Author: Daniel Lipscombe

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Using AR and VR to Embrace the Metaverse

In early August 2021, a playlist was added to Fortnite among the usual solo, duo, trio and squad options. ‘The Rift Tour’ would be an “interactive musical journey” featuring pop princess Ariana Grande. Before the concert, players could shop the online store and buy a skin of Ariana, which would transform their avatar into the singer. There were also accessories and emotes – animated movements – to support the concert. A popular emote made the player avatar wave a cell phone flashlight in the air.

The concert was a huge success and saw millions of players flood the servers to take part. The performance – all pre-recorded – featured a giant Ariana, endless Escher staircases, users bouncing on pink, fluffy trees and riding inflatable Llamacorns through the sky.

As we near the all-encompassing ‘metaverse’, music acts embracing technology and connecting with their fans through these events will be a surefire play to get users into web 3.0. By expanding beyond the confines of a contained show and utilising available technology, fans can get closer than ever to their idols.

Preceding the Ariana concert, Fortnite had already teamed with Travis Scott and plenty of DJs who took to the virtual stage. It’s clear that Epic Games are determined to continue in this vein given their purchase of Harmonix, a company known for creating music based videogames such as Fuser and Rock Band. Virtual concerts are clearly successful because consumers are given a new way to interact with their favourite music acts. It’s worth keeping in mind that many players may attend these gigs even if they aren’t a fan of the musical star, purely for the spectacle.

This is an easily monetised side hustle. Selling skins, items and accessories in the lead up to a concert or experience not only benefits the developers and publishers of the game but the artist too. Given the changes in the world since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, virtual attendance is appealing, more so when you consider the interactivity virtual concerts offer compared to their ‘real world’ counterparts. Artists can sell tickets and merchandise recouping revenue lost during the pandemic.

Over on the Roblox platform, acts such as Lil Nas X and Twenty One Pilots have hosted concert experiences. Users can convert their cash into Robux and buy T-shirts and hats, showing them off within games.

More recently, Wave put on a virtual concert for Justin Bieber and the strategic shooter game Scavengers hosted K-Pop idol AleXa. It’s these latter examples that point to a possible future within the metaverse as they experiment with crowd participation and real-time performances, they also differentiate themselves from Fortnite and Roblox, by creating more fan participation.

While it looked like Justin Bieber had been fully prerecorded, AleXa interacted with the crowd in real-time, much as they would at a traditional concert. Each of these concerts asked the attendees to mash buttons to hype up the artists or throw up glow sticks to create that gig atmosphere.

With improvements in VR and AR, it makes sense that the next step in entertainment will embrace these technologies. In fact, VR is already a usable tool for concertgoers, albeit with some restrictions. MelodyVR – soon to be rebranded as Napster – an app for Oculus devices, allows viewers to purchase tickets to a show and watch it using the VR headset. MelodyVR feels a bit like those early DVD extras, which allowed you to watch a scene from different angles. Once the concert is loaded, you can choose from many positions to watch from, including mosh pits and the wings of the stage. Some angles truly make the user a part of the show by positioning them on the stage, with the performer moving around them.

Horizon Venues is another portal for entertainment, both live and prerecorded, except here your avatar is relegated to a seating area while the performance takes place on a screen. This emulates a cinema, rather than an arena, but the visual fidelity is much better. Using this tool to sit with a friend and watch the latest Marvel film or stand-up comedian would be one step closer to the metaverse often depicted.

Attempting to stand out within the metaverse, is Sensorium Galaxy. Sensorium empowers the concertgoer with a digital avatar who can be fully customised, before attending the gig. Sensorium has already announced a bucketload of virtual concerts with some of the biggest DJs in the world – Carl Cox, David Guetta, Steve Aoki, Charlotte de Witte and many more. These powerhouses in dance music are scanned and captured in motion capture creating a “photo-realistic’ avatar to perform and interact with fans. Sensorium can be used via VR for a “fully immersive experience” which will be unlike anything found in existing experience platforms.

As time passes, video quality will get better, the sound will improve and the metaverse will envelop these experiences, pulling them into the decentralised network. Going to a gig will come in two forms – visiting the arena and using your smartphone to access AR features, or watching from home via VR. It makes a great deal of sense from the artists perspective, especially given the cut to revenue during the pandemic.

We’re still quite a way from Ready Player One, but if Roblox is anything to go by, younger audiences are already preparing themselves for the metaverse revolution. With a concert on the Roblox platform, players can gather together, chat and dance, sometimes interacting with the artist via prompts. What removes this from a true metaverse experience is the lack of seamless movement. You don’t start at your house, on your own land and walk to the venue. You don’t look into the distance and see the rest of the city sprawling before you, ripe for exploration. This will be a future step.

The metaverse needs to bring all of this together, grouping the disparate ventures and creating an experience that benefits the user both digitally and physically. If you were to walk from your house to the arena, meet friends along the way and use VOIP chat to converse, that’s one step. If, when you arrive, you can buy an NFT poster for your digital bedroom, plus a T-shirt for your avatar – all from a digital avatar vendor – it would help if the physical versions of these were then dispatched to your home.

Combining current and emerging technology will bring a rounded experience to everything from games to concerts; work meetings to dating. However, a few things need to change first – VR headsets must become more affordable, or be pushed via government programs. Seamless experiences will only develop if corporations begin working together to decentralise the digital space. Early adoption must try to offer metaverse existence through AR or VR as the cherry on the cake, where our current lives are the cake beneath. The first rung on the ladder is getting everyone together in sections of the metaverse, using the technology available to us. The next step will be folding them all together.

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Sony Loses $20 Billion in Market Value After Microsoft Acquires Activision Blizzard

Microsoft have become a company not shy in throwing cash at publishers and developers in order to bolster their IP catalogue. A company who for the past few years have struggled to find an identity beyond Halo and Gears of War, the Seattle tech giant has begun sweeping in and buying anything they can to provide a better raft of first-party content.

19th January 2022 was no different, however it felt a little more monumental. Announced, seemingly out of the blue, Microsoft have paid over $68 billion for Activision Blizzard in a move that has left competitors, Sony, reeling. Given how Microsoft have shifted the focus of Bethesda, their last large-scale takeover, players and investors are now puzzling over what titles from the Activision roster will still land on PlayStation.

With this uncertainty looming, investors have become increasingly worried, wiping over $20 billion from Sony’s market value in just 24 hours.

Where did that $20 billion go? According to the Financial Times, shares rose in several videogame companies, giving us the idea that maybe investors are hedging their bets by investing in smaller developers and publishers in case Sony decides to splash some cash themselves to combat the loss of Activision IP. Both Square Enix and Capcom saw more than a 3.5% increase, while Konami got a boost of 3.25%.

The wipe of $20 billion ended a 21-year high for Sony stock and it seems the core worry is the Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty, whose yearly reinvention and expansion can garner billions of dollars in profits might never again appear on a Sony console. Whether the next Call of Duty entry ends up on PlayStation is now anybody’s guess, though it would be foolish for Microsoft to gatekeep the series to their own consoles given the value and history of the series.

In the purchase, Microsoft now own the Call of Duty eSports league, meaning their branding will now adorn team shirts, livestreams and league promotion. They now also own several marquee franchises; Overwatch, Starcraft, Warcraft, Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot.

Of course, we can’t forget that along with these IPs Microsoft are now in charge of rebuilding Activision Blizzard and cementing a healthy work culture for employees. The news of 2021, which saw many staff walkouts and investigations into abuse towards staff throughout the company must take precedent for Microsoft.

Will Sony retaliate with buyouts of their own? It’s hard to say. Sony is in an unfortunate position for the first time in years. Their latest console, the PlayStation 5, suffered a rocky launch with many players unable to buy the unit. Plus, the Japanese company also finds themselves combatting Microsoft’s Game Pass system, which charges players a monthly fee for access to hundreds of games, including many leading titles on day one of launch.

Rumours have circulated recently that Sony has their version of Game Pass waiting in the wings, which would certainly give the investors and players something to celebrate, particularly if Sony can add to their first-party studios, too, but losing $20 billion is going to make studio acquisitions a much tougher prospect.

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2021 in Review: Games, Experiences and Technology

2021 was a stand out year for XR. Both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) saw some technological leaps, some great videogames and a glimpse of the future. Both technologies are shaking up several industries while laying the foundations for the metaverse. To celebrate the year, we’ve chosen some of our highlights as we look forward to what 2022 might bring.

After the Fall

Probably the biggest VR launch of 2021, After the Fall brings zombie-slaying back and makes it more fun than ever. With co-op modes, cross-platform play and constant action, it’s a title that feels perfectly at home in VR. The game is gorgeous – aside from the grisly zombies – and playing on high-end hardware ensures a smooth experience. The intuitive controls allow for a great experience, and while there are some minor flaws, After the Fall is set to be one of the biggest and best VR games in recent years.

After the Fall

Resident Evil 4

The best Resident Evil game finally has a VR option! Armature brought everything that made the game such a standout success and revolutionised it with plenty of accessible VR additions. We loved the new interactive features; cocking and reloading the weapons, the malleable storage system, pulling grenade pins, all of these bring the action to life like never before. While it’s not the prettiest game, thanks to the browns and beiges of the original game, it’s still a great spectacle to behold.

Ragnarock

VR often brings out the best in rhythm games, mostly due to the accelerometers embedded in the controllers. It gives a sense of interactivity that button presses can’t achieve. In Ragnarock, thumping away on the drums feels invigorating and refreshing. It helps that this Viking environment is backed by a soundtrack of rock and metal. Energising your boat of rowers, you bash out rhythms and melodies on small drums in the hopes of scoring well. Even when you don’t, it doesn’t feel like a chore replaying songs, because who doesn’t love bashing drums and creating a foot-tapping moment of bliss?

Ragnarock

Pikmin Bloom

Niantic Labs’ games always want us to go outside. They’re urging us to put down the mouse or controller and interact with life outside our four walls. Pikmin Bloom is its latest attempt to get us exercising and interacting with the natural world. It’s more about walking than Pokemon Go, as there’s very little need to stand around. Players must find seeds that hatch into cute Pikmin then nurture the relationship by walking, with the app counting steps. It’s a very sedate experience, it’s one that teams up with the nature around us offering a peaceful escape from our world.

The Climb 2

If there’s a better looking videogame in VR, we haven’t seen it. And we’ve played a lot of games! The Climb 2 is a stunning view, whether climbing snow-capped mountains or high rise skyscrapers. Stopping every few minutes to appreciate the scenery is a joy, and that’s no surprise given the game is running on the Crytek CryEngine. Perhaps better than the view is the feeling of adrenaline when climbing, leaping and saving yourself from a deathly fall. The game gives a light workout to your arms, but it’s entirely welcome. The dynamic objects which could spell disaster at any second keep your heart in your mouth and your fingertips gripping on for dear life. The Climb 2 sounds sedate on paper, but in (virtual) reality it’s a nerve-shredding experience!

The Climb 2

VR/AR Concerts

Sadly, in 2021 the global COVID-19 pandemic is still a thing. This means that artists, musicians and film studios are looking for new ways to interact with fans. VR and AR experiences are a booming business and a guaranteed path to extra revenue in a world where concerts are being cancelled or moved from date to date. Through VR apps like Oculus Venues and MelodyVR, you can still attend the gigs of your favourite stars. Megastars Billie Eilish, Lewis Capaldi and Khalid are leading the way, and the adoption of low-cost headsets will make these experiences even more common in a post-pandemic world.

Wizards Unite is Closing

Sometimes you can have too many eggs in a basket. Niantic Labs has seen massive success with their headline game Pokemon Go and their latest release, Pikmin Bloom. This has perhaps overshadowed Harry Potter Wizards Unite; it certainly didn’t help that players didn’t shift from pocket monsters to waving magic wands. Wizards Unite just wasn’t sustaining itself, making $39.4 million in lifetime revenue compared to the $1.1 billion from Pokemon Go in 2021 alone. Sometimes a smash hit brand just isn’t enough.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite teaser

Haptic Feedback

As VR technology evolves, so too does the need and want for more haptic feedback. We’re beyond rumbling controllers and racing seats that thud and jerk along with a game. Companies like HaptX, Meta and Tesla are all investing heavily into technology that will encompass our entire bodies; gloves that mimic the pressure and weight of physical objects when in a digital world; bodysuits which can react to impacts or environmental changes in a metaverse space. Each of these companies showcased their tech in 2021 to the astonishment of pretty much everyone, for better or for worse.

Facebook rebrand

If you somehow missed Facebook rebranding to Meta, you must have been living under a rock! Mark Zuckerberg shook up the tech world by announcing his company Facebook would now be known as Meta. Why? Because he envisions the future of the internet as the metaverse, a term first coined in the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This future, according to Zuckerberg, will be an extension of our physical selves into the digital landscape of web 3.0, through VR and AR technology. Meta wants to help usher in this technological revolution using its power, influence and money to research and launch new hardware and software which will take us into the next evolution of the internet. 

Meta - Zuckerberg

Metaverse

The metaverse is here! Well, kind of. The latter half of 2021 has been awash with talk around a metaverse. What was once a concept that few people acknowledged has now become a buzzword that even your grandmother knows (Thanks Facebook… oh, Meta). Whatever your thoughts on the metaverse, it’s coming up fast. In fact, to some, it’s already here. If you’re playing Fortnite or Roblox then you’re already on the first rung of the ladder, and projects such as Somnium Space, Decentraland and The Sandbox are waiting for you to jump in. This ownership driven, decentralised digital space is an important change to the way we use the internet. Are you ready?

Unreal Engine 5

2021 finally saw the release of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, bringing a dearth of powerful development tools to the industry. With so many developers utilising Unreal Engine to create their projects, this new iteration gives us a glimpse of what’s to come over the next decade. Launching with an interactive ‘“experience” collaborating with The Matrix Awakens, players and creators have seen the potential and it’s revolutionary. The level of detail and fidelity UE5 will bring is likely to change the landscape of games, from battle royales to VR puzzlers.

Unreal Engine 5

Sony’s 8K headset

As reported by our very own Peter Graham, Sony unveiled a prototype VR headset with not only 8K visuals (4K per eye) but also ultra-low latency. This bodes well for the company’s future, given they are soon releasing an upgraded VR headset for the PlayStation brand. Will we see this fidelity over there? It’s unlikely, but the new technology could make waves in industrial and medical avenues. This jump in technology bodes well for the future of Virtual Reality.

Niantic Lightship

If you’re an AR developer, then 2021 was a good year. Niantic Labs, the company behind pretty much every hugely successful AR mobile game, released their ARDK tools for developers to use. What does this mean? Well, it means that the software they use for their titles, including mesh mapping and semantic wrapping, two features that track and map the world seen through a smartphone camera, as well as their multiplayer API, can be utilised by any development team. This sharing of technologies can only benefit the AR community as a whole and further achieve great things in the world of AR.

Niantic Lightship

AR/VR in medicine

Many see Augmented and Virtual Reality as something built for games and experiences. Contrary to that view, both AR and VR are breaking down barriers in the world of medicine. Therapists are using VR to virtually visit their clients or help PTSD sufferers acclimate to the world. AR helped frontline workers learn how to care for those ill with COVID, using phone apps to triage patients when needed. Back in the virtual world, surgeons are completing spinal surgeries and trainee medical students are learning how to intubate patients using the technology rather than plastic dummies.

Digital Influencers

In 2021, the world of influencers got a bit more digital and a bit more creative. Since the advent of social media, influencers have become ubiquitous with the software – a selection of people touting products for corporations. However, with graphical software innovations, virtual and augmented reality, plus motion capture, we can now find digital avatars living the influencer life. Though right now, they aren’t trying to sell us anything, except maybe their art. CB from Casas Bahias, CodeMiko and Blu are amazing CGI avatars living digital lives, creating comedy, drama or interactive experiences. 

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Top Ten AR Videogames

AR Game Montage

Augmented reality (AR) is one of the more interesting technologies our smartphones can handle with ease. At first, it felt like a bit of a gimmick, but in the right hands, it can add a lot to gaming. Whether you prefer to stay home and solve puzzles, or roam the area battling or catching creatures, there’s something out there for you. VRFocus has put together a list of some of the best AR infused videogames you can play right now.

Pokemon Go Trainer Battles

Pokemon Go!

It wouldn’t be an AR list without Pokemon Go!, would it? The game that got everyone outside in the summer of 2016 has been using AR technology since the outset. What started with Pokemon placed within the world you inhabited, has become a robust system with avatars that interact while your physical self stands around tapping the screen in a gym or raid battle. AR features are integral to Pokemon Go!, particularly the map view which tracks not only yourself but the gyms, pokemon and pokestops along the route; using photos and location services along with the accelerometer to interact with the fantastical world Niantic Labs have created.

The Birdcage

The Birdcage, and its sequel, are beautiful puzzle games that place the central puzzle within your home space. Aiming the camera, you can place the titular birdcage in the centre of a room. The task is to open the enclosure and free the bird by solving puzzles attached to the cage. Utilising your phone’s camera, the perspective can be changed by moving closer or further, and even around the cage. There are lots of switches to flick, dials to turn and word puzzles to move through the steps. The Birdcage looks and sounds gorgeous and is perfectly taxing on the brain; think The Room but in your room.

Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs

Angry Birds had its time in the sun quite some time ago, but recent entries have tried to implement the winning formula onto new technologies. Dabbling in VR (where applicable) and this AR entry, the mechanics feel fresh again. Angry Birds AR: Isle of Pigs opens and asks you to place the traditional looking level on a nearby table (or on the floor). Everything is recognisable – towers and buildings made from blocks with chubby pigs standing by. On your phone, you’ll have a direct view of a catapult, into which the familiar birds jump and can be fired at the puzzle. Watching the blocks and pigs tumble about is joyous and it fits within the AR space ideally. A great game for everyone, but kids will love it!

Angry Birds AR Structure Destroyed

Draw a Stickman: AR

There’s something wonderful about drawing an object on your phone and watching it come to life. With Draw a Stickman: AR, that’s the first step. Your stickman can be as simple or lavish as you want. Once they’re created, an RPG style world is displayed on the floor or surface of your table and you can tap where your stickman needs to go. What comes next is a simple RPG, full of monsters and dungeon crawling… and more drawing! This adds a nice flair to the game, and watching everything pop up in a 3D space through your phone never gets old.

The Walking Dead: Our World

It’s been a few years since TWD: Our World was released and in that time, enthusiasm for zombies has waned a little. Don’t let that stop you from trying this AR gem, though. If one of your daydreams has been how you would deal with a zombie outbreak, now is your chance to live that out. There are walkers roaming your neighbourhood – with maps from Google – and they need to be put down. With legends from the TV show to recruit, you can search out stashes of items and weapons ready to fight it out with the shambling terrors. There are plenty of missions to take on, including saving survivors and holding off rival NPCs, so there’s a lot of variety in this apocalyptic world.

Five Night’s at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery

The tenth overall instalment in the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, it’s time to be scared again. Well, only if creepy, broken, furry robots are your nightmare fuel. There are still puzzles to solve and horrors to avoid, except this time the animatronics are in your home! Played in first-person perspective, the jump scares will get you every time. Thankfully combat is an option, and bashing the demonic beasts has never felt more satisfying. The videogame received a lot of content updates, so anyone jumping in now will have plenty to do.

Pikmin Bloom

Pikmin Bloom

Also from Niantic Labs, comes another Nintendo property in Pikmin Bloom. Some liken this title to a gamified fitness app, as there is no deep gameplay aspect like other AR games on this list. Pikmin Bloom encourages users to leave their homes, walk their local areas and this is reflected in collecting seeds along your route and hatching them into cute Pikmin. Features from the console counterpart have been implemented – like Oliver’s ship log, which is now a daily tracker with photos and captions – to create a richer world.

The Witcher: Monster Slayer

In summer 2021, a surprising AR game popped up on app stores. The Witcher: Monster Slayer is a remarkably enjoyable extension of the Witcher universe. Much like Pokemon Go! the player explores the local neighbourhood battling monsters within the AR world overlaid onto a scale map of your area. Here, instead of using cute creatures, your finger swipes are translated into sword swings and spells to destroy the horrific monsters plaguing the land. A great inclusion are story-driven quests which expand the lore within the games (and the books) and give you a good sense of progression, alongside earned XP and new items to unlock as wander the streets.

Ghostbusters Afterlife: ScARe

Released in conjunction with the latest Ghostbusters movie, this AR app is wonderful jumping on point for the Ghostbusters universe. Packed with puzzles, flying objects possessed by new and familiar ghosts which require ‘busting’ and lots of footage to guide the light story along. This is a great app for kids who can explore their home, or even a local park, while looking for ghosts. There’s something spectacular in swiping and moving the phone to control the stream of the proton pack and wrangle the spectral monsters and slam them into the trap.

Doors: Awakening

Much like The Birdcage above, Doors: Awakening uses your immediate space to position an object bursting with puzzles. In this instance, it’s a door. If you don’t feel like walking back and forth across your living room, you can place these doors on a table and spin them using swipes on the screen. Doors: Awakening has a spooky atmosphere delivered by luscious graphics which bring a real sense of otherworldly adventures to our world. The puzzles aren’t overly difficult, the main reason to play is the visual spectacle it brings to our world.

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Taking the First Steps Into an AR Metaverse

With so many companies and brands expressing their plans for the metaverse, one technology will be key for early adopters – Augmented Reality. AR technology primarily uses smartphones and, to a lesser extent, smart spectacles to adapt the reality we see around us, often adding a new layer of interactivity. Because this tech uses hardware most of us already own, it’s easy to see that one of the ways the metaverse will start being pieced together is via AR videogames and apps.

If you cast your mind back to the summer of 2016, you’ll remember a large portion of the public were wandering parks and streets trying to catch Pokemon. Pokemon Go, created by Niantic Labs, uses AR technology in a few ways; by overlaying Pokemon onto a map which you are physically walking in ‘the real world’; it uses the camera in your phone to show the Pokemon against the backdrop of where you are currently; and it allows you to interact with other players through their avatars within the game, while they might be stood only a few metres away in-person.

It’s not only Pokemon Go capitalising on AR; Spokko Sp. z.o.o. adapted the popular videogame franchise The Witcher into a monster-slaying game; Niantic Labs grabbed another Nintendo franchise with their recent Pikmin Bloom release and in 2018, developer Ludia brought Jurassic World to mobile platforms so that we could capture a T-Rex in our local parks. Games are a great playground for developers to try new technologies.

Pokemon Go is still a very popular mobile game five years later and the AR technology used by Niantic Labs is advancing steadily. In early November 2021, the company announced Niantic Lightship, a platform dedicated to the development of Augmented Reality which can be shared with other developers. This new technology is built for the metaverse, using our phones to capture images and use machine learning to translate that footage into an accurate 3D model. Alongside this, consumers will be able to view particular objects through their phone screens and enjoy a unique experience collaborating together, or creating memories at concerts, like the upcoming Ed Sheeran performance due to take place within Pokemon Go.

However, what started with gaming, is growing into a slice of the metaverse that will become available to anyone with a smartphone. The possibilities for AR are constantly being explored. Coachella, the American music festival, is implementing AR features that will enhance a band’s performance as lights, colours and creatures mix with the live-action on stage; Science Museum Group plan to use the technology to bring their exhibits to life and take strides to further education; while the meditation app, TRIPP, will use this tech to help users become more mindful while out in the world.

As people become more familiar with AR, our phones will transform the way we interact not only with the world, but also how we shop or converse with each other. From the small ideas such as IKEA creating an app that places furniture choices in the intended room for you to see how it will fit your home style. To the big brain concepts – Google is using AR to power their language translation apps and visual search engine with Google Lens where you simply point your camera at foreign wording to see it translated in real-time. Plus, projecting directional arrows onto the ground or floating in the air, to plot a journey in Google Maps. Of course, there’s still a way to go before we’re all connected to each other in a central metaverse. However, these games and apps point to what we can expect from the future.

This link between AR and smartphones is integral, not only to keep consumer costs low but because the hardware is powerful enough at this stage to implement the tech needed. All forms of AR require several pieces of hardware which every smartphone has – camera, speakers, microphone, accelerometers and processing power. Depth registration, which places a digital item overlaid onto our world, needs that camera. The accelerometer gauges distances and moves the AR objects based on how the user moves. Most important, is that processing power; with so many AR apps and games, the processor must use machine learning to crunch algorithms in order to decipher what the camera, and thereby the user, is observing.

At first, AR was feeling too many as a bit of a gimmick. It’s now evolving into a genuinely helpful and impressive piece of technology that could impact our daily lives. The beauty of this technology, starting with gaming, is that it proves an accessible entry. The public can make the leap from throwing pokeballs to using AR in the workplace. With incremental movements within apps, soon projecting videos against a wall during a meeting with colleagues which can then be edited or annotated by anyone in the room, through their phone, could become a metaverse standard, with swish 3D avatars.

To get a sense of where AR is heading, it’s worth sticking close to videogames. Euclidean Skies is a puzzler that has a lot in common with Escher sketches. Holding your phone in front of you, labyrinthine buildings take over the empty space of your living room. These can be turned and rotated to solve the puzzle. While Smash Tanks conjures digital tanks, with a battlefield, and lays it out on the floor with no mess to tidy once you’re done. Each of these games contains the same technology that we’ll see from developers working on Niantic Lightship.

Just these two games can point towards other uses of the technology or other apps available which use similar ideas. Thyng is an interface that projects images and short video clips within a shared space; perfect for meetings in tiny offices. Quiver is a kids AR app which, when paired with colouring pages, brings a child’s artwork to life using the colours the child used.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that one day you’ll raise your phone, look through the screen at a friend and see their digital avatar. If we’re to believe Niantic Labs, it’s not much of a jump to walk over a bridge in your hometown with your phone held out and watch as the scene fades into what that bridge looked like fifty years ago, everyone digitally dressed in period clothing. Or for a group of kids touring a museum to be handed tablets that bring ancient worlds to life before their eyes or whisk them away to stand on the edge of a volcano.

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Nike Meets Roblox in NIKELAND: A Metaverse Leap for the Sports Brand

While Facebook… erm, Meta, and Microsoft are flexing their metaverse muscles by creating VR showcases, Nike has just launched its first metaverse project in Roblox. NIKELAND is, essentially, a huge branded playground for players to experience together. It’s with this concept that Roblox really cements the idea that their playing spaces are distancing themselves from being ‘games’ and are actually ‘experiences’, which follows on from CEO David Baszucki’s recent keynote speech where he claimed Roblox has always been a metaverse.

When first entering NIKELAND the iconic ‘swoosh’ logo adorns practically everything in sight. There are clouds in the sky personified with bright eyes and that swoosh as a smile; slides and ramps are shaped as the swoosh; it is everywhere. But of course, it is, let’s be honest, this is advertising on a new scale. A cynical mind may believe it’s too much, but if you look beyond the adverts, NIKELAND is a well designed and enjoyable place to hang out. And a great starting place for the public to experience the metaverse, albeit with baby steps.

This experience is bursting with colour. Green hills and blue sky dominate the scenery, with several squared-off areas in the centre for players to call their own. Pink trees dot the surroundings, oversized baseball bats provide makeshift ramps and a bright orange athletics track circles the core buildings, which look as if they’ve been yanked from Seattle’s Silicon Valley. Even at this early stage, avatars are zooming around hunting for cool areas to hang out or shopping for new shoes.

New users get a short guided tour. Every player has their own ‘yard’ which can be fully customised based around several sports. There are tennis nets, basketball hoops, soccer goals and even a gymnastics pommel horse. The next stop is the lobby, which houses two shops; the first sells items to be used in the ‘yard’ and the other is decked out with fully licensed Nike clothing and shoes (each pair of shoes has a superpower and all are brilliant!).

Early players are gifted a Nike baseball cap and bag, which can be worn in any other experience/game, which not only emphasises the Roblox metaverse but is also a sign to future creators and collaborators that Roblox shouldn’t be ignored. Earning potential here is huge, particularly as players in other games spot your latest Nike gear and want it for themselves.

To buy anything, players spend Nike medals, which are earned by playing mini-games with other players or discovering them within the NIKELAND world. There’s no clear way to translate Robux to medals, so at least for now, everything is free to players. 

Personalisation is key here, as other players can visit your ‘yard’ at any time and give your created area a ‘like’. In the ‘yard’ placing items is as simple as selecting an object within the build menu and clicking a button. The options are myriad – large plastic geometric shapes, patterns to emulate grass or clay tennis courts, benches for other players to sit and spectate.

The ‘yard’ can be as lavish or basic as the player wants, but it’s worth keeping in mind that games will be played here and other users will appreciate some effort. A glowing blue circle outside the yard brings up a menu of three games – The Floor is Lava, Tag and Dodgeball – each incredibly simple and Nike promise more games are on the way. Once activated, all players in NIKELAND are given a notification to say a game is starting in your ‘yard’. Of course, if your ‘yard’ looks like a parkour course, it will create a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Being a sporting brand, Nike doesn’t just want users to sit at their PC, though. If players choose to load the experience on their smartphone, the accelerometer inside will track movement and bestow the avatar with “sports superpowers” in the form of super speed, or long jumps. It’s a bridge between our world and the metaverse, but it’s a seed full of potential. Nike could build in a pedometer that translates your steps into medals or offer promo codes when you buy shoes in a brick and mortar store, which digitally adds those shoes to your Roblox wardrobe.

NIKELAND is a small step into the metaverse. If Nike is working to a checklist, you’d be able to mark off several items – Shared digital space, persistent clothing and accessories, community activities, player-focused parcel of customisable land and a connection to the ‘real world’ with smartphone connectivity. It may not be the metaverse that other companies are imagining, but why run before you can walk?