This Week in the Metaverse (W15.2023)

What I read and wrote this week + new episode of Into The Metaverse podcast: A conversation with with Frédéric Chesnais - founder & CEO, Crypto Blockchain Industries (ex CEO, Atari)

Apr 15, 2023

Hey, Yon here! Welcome to Into The Metaverse. My mission is to help you understand what is the metaverse, how it will impact our lives, and what opportunities it unlocks. If you are a marketer, entrepreneur, investor or simply a curious professional, Into The Metaverse is for you. Subscribe to get access to every letter and podcast show that I publish.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:

What I read and wrote this week
Metaverse hype cools down; It’s time to build
This week's episode on Into The Metaverse podcast: A conversation with with Frédéric Chesnais - founder & CEO, Crypto Blockchain Industries (ex CEO, Atari)

Let’s dig in!

(1) Weekly News Roundup

Virtual Worlds

Roblox creators can now make and sell limited-run avatar gear → The new ‘Limiteds’ can be sold in specific quantities.
Peacock Can Now Be Watched in the Metaverse → NBCUniversal and Meta unveiled plans Wednesday to bring the streaming service to the Meta Quest line of VR headsets.
The metaverse’s *really* early adopters → Ultimately what Web3 enthusiasts want out of their digital worlds isn’t that different from the average web user: They want it to be sociable, secure, and to empower or enrich their lives in some way that isn’t accessible to them offline.
Meta’s President of Public Affairs, Nick Clegg, writes a blog post on How the Metaverse Can Transform Education → “The potential they have to transform education more broadly relies not so much on technological advances but on scale and access. The more developers build these programs, and the more governments, companies, schools, colleges and other institutions utilize them and invest in them, the more impact they will have. And as the technologies mature and develop, so will their ability to translate ideas across cultures, break down socio-economic barriers, and create more and better ways for teachers to bring subjects to life for their students.”
PwC 2023 Metaverse Predictions → Beyond the hype: what businesses can really expect from the metaverse in 2023
Everywhere and nowhere: Metaverse leaders plan for data centers on a whole new scale
Being Present for the Birth of a New Gaming Genre - “Create & Own” - is EPIC → great shoutout from Signum to our work at Supersocial and Into The Metaverse: “Why is UGC important? Here is a great description by David Taylor, Lead Product Manager of Supersocial (founded by our good friend and thought leader Yon Raz Fridman!); The Flywheel of User Generated Content in Games is: Great Content attracts -> Players/Audience/Spend to the game, which attracts -> Developers/Creators, which attracts -> More Great Content”
What Gen Z think about fashion in the metaverse → While some of us are still grappling with what the metaverse actually is, Lucinda Brooke, Strategy Director at The Upside, says that Gen Z has embraced this new frontier and, as far as fashion goes, has decided it definitely isn't a case of the emperor's new clothes.
Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield starts game studio Popularium
Gucci and Vans launch first co-branded Roblox world
Changi Airport expands into the metaverse with launch of ChangiVerse on Roblox
Metaverse - What it is, how it will impact YOU
Bron Digital launches Gossamer game on Fortnite Creative

Digital Twins

Magic Leap collaborates with NVIDIA to advance digital twins for enterprise → Magic Leap is pioneering immersive, photorealistic, ray-traced digital twins in NVIDIA’s Omniverse to create new efficiencies and value in engineering, architecture, retail, and other industries.
Bentley, NVIDIA See the Future of Metaverse Digital Twins

AI

Tim O’Reilly says that You Can’t Regulate What You Don’t Understand, Or, Why AI Regulations Should Begin with Mandated Disclosures → “Companies creating advanced AI should work together to formulate a comprehensive set of operating metrics that can be reported regularly and consistently to regulators and the public, as well as a process for updating those metrics as new best practices emerge.”
Researchers populated a tiny virtual town with AI
Amazon CEO: "We're democratizing" generative AI

Blockchain

David Marcus, former CEO of PayPal, Head of Meta’s Crypto efforts, and now founder and CEO of Lightspark, announced the launch of the Lightspark Platform → Lightspark believes the world needs an open, interoperable, cheap, payment protocol that settles in real time. They came to the conclusion that the “Lightning Network was the best to build on, first because it operates on the most secure, battle tested, decentralized blockchain, Bitcoin. Second, because it stands out for its exceptional scalability, performance, cost, and energy efficiency.”

NFTs

Adidas Releases Chapter 1 of Its ALTS Dynamic NFT Collection → Holders of Adidas' Into The Metaverse NFTs can burn their tokens to join the new dynamic NFT ecosystem
Pussy Riot Pitches Metaverse ‘Utopia’ With Virtual Social Network IMVU → The virtual church from Nadya Tolokonnikova and Metajuice will feature NFTs and special events, supporting LGBTQIA+ causes.

(2) Metaverse hype cools down; It’s time to build

While ‘metaverse’ as a theme is still in early stages of emerging from theory to practice, we’re seeing a growing number of brands who adopt virtual worlds and platforms like Roblox and Fortnite to not only engage with next-gen audience but also, and more importantly, invest in nurturing relationships with them and experimenting with what social, play and commerce could look like in the very near future.

When the mania cools down, it’s the best time for real believers to build.

Supersocial has been believing since June 2020, when we started on the Roblox platform. Thrilled to see our partner Dina Fierro from Shiseido quoted in this WSJ article with a mention of NARS Color Quest, which became the #1 branded beauty experience on Roblox. Dina and her team are trailblazers.

(3) This week's episode on Into The Metaverse podcast: A conversation with with Frédéric Chesnais - founder & CEO, Crypto Blockchain Industries (ex CEO, Atari)

Joining me today is Frédéric Chesnais - founder & CEO, Crypto Blockchain Industries, and the former CEO of Atari. Crypto Blockchain Industries is a company listed on Euronext and focusing on investments in blockchain and technology.

Fred has decades of experience in executive production, budgeting, financing and management of intellectual property rights. From 2001 to 2007, and then again from 2013 to 2021, he was part of the management team of the Atari Group, the iconic technology and entertainment company. In 2007, he left Atari to create his own executive production company, I2G, which he sold in 2012.

“Most of the last 20 years of my professional life has been spent with video games. So first and foremost, for me and for this company that I've created, the Metaverse is a video game. It's an open world. Some may say, you know what, you can have a metaverse in 2D, but as far as we are concerned and given my background, I do focus on the consumer experience, and for me, it's definitely a 3D open world, and then you add on top of that, we add the blockchain layer for transactions.”

Listen to the episode on: Apple / Spotify / Anchor.

Watch:

Yon is the founder of CEO of Supersocial, a company that designs, builds, promotes, operates and grow cutting-edge virtual worlds on Roblox and beyond. Thank you for subscribing to Into The Metaverse. We grow when readers who appreciate our work spread the word.