For decades, gaming and play have impacted creativity and culture in our everyday lives.
Now, we are witnessing the physical and digital worlds beginning to blur, as leading brands are focused on powering up experiences through the “power of play” – adding value, unlocking meaningful moments, and providing frictionless ways to create, socialize, and interact in our ever-changing world.
And at this year’s SXSW 2023 in Austin, Texas, it was refreshing to see more on emerging tech and how these new technologies can create immersive, interactive experiences (and very little on NFTs and digital collectibles).
How Can We Tap Into Alternative Pathways for the Metaverse?
Hypemoon attended the UK House and watched an ironically entertaining, yet informative discussion on “The Convergence Revolution: What’s Next for the World of Fashion, Gaming, Entertainment & Tech?” moderated by Vogue Business Innovation Editor Maghan McDowell.
We’ve seen what can happen when these four verticals come together, but what’s next for this growing trend?
One of the biggest barriers for the average consumer is the failure by big tech (and media publishers) to take the time to distinguish and differentiate how new technologies – Web3, blockchain, and the metaverse all work independently from one another, despite their intersections.
Prior to the start of the panel, Fashion Innovation Agency’s Moin Roberts-Islam opened the discussion with a rare introduction into Web3, the metaverse, and the Blockchain.
The Fashion Innovation Agency (FIA) at London College of Fashion uses emerging technologies to disrupt existing practices in the fashion and retail industries.
“The metaverse is an open, persistent, real-time, interoperable virtual world,” Roberts-Islam very simply explained.
He shared that in 2022, the investment spend by companies, VC, and private equity groups was over $100 billion USD, with the metaverse estimated to be worth $4 trillion USD by 2030.
Web3 is often conflated with the metaverse, which is a huge problem because they are not the same thing.
“Web3 is a new internet infrastructure built on blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and decentralization,” Roberts-Islam explained.
Turning to brands in the metaverse, the annual global spend on virtual goods, according to FIA, is now over $100 billion USD – specifically digital fashion (thank you Roblox and Fortnite).
Interestingly, Gen-Z, according to research conducted by FIA, highly prefers fashion & clothes over food & dining.
Roberts-Islam concluded his introduction by providing attendees with an incredible visualization of “photogrammetry” – a method of extracting 3D information from photos and taking overlapping photos of an object, structure, or space, and converting them into 2D or 3D digital models – and use cases, including previous work done with LucasFilm.
The Power of Play in the Metaverse
This year’s music and tech festival brought together many of these brands, including, but not limited to Niantic, Napster, Warner Music, and others that all led their own conversations about how to curate personalized experiences inside the metaverse and virtual worlds.
Another thought-provoking conversation took place at the official SXSW showcase, “The Power of Play in the Metaverse,” which Hypemoon attended alongside Napster CEO Jon Vlassopulos, Niantic, Inc.’s Jenna Seiden, Dentsu’s Valerie Vacante, and HeadOffice.space’s Marco Carvalho.
The 60-minute session explored the rapidly evolving technology landscape, industry-leading brand experiences, cutting-edge platforms, and technologies that are currently empowering creativity, commerce, and connection in the world around us.
Niantic Morphs Into an AR-Centric Company
Niantic, best known as the developer of the highly-popular mobile game, Pokémon Go, announced its restructuring as an AR-centric company, rather than just a technology company.
Just days before SXSW, Niantic launched its alpha test of Truffle, a new social mobile app that allows users to pin their favorite spots and venues on the map for their friends to check out.
However, the app is currently only available to Austin natives, which Hypemoon was able to play with throughout the SXSW festival.
Who knows what you like better than your friends? Meet Truffel – a new app that focuses purely on the joy of discovering the hidden gems of a city, and sharing it with friends.
Learn more at https://t.co/DeyU2rF2WV about release information and our Alpha test in Austin, TX! pic.twitter.com/V49d6EQ1NO
— Niantic (@NianticLabs) November 17, 2022
“We’re not only mapping the world, we’re understanding it. And we’re sharing it and what that understanding means,” said Jenna Seiden, VP of Business Development at Niantic.
Seiden, who spent most of her career helping drive the overall brand strategy and partnerships with Meta, HTC, Beat Games (acquired by Facebook in 2019), Microsoft Studios (XBOX), CAA, the NBA, and more, now leads Niantic’s partnership efforts across IP, publishing, mapping, AR, and the Lightship Platform in working with brands, agencies, game developers, and creators.
Specifically, Niantic works with brands to leverage map-sponsored locations, or geofence, billboards that are really targeted.
“What branding goes there? What’s the opportunity as you’re walking through [that venue]? And what branding goes there? And what rewards or coupons could you have?” she presented.
Ultimately, the answers to most of these questions are leveraged through what Seiden says is a “straightforward licensing platform system” that brands can use and bring into their agencies – or tap into their own innovation teams.
“All of the toolsets of this platform that we have are so specific and helpful in creating these experiences, and that’s what we do in our core,” she emphasized
In January, Niantic debuted NBA All-World, a new mobile game that borrows some of the elements of traditional sports games and combines them with the real-world exploration of Pokémon Go, where people can “recruit” individual NBA players for their personal team and deck them out in industry-leading brands like Adidas and Puma, while playing a number of pickup games against other players.
Seiden also teased another upcoming AR-based project, “Peridot,” which she describes as a “disturbingly cute pet game” that takes the AR experience we remember from Pokemon Go, to the next level.
Think Pokémon Go meets Tamagotchi pets – whereas Pokémon Go was more about catching and battling your pocket monsters, Peridot places a greater emphasis on “breeding.” In the game, users will be able to raise their “Dots” and breeding them can produce entirely unique critters that are 100% genetically unique.
“When you play Pokemon Go, a lot of people don’t realize that the AR experience is a short little experience, because the technology isn’t there to support your arms, which gets tired holding the phone, and the battery overheating and dying. But we’ve learned and that’s why Niantic is now an AR-centric company.”
Meet Headoffice.Space – the future OS of the Metaverse
Also sitting on the panel was Marco Carvalho, CEO of Headoffice.Space, a finalist for the SXSW 2023 Innovation Award in the “Convergent Gaming” category, and who was also selected as a finalist in the “Metaverse and Web3” category for the 2023 SXSW Pitch competition in Austin.
The Los Angeles software company is quickly becoming the Metaverse OS of choice of Fortune 500 companies and global brands, including, but not limited to its ongoing partnerships with Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Dentsu.
Headoffice.space’s latest product launch is hOS, a cloud-based operating system designed to power fully productive, massive multiplayer worlds on the cloud.
With hOS, customers are able to host virtual cities that can be (re) purposed for brands, e-commerce, remote work, gaming, events, and education – without requiring expensive computer equipment, gaming headsets, or specialized technical expertise to get these worlds constructed and set up.
And there’s Moon Valley, the world’s most advanced Metaverse city, according to a recent press release the company put out. hOS essentially transforms these virtual worlds into more than just a gaming space by offering an immersive environment where people can work, game, and connect with one another.
Headoffice.space CTO Gilliard Araujo says that the hOS operating system even offers advanced communication tools such as video, chat, and recording and integration with various apps – including ChatGPT, in-world AI avatars, wallets, and more through its SDK.
Napster’s Jon Vlassopulos and Dentsu’s Valerie Vacante on Curating Impactful Experiences
(L-R) Napster CEO Jon Vlassopulos, Hypemoon's Andrew Rossow, Dentsu's Valerie Vacante
Following the conclusion of the panel, Hypemoon caught up with Napster’s Jon Vlassopulos and Denstu’s Valerie Vacante, who shared additional insight behind why we are having these types of conversations right now at SXSW.
Vlassopulos, who 20 years later, returned to Napster, this time as CEO, believes that this is simply the reflection of the attitude everyone is currently taking in the space right now, which will continue to be “very playful.”
“Thinking about interactivity, when you’re putting together a brand campaign, thinking about how to put people together over LinkedIn, [Napster] is connecting with artists and thinking about how you can be playful – social or interactive – and do things in a nonlinear way in terms of the experiences that we have now,” Vlassopulos shared with Hypemoon.
Right now, we still seem to be missing the mark on curating a truly “interactive” experience, which Valssopulos attributes to this “technology friction” and the need to better localize these types of activations, without any friction.
Vacante, an award-winning global innovator, is a creative catalyst and visionary that currently serves as the VP, Solutions Innovation for dentsu – a global experience and innovation agency that works to uncover cultural trends, next-gen product innovations and designs strategies that are impacting the ways people connect and experience in the physical and digital worlds.
From pioneering award-winning digital products and connected experiences that have been recognized by CES, SXSW, WIRED Live, and WIRED Next Generation, Vacante has an impressive portfolio that spans across IoT, AR, VR, voice, robotics, and toys – including, but not limited to Hasbro, Mattel, Disney, Bandai Namco Entertainment, WowWee, AT&T, Vodafone, Mercedes-Benz, MINI, Honeywell, Sleep Number, Dell, HeadOffice.Space, and many more.
In 2018, she launched the first-ever connected play landscape, where her latest iteration maps over 260 connected experiences, emerging technologies, and business growth opportunities that have been recognized by VentureBeat and The Drum.
“We are having a lot of conversations with brands and they just don’t know where to start – whether it’s utilizing NFTs, crypto, or even doing a PR run. I don’t think just going and trying to get some headlines is the best way; it’s about being true to your brand. It may not be going out and blasting what you’re doing, but instead, doing something small and building from there. I think there are so many areas that brands are wanting to experiment with, including generative A.I., which we hear so much about every day,” she shared with Hypemoon.
Vacante also emphasized us asking the questions of how these technologies, like A.I., can help enhance our creativity and what that will mean as we are creating these virtual worlds.
In other news, read about Nicole Behnam and her new MoonPay-powered podcast, that pushes the boundaries of traditional conversation and discourse, by prioritizing problem solving over click-bait news.
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