The Metaverse: A Virtual Utopia Or A Dystopian Nightmare?
Tech Dominance And Implications On Brands In The Metaverse
Imagine every morning, you pick out an outfit for your avatar and head out in your virtual car to shop. Play games. Hang out with friends. Travel places.
Or, see yourself transported and connected in real-time to a dance studio. The instructor is wearing a motion-capture suit; his avatar showing you the same moves to other participants.
Perhaps walking on the street, you decide to consume art. Your brain-computer interface device transports you to inside the museum.
Welcome to the metaverse. The word “metaverse” is a portmanteau of the prefix “meta”, meaning beyond and “verse” refers to universe. Popularised by Snow Crash, a 1992 sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson, the metaverse refers to a blend of digital and physical existence. It is a collection of shared online worlds in which our physical, augmented, and virtual reality converge, enabling us to work, play and interact virtually in mixed reality.
The Fight For Dominance In The Metaverse
Big tech such as Facebook, Google, Roblox Corporation and Epic Games are scrambling for dominance in the metaverse mountaintop.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is to transition to a ‘metaverse’ functioning in an “embodied internet” that converges Facebook’s major investments across augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), gaming, commerce and social networking into one virtual environment. The tech founder believes it will be interoperable, allowing consumers to easily teleport from one experience to another, without leaving the ecosystem.
“The defining quality of the metaverse is presence, which is this feeling that you’re really there with another person or in another place. Creation, avatars, and digital objects are going to be central to how we express ourselves, and this is going to lead to entirely new experiences and economic opportunities”, Zuckerberg told investors.
Not everyone agrees.
A Dystopian Future Of Technology Gone Wrong?
John Hanke, the founder and CEO of Niantic, the company famous for the creation of Pokemon GO likened such a virtual world to a “dystopian nightmare”. He wrote, “technology should be used to make these core human experiences better — not to replace them”. Niantic is working on building what it calls a ‘real-world metaverse’, one that overlays data, information, services, and interactive creations in the physical world.
“… I think we’ve seen the darker side of the technology now when it usurps the human stuff that we do, when it gets in between our relationships and all of our information and it takes the place of the town square or the neighbour or the walk in the park” reflects Hanke on the philosophical divide.
Gucci Garden Archetypes In The Roblox World
How are brands responding to the metaverse? In collaboration with Roblox, Gucci is a phenomenal example of how a luxury brand dips its toe into this realm of unknown by creating extraordinary experiences.
Launched in Florence, Italy, the IRL “Gucci Garden Archetypes” celebrating the house’s 100th anniversary was the epitome of artistic fashion installation in an immersive multi-media and multi-sensory space. Reflecting a “playground of emotions”, the imaginative, inimitable narrative and creative manifesto of Alessandro Michele traces the last six years of Gucci advertising campaigns.
Imbibing the same archetypal spirit, the ephemeral Gucci Garden experience on Roblox (only in May 2021) presents a phenomenal metaverse showcase enabling online visitors to absorb elements in spectacular high-fidelity virtual environments.
An immersive experience, players walk into the Gucci Garden with a blank avatar. As they manoeuvre through themed rooms in parallel and overlapping world, visitors shed their avatars and imbibe personalised textures, patterns or colours into their character mannequin.
Imagine a world without limitations. Where mannequins absorb fragments of patterns. Where flowers grow on your head. Where the ceiling opens up to the sky.
Visitors get to directly purchase and wear limited-edition Gucci virtual signature items including a Gucci Dionysus Bag, Gucci Diamond-Framed Sunglasses, Gucci GG Marmont Bag and Gucci Headband for their avatars.
The Future Of Brands And Shopping In The Metaverse
With the metaverse shaping consumer behaviour, what are the opportunities for brands and businesses?
· Gen Zers will seek to purchase avatar ‘skins’ for their personas to live in virtual fashion, houses and cars. Creators and designers can create digital wear and design brands for different people at different stages of wealth.
· With consumers demanding remarkable experiences, brand integration, brand expansion and brand expression will become important elements on all walks of life including fashion, identity, gaming, travel, sport, creative processes and work.
· With avatar consumers purchasing virtual products, firms can envision new business models by using virtual products to quantify the demand before launching the physical product.
· As consumer behaviour becomes more intuitive, immersive and engaging with responsive brands, the future metaspace could see opportunities for travelportation, gamevertising and creative retail frontiers such as digital-twin stores and augmented shopping experiences.
Brands such as Gucci, Vans, Stella McCartney, Burberry, Coca-Cola, Netflix and Warner Bros have already dived into this sphere. In tandem, investors and futurists including Atari, Epic Games and Nvidia are in the race to expound on its potential for social connection, experiences, experimentation, entertainment and crucially, profit. Yet, there are real concerns.
The Future Of Humanity In The Metaverse
The New York Times article states, “In fiction, a utopian metaverse may be portrayed as a new frontier where social norms and value systems can be written anew, freed from cultural and economic sclerosis. But more often metaverses are a bit dystopian — virtual refuges from a fallen world.”
As the world moves towards the metaverse, will there be governance? Will humanity be ‘caught’ in the web of living more as an avatar inside of a virtual world than a real world? Will the positives for humanity be greater than the negatives in the metaverse? With big tech opening up new frontiers, will brands be future-ready for the metaverse?
