future for the Metaverse. There is an increasing focus on the legal challenges for trademarks, copyright and patent owners in the world of content generation. This focus on who owns what and how this can be developed and created is debated almost hourly. In the past year alone, there have been a number of trademark applications for virtual goods and services. According to a report from May 2022, the increase in popularity of the Metaverse and Class 9 of the Nice Classification, which includes computer hardware and software, was the second most popular by the end of 2021. From Hermes disputes to art sales, there’s something for every jurisdiction. But there has been a lot of disagreement in legal circles about the possible classification of virtual goods and services. And the EUIPO raised guidance back in June, indicating that virtual goods should be considered as Class 9. The Office also said that NFTs are to be treated as “unique digital certificates registered in a blockchain, which authenticate digital items but are distinct from those digital items. As such, they should also be incorporated into Class 9” however, they must specify what the type of digital item is authenticated by the NFT. This is going to cause quite a lot of headaches, not just for trademark owners or for luxury, but also for the people making the rules.

Kelly Vero, here! Your creative badass, future-gazer, game developer and general metaverse nerd. I really fancy myself as a culture vulture. Some might say that even with a major in Greek and Roman Mythology and a minor in Art History, I’m possibly more of a philistine for turning my back on the traditional norms and focusing a little more on the glorious future. So what happens when you add digital in the mix of the traditional? The Wonders of the World Let's start with Fliggy because it brought so much enjoyment to my stints in lockdown. Fliggy is an online travel agency leveraging the Alibaba ecosystem. But it's one of China's most downloaded mobile apps. Why is it one of the most downloaded apps? Well, obviously, because of the quality of what Fliggy stands for, which is travel, but during the pandemic, it stepped up and went deeper into the culture of the world, starting to develop its own virtual experiences we could visit, for example, Palace de Versailles. The private apartments of the King and Queen, as well as les salons (state rooms), were open on a wet Wednesday afternoon from the comfort of my desk. Guided by an actual person, these events sought to enrich the audience with the rich seam of history, but a desire to sign up to visit what we could only eat with our eyes. Fliggy were able to pivot quickly and more importantly, innovate out of a situation. I've talked about something similar in a previous article, but the ability to humanise technology through places I wanted to visit when I was locked down is immeasurable to the strength of self during this time. Literally: if you know, you know. VR did not (and to some extent still doesn’t) provide that connection to people, places and things. Though apps such as Wander or the Google Arts & Culture website may give unbridled access to locations and visual spectacles, they are limited and distanced in their approach to the user experience. Any walls or barrier to entry creates exclusion resulting in short-term retention and a lack of joy; it doesn’t matter how many portraits you have in your galleries. So, I don't accept that 10 million daily active users as of 2020 would feel okay about just sticking with a travel agency app that didn't provide something more connective during a pandemic. In 2022, Fliggy is still killing it. I love Fliggy a lot, despite my not being Chinese, but moreover, this is a great way for us to explore culture and etiquette and not just travel: it’s the technology of travelling without moving. The Gemini Effect Digital twins aren't anything new to us as consumers over the last few years, we've heard them called everything from digital fashion to digital assets to 3D items. Well, any kind of technology where a live object has a facsimile in digital is a twin. I work on twins every single day of my life, and I find them to be fascinating, both outside and inside. However, when we look and think about digital twins from the perspective of culture, another really rich seam presents itself to us. It was a company called Matterport that really kicked off this love affair that we have with inside culture. Although slightly left behind over the past couple of years in Western Europe and the rest of the world, Matterport is massive in the USA. Want to know why? It’s really simple. The use cases are abundant. It is a really helpful tool for businesses that want to be effectively open all hours, and not just businesses. If you want to do an open house for your real estate sale, you can do it using Matterport. If you want to open up a gigantic film studio prop store, you can do it using Matterport and hone in on the tiny bone fragment prop from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The limitations to Matterport are really only as far as the fact that they work best on a PC. Everything else is fantastic and opens up an entirely new way of thinking about our connection with culture, the Arts etc. Why should we in the west (particularly) care about what's on our doorstep? We could just go outside, right? Wrong. When working on a project with Dazlus AG and their amazing Hightime App, a beautifully crafted story of a city in AR, I needed to get under the skin of Munich. So, turning my attention back to Wander again, I relied upon it to help me understand the roads and streets and more importantly, the stories of the city. It was then that I realised Wander wasn’t giving me that connective experience, VR or not. I needed to look at the city through my heart or my imagination which is tough in VR. When we go into museums, galleries or historical places of interest, we use our imagination to piece together the things that we don't know. Google Arts and Culture operate a similar sort of experience to Matterport and to some extent Wander, but the problem with that is that your brain is very smart. It knows when it is looking at procedurally generated content. When you tell your brain that you want to be able to understand what the eye is seeing, that’s when these apps become redundant, and we lean on the power of Fliggy or Hightime. Google Arts and Culture had a golden opportunity to do something amazing many years ago with the Getty Museum, and my worry is that 10 or so years on, they’ve still not nailed it. It’s ok that every single museum or place of culture gets involved with these schemes to support and showcase what the arts can do, but it’s not immersive. At all. Quite the opposite in fact. The Venice Science Gallery nailed it. They produced a short experience for us to understand the importance of lost or stolen artworks: called NETCHER (NETwork and social platform for Cultural Heritage Enhancing and Rebuilding). From stealing a piece of marble from Ostia Antica to the ancient city of Palmyra and even understanding why Gustav Klimt hid a secret underneath the layers of oil on canvas in Portrait of a Lady. For them, “specific research tools and devices as well as digital, virtual and augmented reality, [...] can have a deeper understanding of these objects and of the importance of keeping on fighting against illicit trafficking of cultural heritage.” They’re not doing anything new in technology, except they are, in peeling the onion of the objects and the technology that serves them, they are able to understand the intrinsic heritage of the object through the stories and materials they yield. The Heritage of Luxury Recently I have been fortunate to work with a company called Audemars Piguet. They are a heritage watch brand based in Switzerland. Their outgoing CEO, François-Henry Bennehamias, is a passionate supporter and proponent of digital technology to solve some of the problems that heritage watch brands have. Heritage watch brands are those with a long design inventory, a history that spans over hundreds of years. Yet, when I was invited to their headquarters not far from Geneva in Switzerland, it didn't look very techno. Vallée de Joux is a very tranquil area where Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, Breguet, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Jaeger-LeCoultre have their factories and headquarters. It looked pretty sleepy, well kept and parochial. But inside AP’s fantastic new museum itself, the story of the watches suddenly made me feel as though I was a tiny ant in a gigantic universe. The great thing about what François was doing at Audemars Piguet was that he had presented the heritage watch brand with the golden opportunity of transmedia. In using it as a vehicle for telling stories, the watch became more than a timepiece, and that story could be alive just like the watch. In developing the Black Panther watch under the famous Royal Oak series brand, François tapped into an entirely new generation of audience for AP and naturally outsold its original benchmark for watch production. However, the story of the museum itself is as strong as the watches that are inside it. It really does take the visitor on a journey and culturally with an entirely different gravitas on the visitor: from Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Shah of Iran, history is told through technology in watchmaking, as seen through the eyes of the people who made them. But that’s not why I want to talk about Audemars Piguet. It’s about the digital transformation of that entire storytelling experience in watchmaking and design. It doesn’t leave you. The experience is wholly interactive and immersive without VR. So when a multi-Michelin starred chef was an ambassador of Audemars Piguet, you, the visitor (and hopefully superfan) are invited to participate in the sights, smells and tastes of what he is cooking in situ. For film buffs, you can get up close and personal with Arnie in a custom-made Terminator experience (Arnold Schwarzenegger is a massive fan of the Royal Oak too). This is what the metaverse is all about, the inside-out and outside-in of UX. Most cultural objectives fall short of what is real for society, preserving the arts for those who have. You don’t have to be a heritage watch brand to get closer to your vision. You just need to execute it or curate it in a way that everyone can connect with, not just your high-net-worth donors. The metaverse is your friend. It's one thing to create a like-for-like system twin of the British Museum. It’s a whole other thing to immerse the end user in that particular moment/scene/experience with as much ease as the Terminator experience at the Audemars Piguet watch museum. Social Life I'm regularly pitched by businesses who want me to look at their metaverse. They've created a metaverse for the purpose of an exhibition or showcase of what it is that they can do and create. Yeah, they want to fill it full of luxury (why?), art, or they want to fill it full of jewellery, or they want to fill it full of something. These things are just not immersive. They're not inherent and native to who we are as humans unless that weird staccato environment of being hit from all angles by flying handbags is the new normal. As humans, we have to know how to behave, adapt and connect in order to adopt tools, apps and experiences. So how can the etiquette of the metaverse help us to shape experiences away from the hazing of what we now call the mainstream media: that whole discussion about games being bad, the metaverse is bad, NFTs are bad, etc, etc. Yawn! Not everything has to be bad. Everything, including the metaverse, in moderation, is good. We can learn there, we can live there, we can work there, but not all the time. Just as in life. There is a great deal of discussion about how the metaverse is going to change the way that we socialise and talk to each other. Our psyche and our associative responses to our social nature in this digital age shouldn’t change. It doesn’t need to. We still have the opportunity to walk away from our screens. What might happen when we start to make things more immersive? Or, even better, we start to make things less about ourselves selling a brand or an item and make it more about an experience like an amusement park. Then what happens inside the metaverse? Do we become addicted? Hell no! We become socially mobile inside what it is we have created (UGC) or what has been made for us. We get to choose our own adventures. But I'm not sure that any Metaverse has really managed to pull this off in its entirety yet. I've mentioned before that I've got a job in Avakin Life where I cut people's hair. A limited experience, though it is, it’s fulfilling because in real life I cannot cut hair. Being a hairstylist in Avakin Life isn't something that I can participate in every single day. If I don't participate in things every single day because I'm busy working, then does that mean that I am going to suffer from FOMO or I'm going to lose out on some kind of reward? Quite the opposite: as a user or a player, I don't really miss it. What I miss is the interactivity of experiences or social events and focus inside Avakin Life rather than my actual job because I already have a job in real life (in fact, I have about 10 jobs). The job that I have in Avakin Life is just a great little talking point and a bit of fun. Interoperability is a Big Word in a Small World Now look, there are opportunities inside the metaverse for us to completely mess up. One of them is interoperability. If we don't look at etiquette as coming from a place of tying up all of our cultural interactions, as we did with Yahoo chat rooms back in the late 90s; then we're missing a golden opportunity for us to be able to understand exactly what it is that we want the metaverse to grow into. Do you want to know who has nailed this concept? Look no further than South East Asia. Companies such as Hyperconnect, Bilibili, Line, WeChat and KakaoTalk have created a sense of metaversal insertion into messaging platforms, creating even more interesting ways to communicate. The wake of Youtube and Meta’s “do more” promise to stop online abuse and vitriolic hate speech isn’t exactly moderation. Not in the age of AI. This is selective moderation and could possibly be based on SEO. Web3 will (and for some, currently) requires us to moderate ourselves on a ledger where what we say cannot as easily be decoupled from who we are, anonymous or not, we know. If we flip the problem on its head, the web3 approach is simple: enhance the experience and make it more immersive and real for end users - that in turn invokes natural moderation or, as my mum calls it - manners. It’s all in the name with Hyperconnect because their vision is to create a hyper-connected humanity which is free from loneliness: machine or human. With that, they have developed a series of products inside that space. Hakuna Life, which is Chatroulette for spontaneous social entertainments (which one might argue was always the elevator pitch at Chatroulette), as of December 2020, has had over 20 million downloads globally, which tells you something about not only the product itself, but also the desire for connection from light immersion (voting) to deep friendships (group activities). Socially immersive metaverse? I’ll take it. Bilibili, as of 2015, has served over 50 million users, 75% of whom are under the age of 24. In Q3 of 2021, the company's platform had grown to support 237 million monthly active users. For what though? Three little words - User. Generated. Content. Full commentable and shareable, it’s TikTok plus. From parodies to subcultural content creators, it is like Reddit with videos, and also, it handles mobile games really well. If the future is really mobile (something that I go on about maybe too much), I can watch the next instalment of The Penthouse there and comment on it as I'm watching it. You can't do that on Netflix. You can do that on Rakuten Viki. So, keep your TikToks and your Instagrams: Bilibili does live commenting. Allowing you to create and interact at the point of source. And as for moderation? The user plays the tune, and the user sings the song. Express Yourself Self-critique, moderation and obviously, expression is at the heart of culture and etiquette. We can’t have one without the other, and yet, in web2, we’ve spiralled like the cast of Jersey Shore on a Sunday afternoon. This philistine (that’s me) actually wrote her thesis on Jersey Shore and the demise of Bacchanalian theatre from 1660–1688. The arrogance! And yet, in 2022, I’m not far wrong. We are all artists regardless of how that manifests. Some of us are misunderstood, and some of us really want to be loved. We tread the boards of life, hang our images on the walls of municipal galleries and hope that we aren’t pelted with rotten cabbages and tomatoes. But we’re social creatures. We’re mobile creatures - we want to go to those places that we’re not supposed to go to, and we want to experience those moments however it suits us - some might want to monetise the experience, and some want to pay money to be the experience. However we adopt the vision, it has to be ours, not yours, and that's truly how the metaverse will conquer all. So please, stop making something artistic, spectacular and fantastic in your vision - we get it, but we’re not a part of that - instead, why don’t you join us, develop something as we move and come with us on the journey?

I’m Kelly Vero, creative badass, future-gazer, game developer and general metaverse nerd. I’ve been making games for a long, long time but I’ve always had an eye on the future, where I now work, to drive technology up and out beyond your wildest dreams. Since it's very humble beginnings, the world of online technology has been set up to be this stuffed hard drive of all our thoughts, feelings and hopes. But what happens when we’re not around to feed the beast? Then what? ...And Out of This World Back in 2013, a really good friend of mine passed away. Actually he was a student of mine, a mentee. He was learning game design under my tutelage and one day he grew up and moved away, like most people do. During our time together we’d studied in a metaverse (SmallWorlds), watched every conceivable Japanese modern classic from Princess Mononoke to Moonchild (Gackt and Hyde anyone?) and he would blog and post his life online. I know he did. I taught him how to do it. I read his deepest thoughts and his funniest moments in that time we were apart. But one day, he died. The deep thoughts and the funny moments were gone. Weren’t they? Every year since he passed away, his friends, and all the people who loved him, commemorate his life. However, they don't commemorate him in a traditional sense, where you would go to his grave, leave flowers, and have a beer in his honour. Because we live in the future. And the way to preserve in ad-memoriam these days, is to preserve your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We leave our memories of him and our words of comfort for each other in that place. It still brings a great deal of peace to everybody who knew him, and even those who didn't know him. Everybody feels as though they're part of a wider story. Pretend We're Dead That got me thinking about us and our story, the living, and how we will protect ourselves and our heritage when we're no longer alive. If you know me, you know I love to talk about digital death, it’s the goth in me. I think the reason why I want to talk about digital death is because it focuses on two key issues affecting our digital life and lifestyle. The physical or phygital, and the pure data. There’s a symbiotic relationship that is hard to uncouple. What are our most important possessions? Is it that China tea pot that has been handed down through the family across generations? Or is it data? We know that data can take a variety of forms; from photographs, diary entries and blog posts to the things we don’t want people to find. Currently, what happens after we have departed this mortal coil is, if I were to use my first example as the basis for the argument: an opportunity to keep ourselves alive by virtue of everyone around us who loved us. However, since this generation, and that's Generation X (not the band), will be the first generation who will go into digital retirement. What does that actually mean for every generation to follow? The Digital Ageing Process In my Digital Witness presentation at the inaugural Beyond Games event last year, I talked about the things that will affect us meaningless meatsacks - from dementia to pensions. We’ll be the first generation to embrace old age using technology. So, let’s face the problems head on. My knees hurt a bit and my eyes need the bottom of milk bottles to even see my own hand these days. I’m not as fast as I used to be and I’m not as hot, but my brain is. Well it is at the moment. While my whole body fails me, my brain is on point 24 hours a day (it feels like). Before I Forget was one of the first games to explore the often uncomfortable themes associated with getting old but who cares about that? I’m an Iris Apfel, I’m growing old disgracefully. How are you going to help me with that, game developers? Eve Online, Borderlands and even Sea Hero Quest either gather data as we play, or allow us, the citizen scientist, to explore everything from planet discovery to protein folding and even COVID. What a helpful lot gamers are! Health tech is mega sophisticated with fancy device diagnostics and even cybernetics in operations are driving up the focus on them kids who used to spend every coin in the arcade and their demands to be operated on via joysticks. I’m ok with it. The simple motherboard is now a portal to good health. What’s not to love? Femtech or feminine technology can do everything from measure infertility and provide support, to nutrition, period products subscriptions and even robo-midwives (well, chatbots). And finally sex tech has given us more reasons to avoid being lonely in our dotage. In a world where population is on the decline in civilisations where technology is king, it’s hard to imagine a life completely alone (unless you’re Tom Hanks in that bloody awful film with the troll face football): and why should you? Death of a Swan It will be managed by data and what happens in the metaverse. That’s the first pearl clutching statement I’ll make. Why data? Bizarrely, I started thinking about this subject when I was willing Cloud Strife to not die in Advent Children. His brother from another mother, Kadaj, was defeated in battle and heard who he thought were the words of Jenova. We all dream of a noble death don’t we, and only a few of us are lucky enough to die in total peace. Let’s be honest, death is the end of our physical essence and as Kadaj’s spirit energy (and all that amazing materia) returns to the Lifestream; we realise that life and death is all around us in the physical realm but in the spiritual, or should that read digital, we are all one. Sakaguchi wanted to explore “life” in a "mathematical and logical way to overcome the mental shock." That’s data. And to some extent doesn’t that also explain the metaverse? Deus Ex-Machina If data is sustaining, then I both love and hate data in equal parts. The whimsy of retaining your identity well into the future is the stuff of Wilde, Joyce, even Clancy for god’s sake. But if you want to hate on data you can. It’s a fatberg of zeroes and ones. It’s clogging up clouds, vaults, wallets, google drives and whatever else you stored that meme of an exploding dog on. Do you need it? Will it take you into the afterlife? Are you k-drama idol of his day, Tutankhamun? Do you have a sarcophagus full of treasures that will delight and inspire egyptologists of this generation? No, you are not. You’ve kept a photo album of that time you went to Magaluf in 1989 where you and your brother took turns dipping your dad’s hands in a dish of warm water after a night out in Willie's Bar. I’m just saying. This really wasn’t worth scanning, putting in your hard drive and transacting between backups. It’s pointless and wasteful. But it means something to you, because you are here, now, you are alive. You won’t always be, so it would be good to think about the memories you can make space for on yours or in someone else’s memory. The ghost inside of the machine is you. You’re irrational, emotional, you operate with skin and bone and muscle and heart. Data doesn’t. It wants to be overwritten, it was made to be versioned. And that love and hate thing I talked about earlier? It’s SpaceJam. Until last year that was the greatest website ever, but it was overwritten, revised and released into the internet to be born again. That’s you. Ted “Theodore” Logan was right. Curating the Crazy I have been an avid user of the internet since it was born. I've tried as much as possible, given the meagre salary that I had in my more formative career years, tried to keep ahead and be an early adopter of new technologies (provided it's not Apple), and new tools that I can support and that support me. But in the future, I won't be around to see all the fruits of what Generation X, the Millens, Gen Z and Alpha will produce. With that in mind, I'm pretty careful about what I create, and how I curate the things I do online, to make space and be frugal. My time was when Crash Override and Acid Burn were married (go and look it up), and wouldn’t we all want to be remembered with a banging Fluke/Prodigy soundtrack? The digital spaces that we create now have to be curated by us constantly. In order to ensure that there is enough room for digital usefulness in the future, we have to use the tools at our disposal to edit us a little more meaningfully, enough for us to be remembered and commemorated in the ways we want for ourselves and our friends. It's been ten years since he passed away. So much has happened. We’ve come such a long way. The only channel I have to remember him is in a search engine. Something uncurated, something that exposes all of us to who we really are or were. And yet, amongst that cached result he’s still there, living, in digital form, waiting to be discovered like an artefact at the bottom of the sea or in a sarcophagus buried deep within a pyramid. The story doesn’t end because we are no longer living, the story starts with what we left behind.

I’m Kelly Vero, creative badass, future-gazer, game developer and general metaverse nerd. You can always find me waxing lyrical on my favourite subject - I don’t even need to speak its name - why do I bother? Because it’s important that we get this stuff right. Web3 is all over our newsfeeds currently but what in the name St Gavin Wood of Ethereum is it? Wonder no more… What is Web3? This is a fantastic question. The idea of Web3 is currently somewhat of a philosophy. However, if we’re saying that the metaverse is a playground then Web3 is the gatekeeper of maintenance and services for that playground. Let me explain. Web1 is our Precious The year is 1989, Bros, Kylie Minogue, and Def Leppard are rising high in the charts. I’m in my last year at school, and the World Wide Web has been born to Tim Berners-Lee as a sort of open framework for sharing documentation. A bit like Wikipedia. Those of us who wanted more were the folks who were navigators around various web pages and websites using things called top level domains. From Berners-Lee’s early engineering to the Netscapes, the Internet Exploders and the Dogpiles, the world followed quickly behind this basic function to share. We just know these domains as URLs or website addresses. URLs are really the sort of coordinates of how we get from one website to another. Web2: The Spoiled Brat of Web1 When Web2 emerged as a possibility of being something more than a web page, shit got messy. Because it was more than a web page, and that there were things such as data and content that needed to be taken into account, and that they were centralised within companies that we now know as big tech, Web2 became something of a diva. These big technology companies such as Google, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, or even Amazon, were starting to effortlessly filter through into our daily lives with a native but definitely fervent need to control what we see, what we buy and what we want. Then came social: media, marketing, music and MySpace. It definitely ends with Facebook, and Twitter. When we required a little bit more from the internet, because we’d been told this was the promised land and we all thought it was ours, we were confronted, disappointed and we set about a quiet revolt. Web3 is All of Us Today, we're building something called the metaverse and we know that it needs something a little bit more robust or workable, a bit like Play Doh, that we can break off and use chunks of, and allow it to service whichever tools we are building, or whatever it is that we are creating. We can't do that with big tech, big tech is a walled garden, a limited philosophy that is the vision of its board members, not its users. So, we’re establishing a new way of thinking about the internet. It’s called Web3. Though some people argue that data security, scalability and privacy for users has somehow been compromised, for the majority of people navigating Web3, it could be argued that a decentralised web takes us back almost to how the world wide web and the internet should have been, and that is: open. To everybody and not owned by anybody. Though some people suggest that web3 is a buzzword or a marketing term, Web3 actually has legs. It creates a system or a series of interoperable tools, services and datasets that can be utilised by everybody. From game designers to social media enthusiasts, and even to fashion designers and aviation component manufacturers. It gives everybody the opportunity to be a creator, rather than having the reliance upon big technology companies to provide that blueprint or framework for them. Naturally, that completely pisses off big tech companies, because they're really focused on making money through the downloading, buying and utilising of their tools. It keeps their shareholders focused and happy and rolling in profits. But for the rest of us? All we want to do is pull a little piece of clay off here and add your own little bits of Play Doh there. Why shouldn't we be able to do that? That's what technology is all about - it’s collaborative. The Gold Rush was never about Gold So, when we talk about Web3, I like to use the analogy of the gold rush. In the gold rush, everybody rushed to the rivers and started scouting for the best places to collect and search for little nuggets of gold. Often, they were disappointed. They came away empty handed. How did anyone make money during that time? Who were the millionaires? Who were the billionaires? It was the people making the tools. Therefore, if we think about the world as being a gigantic gold rush at the moment, and almost a little wild west, that’s okay! The gold mines of NFTs, blockchain technology, or your favourite metaverse, game development and extended reality (XR) opportunities are being serviced by investors, toolmakers, dreamers, creators and inventors like Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesen, probably by Marc Andreesen; because the people who are going to be the big winners in this space will be you: content creators, the doers, the service providers. And what of the big tech guys? With their prisons of design pillars and KPIs and their demise of infinite deliverables. Who knows? Let's spare a thought for them as we step into Web3.

I’m Kelly Vero, creative badass, future-gazer, game developer, and general metaverse nerd. As I was an early adopter of the fun bits in Web2, I have been on countless internet dates and gone through the whole nine yards of A/S/L on Yahoo Chat Rooms. I'd used everything from Plenty of Fish to Match.com. However, in the last 15 years or so, I haven't needed to do that. I guess because of that, I've probably lost a little bit of touch of how love grows in a digital age. Now we’re diving into the metaverse, I have a curiosity. How easy is it to make friends or fall in love in Web3? Plenty of Phish A few interesting opportunities have availed themselves since the metaverse became this mainstream behemoth, and for these end users: love is back in fashion. But how are people connecting? When I was looking for love it was about navigating from outdoor billboard to Streetmate (I’m really showing my age now). But today, the navigation is less disjointed and as fluid as the metaverse allows (which is a lot). There are apps now that allow people to be able to connect using virtual reality for example, and one of the big issues could be, the inability to fully hold the end user. And that's fine, because not everybody approaches dating in the Tinder, Grindr, Bumble or Raya-style where they must be consistent and utilise the services of the app every single day. One of the things that probably is quite refreshing about Web3/metaverse app Nevermet, is that it's a gateway for people to be able to have deeper conversations either in VR chat or to take the conversation to Discord (and beyond). It doesn’t mind if you go elsewhere. It isn’t a jealous god. And it shouldn’t be. Get Real The big whale of 2022 is BeReal. BeReal is a social site which has gained popularity throughout 2022. A daily push message encourages users to share a photo of themselves and their immediate surroundings in a randomly selected two minute window every day. It has notes of Insta but somehow feels worlds apart because it's very authentic; to the point some might say mundanity. However, what it is, is an app that fits into our lifestyle and our lifestyle currently is that we are either chained to a computer all day (thanks to the pandemic) or we're pretty oblivious to anything but walking the dog. In short, it’s designed for everyone time-poor. Where we might previously swipe across how somebody looks or who somebody is or whether they're interesting enough for us to stan. What we might now do is look at BeReal as an even shorter window into the souls of regular people rather than Kardashians. As a social media app, it is being used quite extensively for people to be able to connect with other people in an Instagram style, without the botheration of ungamified targeting. People looking for filtered content from the perspective of actual filters will be disappointed, this is an experiment in real images rather than selfies. The critique of BeReal particularly from the perspective of a game developer, (that's me) is that it has a daily cycle of engagement which is great. But it is incredibly repetitive, let me explain. When I play a game, such as Township or Farmville; though the core loop is repetitive, the experience is different pretty much every time. So for example, if I go and harvest a field, it is technically a different experience every time I harvest because there are other things to take into account. There might be eggs to pick, there might be milk to collect. In the case of BeReal, it really is the same thing every single day. Leaving Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram behind was one of the most exciting things I ever did. I guess one of the reasons why is because the sheer banality of the system of social media was just not endearing to me anymore. Another reason is data. When my experiences on social media started to get a little bit predictive, I was glad to release it and release myself from its prison. That said, there is no real desire for me to enter into social media with the heft, or the enthusiasm that I had in 2006/2007. My social media needs have changed: it's nice to connect with people and maybe over time they will turn into friends but overall, it's not necessary. Big Time Sexuality Wait a minute, what if I wasn't sociable at all? If I had no partner, and I had no way of being able to enter into either a world of love, or a world of social connection or engagement. Step forward sex tech, which is working hard to be able to solve some of the problems that we're having as a population edging towards a totally single existence. Vibease, famed for the remote control vibrator, has developed a unique opportunity for people to be able to not only connect with their own bodies, but also to be able to enjoy the tools of the metaverse and the Internet, particularly, which have put us in such great stead over the last few years - from audio books to long form publications. Vibease has created an AI partner who controls your pleasure. And in doing so, it has brought about a great deal of psychological change for a lot of people. Categorisation would be obvious to describe, but that’s not necessary here. Partnerships and social engagement which can be the single most difficult experiences for wide swathes of any population will hopefully have found that this opportunity to connect with something in a safe way is more important than being social. When you think about it, this is a giant leap for future tech. The design methodology of this principle alone allows people to learn, accept and more importantly, understand not only who they are as people but what their places in society are to a greater extent. In the movie Her, starring Joachim Phoenix, and Scarlett Johansson, it was Phoenix’s character who fell in love with the Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri-style of Johansson’s character. In it Spike Jonze was pretty clear about the approach to Her as a social commentary on what was happening in modern relationships of that time (2013). What's merely happening now is that this is not moving away from Her’s original intentions as social commentary. The enhancement of technology from that base requirement is allowing us to go deeper either into our psyche or into technology itself. Yes, we might indeed have conversations with Siri, because we are lonely. But AI partnerships give us the opportunity to have solid back and forth, no pun intended with the AI partner rather than just having a discussion with a chatbot. These new technologies have resolved and refined themselves to the point of sentience, which is both scary and exciting a prospect all at the same time. The Future is Uncoded It is exciting to see how Gen X, Xennials, Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha individuals will connect with technology on a higher level for the purposes of social engagement, or whether indeed, they will completely repel the idea that somehow they have to parade themselves for two minutes a day on a social media platform in order to feel engaged, or more importantly accepted as individuals. How different this is from blind dates, youth discos and clubs of the 1980s and 90s is yet to be decided. But certainly my generation will continue at a pace with the tired, bloated and frankly dangerous social media applications of web2 just as teenagers are reported to be turning their backs on some social media entirely by simply talking to one another face-to-face or in a metaverse.

It’s me: Kelly Vero, creative badass, future-gazer, game developer and general metaverse nerd. What does entertainment have to do with the metaverse? As it turns out, quite a lot. Entertainment plays its biggest role yet and needs cutting edge technology which is driven by consumer demand. Are you sitting comfortably? Gabsida! Enter Stage Right In 2019, a freak phenomenon happened in no other place but China. A book, Mo Dao Zu Shi (The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation), was adapted for the screen as The Untamed. A television series of 50 episodes, it was created for WeTV through Tencent video. So far, so good. But this book was controversial. And this genre would quickly be banned from Chinese state publications, broadcasts, and anything purporting to create the citizens of tomorrow. Unstoppable as the brand and IP was, it allowed itself to be interpreted into national fashion crazes (Hanfu) and adapted verbatim in everything from cosplay to merchandise, and branded consumer goods. It gave advertisers the opportunity to connect with entirely new audiences and from creating an animated series to developing a mobile game: The Untamed exploded the much bloated genre of Xianxia, becoming one of the most popular dramas of the last 10 years. It surpassed 9.5 billion views on Tencent Video in June 2021, which was a few days before the second anniversary of its airing date, making it one of the highest viewed dramas in the world, let alone on a Chinese platform. You’ve definitely never heard of it. The Spokesmodels of Simulation The premise of the story is that we follow the life and tragedy of Wei Wuxian, who is a cultivator of dark and demonic arts. Resurrected 16 years after his tragic death, his return to the world brings him to reunite with the people in his life, including his soulmate Lan Wangji. Though gripping and intense (and I might add not entirely as homoerotic as some might report), the plot is not the most interesting part about this IP. It is of the two leads, namely Xiao Zhan (playing Wei Wuxian) and Wang Yibo (who plays Lan Wangji). Both performers, models, and actors in their own right, this series propelled them into mega stardom - creating fan fiction and idolatry on a level of the Beatles or BTS. Through the freedom of fanfiction came the metaverse. A world of opportunity began to appear for people who were passionate superfans of Xiao and Wang in recreating or simulating this particular universe. Social platforms alone could not sustain, not maintain the deepest requirements of the fandom: to see, be and play with their idols whenever, wherever. The Sims is a popular RPG IP. It is a world contained in a beautifully crafted core loop originally developed by Will Wright. It is a bona fide metaverse, though we often don’t see it as anything more than a game. In the usual business of games, as consumers we might wait patiently for a few years to see our favourite books, or tv shows represented as video games. But something changed, and the simplicity of Mo Dao Zhu Shi’s fiction allowed us to take the world and repackage it into life, creating the author’s vision onto other platforms and in other experiences giving rise to opportunities in the metaverse for other activities to be lived out or experienced. The Untamed is not the only perfectly crafted reproduction in the metaverse if indeed you count The Sims as a/the metaverse. Games are Life, Not Make Believe From Fallout to Mass Effect, you don't have to travel very far in the metaverse to find recreations of well known games, and IP. One of the more famous, such as Halo, doesn't get a mention in this infinite platform where tech meets aesthetics. Most off-the-shelf metaverse interiors are purchased with recreating the expansive battlefields of Halo in mind and yeah, folks can even buy a “private car garage” in Sketchfab with gunmetal grey walls and neon orange trims and decals in hexagonal shapes and patterns. So, why is simulation happening in the metaverse? What is the psychology of creating an LA beach scene in GTA Online or going on the party yacht in Avakin Life? It's a really simple answer, and that is because they can. Anything that you feel passionate about in the metaverse you should be able to create. But the why perhaps, is that all of the simulations inside the metaverse feature the gamification of the original cinematic or written experience. Like transposing the feelings of the book or film into the rudimentary routines of games in the metaverse. Companies like Rockstar, Roblox et al have been looking at the metaverse as the ideal platform for gaming, therefore the potential barrier to entry for anybody wanting to recreate everything from the detention room in the Breakfast Club, to creating an aviation construction or simulation for safety policies inside the Boeing metaverse. This can happen in any place where there is access to 3D models, avatars and environments. And if the goal is to simulate experiences in the virtual world before moving into the physical world, then this is exactly a perfect playground for industries that wish to create simulations of everything from office spaces to training exercises. What we read in books or see on screen is playing into the deepest part of our psyche. The games industry has known this for a long time and through the barrage of space junk in the various platforms and points of sale, it is studios such as Square Enix and as previously mentioned Tencent who want to be able to give the world; and that’s the key phrase here, the world to the end user or player. Tencent has, since 2019, developed a pool of experiences through its ““Global Digital Museums for National Treasures” Strategic Cooperation Initiated by Tencent and RMN” RMN being the France National Museums Union. Bringing game engines and aesthetics to new audiences through the medium of living technology. Square Enix has long supported the theory that we should be able to live in our game and is slowly pulling its vision together through a series of carefully curated tools allowing us to do just that. As I write this I am excited about the possibility of finally buying that apartment in Sector 7 slums! All the World's a Stage Entertainment, in my opinion at least, needs some refinement than the usual “let’s just show up in Breaking Bad and see what happens” - though that is the desired effect, I have a better theory. Somehow, looking at that image of Wei Wuxian and Lan WangJi makes me wonder whether we are opening the doors to live inside persistent theatre. And if that's the case, where does that leave the world of entertainment if as players we can spend time acting out our wildest dreams inside simulated worlds or stages, doesn't this provide the perfect foil to one of Shakespeare's most famous quotes? This space is primed for theatre. The execution of intricate sets and dioramas into infinity allow us to grab more than 360॰ - something that takes us way back to the era of theatre in the round through playwrights from Aristophanes to Brecht and it paves the way for life inside a realised fiction (just like games). Data-Driven Theatrics All or most industry verticals have their own theatre that provides as much, if not more than entertainment or serious gaming/training can. They can provide a wonderful, rich feedback loop of data created in the metaverse flowing back into the real world and out into the metaphysical landscapes of where it came from. In algorithms, architectures and neural nets there is a need for them to play a role in increasing the coherence inside the metaverse. Synthetic data is "any production data applicable to a given situation that is not obtained by direct measurement." And lately, a spike in synthetic data has shown us that it is not the most effective way to be able to extract the information for the feedback loop in the metaverse. The role of people inside the metaverse seems more important in terms of being the key, or the gatekeeper of data as it passes through real life into simulation. But one of the things that we have to remember is the computing power of what is capable here. Whilst we're still still trying to figure out how quantum computing and edge computing can truly work to be able to save our GPUs and CPUs, perhaps forcing energy into creating a series of platforms and systems to test data is not the best use of the metaverse. After all, the metaverse is a playground, so we should be able to play in it rather than use it as an academic lab where we study (that's another article entirely!). If you think about my analogy of the theatre, and how the metaverse allows users to connect with this platform as a persistent architecture, rather than as an instanced architecture then we have a good opportunity to be able to create worlds that contain very strong e-commerce opportunities for the end user. The Money Shot Full circle brings us back to Mo Dai Zu Shi/The Untamed. The discussion about branding, brand awareness and loyalty systems has long been earmarked as the main driver of the metaverse. The economic effects of The Untamed pre-Sims fan metaverse saw multi IP draws bringing in 3.27 million viewers paying between 30 to 50 yuan to watch the live broadcast of the actors performing songs inspired by the series. Pre-pandemic. Imagine if this was Travis Scott or Ariana Grande in Fortnite? Imagine if this was broadcast in Honor of Kings or QQ Speed? Tencent Video returned an estimated 100 million yuan (almost $15m) in revenue from that concert alone. 100 million yuan. These tickets sold out in less than five seconds and WeTV, who showed the series and related concert performances, saw growth by 250% with an average of 1 million application downloads per month since the drama was originally launched in 2019. This data shows us that where there are strong enough IPs, as controversial as they are, there is an audience. But what this information tells me is that the pivoting of the metaverse towards something more functional, either in entertainment or industry, provides infinite data and revenue possibilities in persistent interoperability.

I’m Kelly Vero, creative badass, future-gazer, game developer and general metaverse nerd. I’ve been making games for a long, long time but I’ve always had an eye on the future, where I now work, to not only get you all excited about the metaverse but also to select the latest beauty products from the world of web3. Are you today years old? Yes, virtual try-ons for skincare exist and you’re getting a free sample - right here! Drowning in Myself We're all a bit like Narcissus. When we enter onto any gaming platform, or into any metaverse. If someone asks us to create a version of ourselves or an avatar with which we can use inside a game, we go full Greek mythology: hunter mode, and rejecting all romantic advances, we fall in love with our own reflection in a pool of water and stare at it for the remainder of our lives. The problem with this, of course, is that we spend so much time building these incredible avatars of ourselves that we forget what the hell we're supposed to be doing inside the metaverse and oftentimes, if it's a gamified experience, then we should be participating in some form of contest or experience. However, if it is just pure exploration mode, we will spend so much time making ourselves look amazing that a lot of the cool stuff simply passes by. When we talk about cool stuff in the metaverse and start with ourselves as avatars, we have to take into account that the amount of brands - especially beauty brands that are entering this space - are looking at creating a total metaverse experience for individuals who don’t have that literacy, or for metaverse aficionados who aren’t fluent in beauty. The metaverse is an opportunity, so don’t waste it by trying to create like for like. Instead make the awareness drive the imagination of your consumers. That’s what Avakin Life did. And they were there before anybody else. A Metafirst O Boticário, a beauty brand based in Brazil, and Avakin Life, embarked on a wonderful experience using their brand and building a store inside the most popular gamified metaverse. A funky and cool campaign, this brand has registered more than 9 million visits to its in-game club and store in the month of March 2021. The initiative was a first in the metaverse providing players with an experience that has since been repeated by everybody from Charlotte Tilbury to YSL. In the Avakin Life universe, participants can choose from various items, and they can decorate their apartments. I even have an office there that you can book for meetings and players can virtually visit real or fantasy locations from party yachts to the island of Malta. Among the activities offered during the O Boticário initiative, was a fashion contest where players could participate in a beauty contest with the brand's products - that had already received more than 150,000 entries at the time of launch. A beauty contest in a virtual world? I’m not done. In the competition, avatars with the best looks received points, and rewards could be used in the brand store. Finally, to end the brand “season”, there was a pool party which was fully personalised and open to all Avakin Life users. Even at the end of the contest and still powered by O Boticário; this special menu with the brand's items was available within the game and could be accessed from any scene in the game until the end of 2021. But what did this mean for a brand accessing the virtuality of beauty in a heavily services marketplace? In relationship to the partnership that they already had in place with YouTube, and their augmented reality technology, they were able to publicise the launch of the 'Make B lipstick line' during the pandemic, which in addition to store closures prevented the physical testing of products. So overall, this solved an incredible problem and something that was really lacking in the beauty space during the pandemic and beyond for a very, very long time. Imagine being unable to try anything before you buy it, in a world where we're so used to going into retail outlets. Today, I can’t imagine anything more sensible than doing everything metaverse first, can you? Isn't it refreshing that a gamified metaverse platform such as Avakin Life bucked the trend of the pandemic as an obstacle to access and instead placed the ability to be able to try-before-you-buy in the hands of the player? Directly? Whether it's connecting through or being immersed inside the game's experience itself. O Boticário shows us that we have a free opportunity to go as far down the rabbit hole as we want to go in terms of beauty. And one of the great things about O Boticário was that when you select some of those purchases, you can have them delivered to your house. That's brilliant. Butter is Good For You Like everyone, I'm an absolutely huge BTS fan. I love everything that there is to love about Jungkook, and even V. I also like the other ones whose names I can't remember. But if you haven't lived in Netmarble’s BTS Universe or you haven't watched Butter, you haven't really lived in the minds of your audiences. And that's exactly what the value proposition is for beauty inside the metaverse, at the perfect time where everything's a brand. To extend beyond transmedia from the real to the hyperreal and then back again, there has to be an effective cycle of e-commerce from brand awareness to actual reception and feedback. The loop is always closed by Southeast Asia. Whether it's Korea, China, Japan, or any of the other countries in the APAC region. They feed their IPs beautifully by using resources, such as the metaverse, NFTs and tokenomics to retain buyers and consumers. Not only the metaverse, it's also esports which is now getting excited about beauty. After all, we're not just wearing sneakers and doing virtual trials; we're not just buying glasses and flogging virtual wares to see whether it's something that suits us. From Counterstrike to PUBG, the coverage of beauty products through the obvious vehicle of skins is exponential in the places where traditional product propositions seem to merge with the new. When we're looking at opportunities from AR (augmented reality) try-ons to simulated worlds it’s in everything from Snap Inc to Clinique that we can find our kind of people. And if those people just so happen to be in BTS, or they happen to be Wang Yibo, advertising Shu Uemura; then this is a big win for brands worldwide. Instagram is Fugly Back to Butter, and as a video concept (a one hour teaser) it was viewed by 18m people worldwide. A piece of melting butter says so much about expectation management in IP and branding doesn’t it? Which just goes to show that a small clip of video can create so much hype that everybody rushes towards whatever it is that these guys as a band are influencing this time. The ugliness of the metaverse, in terms of beauty, is that we all want to be something that we're definitely not; and we use beauty and beauty products to be able to either create that for us, or we catfish our way through it. Or indeed as I just suggested, we fall on to the hype train big time and never really seemingly get off. I for one, am an incredibly guilty party here, as I'm somebody who is constantly sucked into the latest k-products coming out of Korea. But, even I know that this is not providing us with a real vision of who we should be. When Narcissus rejected all romantic advances, he fell in love with his own reflection. And in this day and age, we could be rejecting our social opportunities to effectively stay safe within either our own little clique, or alone as ourselves and our metaversal narcissism. A lot of people believe that the metaverse and social media may pose a great deal of rise in narcissistic personality disorder as a psychiatric condition. It's marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration and an inability to empathise. Wow, that sounds like every single Instagram influencer. So how do we view this beyond the ugliness of future tech? Dip a Toe into the Water Beyond Greek mythology and cautionary tales but not necessarily through counterexamples; opportunities that lie outside of beauty or where beauty provides a springboard into other things there is a way to turn that frown upside down. Tik Tok is now a world leader in all things one-minute makeup and beauty tips. That's cool. How do we bring that experience into the metaverse in a way that suits our personal limitations? If indeed we have any after we've been on Tik Tok, or Instagram? Well, there's lots of different ways that connect to beauty outside of the usual make-me-look-like-a-20-year-old avatar creations or filters. Participating in events that allow us to explore, but not necessarily go through that entire sales funnel is a good way for us to be able to figure out whether something is for us. Almost like a try-before-you-buy scenario. That almost never ever happens at a make-up counter where margins are fairly tight and hygiene is premium. For the people who want to restrain themselves a little bit and really only want to potentially dip their toe into the water, rather than stare at their own reflection in a pool forever, might get excited about the possibility of a proof of appearance protocol utility (POAP for short). These POAPs can be found in Decentraland, their most famous being the Estée Lauder POAP. Estée Lauder partnered with Decentraland for an exclusive beauty brand partnership to invite users to step inside the iconic Advanced Night Repair’s famous little brown bottle. Visitors to the concession in Decentraland could unlock that exclusive POAP for glowing radiance(!) and gain a wearable NFT for their avatar. I know quite a few people who did this and they're still wearing/using their POAP today. So if I appear in a Charlotte Tilbury experience or a YSL experience, I can receive a little gift and that little gift might be a dusting of glitter, a little bit of face paint, or a little touch of something zhuzh. I can keep the POAP forever: proving that I have been to Charlotte Tilbury, YSL, NARS or the Lottie London experience - and perhaps it might just open the door to IRL discounts, loyalties or anything fresh to close that brand loop. Additionally, as this brand loop movement grows, we are also starting to see that some of the household brand names are starting to file for trademark applications relating to the metaverse, particularly to NFTs. Folks like L'Oreal, Estée Lauder (who we’ve already mentioned), and of course the usual suspects of Gucci and NARS have signed up. That Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty and Fenty beauty brands have filed trademarks for everything from virtual perfume, cosmetics and styling for avatars, presents the next generation of brand awareness. When Lottie London produced their first ever collection of NFT's last year their response was incredible. The NFT sold out within 24 hours - they've hosted events in the Vegas City district of Decentraland with celebrity nail artist Chaun Legend. For many beauty brands, Decentraland presents a super opportunity to be able to get live feedback. Their DAU (daily active user numbers) are good enough to create small focus groups, and again, close that feedback loop into something that's more sales related. Your Focus Needs More Focus Games and gaming is completely underestimated by developers and brands where more and more women find themselves unserved by both. Female gamers account for a bigger audience than we might think. 80% of female internet users aged 16 to 44 play video games. And thanks to beauty, female gamers are the key driver in the uptick of beauty products available globally inside games and gamified metaverse platforms. Another survey discovered that in 2021, 53% of beauty fans played or downloaded a free to play game. It's no wonder that Charlotte Tilbury took a calculated risk on sponsoring the Girl Gamer festival. Personally, I don't really agree with titling or categorising people in this kind of way. But what I do really, really enjoy is the opportunity that we can get so much closer to a different demographic using the medium of gaming, web3 and the metaverse to make that happen for beauty. Dermalogica and La Prairie are beginning to test the waters, and Clinique has been streets ahead in creating digital first opportunities through metaverse beauty try-ons and NFTs rather than just waiting for customers to line up at counters from Fenwick of Bond Street to Selfridges. We know that these digital touch points are not a replacement for something that is wholly personal and yet, the metaverse offers sophisticated experiences. It makes us think a little bit more about ourselves. As developers and brands we should make adjustments for older generations like me now, but plan for native service delivery in the future of how Gen Alpha connects with beauty products. Just Do You But will they also see this as an opportunity to natively connect with BTS and Wang Yibo? Definitely, and how they will do that is entirely up to them. But for us, Gen Xs, Xennials and the Zoomers the ways are multitudinal. This freedom of expression in the things that we enjoy day-to-day, and the limitlessness in terms of how we can express ourselves using the metaverse, we can be who we want to be, again, with being who you want to be. There is definitely a danger that you're not only not being true to yourself, but you're not being true to the people around you too, sorry to be a Debbie Downer. I think that the metaverse provides places where you can be anything you want to be/however you want to look without any restraints or restrictions you might encounter in real life. But remember that you have to focus on what happens after the metaverse, persistent though it is. If beauty has been built on commodification, it's now building immersive experiences and education. We're no longer talking about beauty being just skin deep. We're now looking at the opportunities of what beauty can teach us about ourselves from a psychological and certainly a philosophical perspective.