Entertainment in the Metaverse: The Future is Now

Metaverse Entertainment

Virtual reality entertainment events with huge crowds of 3D avatars are already here. In April 2020, rapper Travis Scott held a concert in online video game Fortnite’s captivating surroundings, playing to an audience of 12.3 million! K-pop group BTS also chose Fortnite to debut their new single in September 2020.

Now, VR entertainment has a new thrust. Going forward (really, what other direction is there?), media and entertainment experiences in the metaverse will no longer be standalone affairs. Instead, there will be a unified space that integrates multiple virtual worlds into a single, interoperable location that can be accessed by any number of users simultaneously. And they’ll be able to choose from myriad entertainment venues, events, and services.

What will this look like?

It will be a virtual copy of our real world with astonishing verisimilitude, aided by conveniences such as teleportation, content projection, and infinite appearance customization.

In terms of technology, the metaverse combines AI, blockchain, virtual reality, mixed reality, and advanced IoT technology to help users perceive and interact with virtual entities as though they were real.

In a way, the metaverse can be an entertainment experience unto itself. The very fact that users can leave the physical world and engage with unfamiliar yet keenly believable surroundings is entertaining in itself. Now, providers are building on those basic capabilities to produce content that grabs and maintains user attention.

This includes regular 2D content streamed to metaverse locations such as a VR movie theatre, 360-degree video content, immersive infotainment experiences, and live events.

Three Important Uses

1. Virtual reality theme park

VR theme parks and amusements parks would eliminate the challenges of building costs, visitor safety, location, travel, innovation, and even the laws of physics!

2. Competitive entertainment and sports betting

VR would allow betters to observe an event up close, enabling better decisions. Betting is motivated by peer networks, and the metaverse is a social place. The metaverse also comes with its own crypto wallet.

3. Concerts inside the metaverse

As mentioned, the idea of virtual concerts isn’t new, and leading artists have turned to this technology to counter the losses during COVID-19.

Imagine Dragons, Travis Scott, BTS, Muse, Post Malone, and several other contemporary artists have held VR concerts in the last two years. The metaverse will enable increased visibility and flexibility for the user while ensuring predictable audiences for artists.

Enterprising Companies

Several companies are investing heavily into bringing similar (or even better!) experiences to the metaverse.

  • Walt Disney – Disney has been approved for a patent that would create personalized interactive attractions for theme park visitors. The technology would facilitate headset-free augmented reality (AR) attractions at Disney theme parks.

    The metaverse has largely been imagined as existing on the internet, accessed using virtual reality or AR headsets. However, the technology proposed by Disney would bring the metaverse to the physical world.

  • Facebook (Meta) – At Connect 2021, Meta debuted several simulated scenarios for the metaverse, including one for media and entertainment. Meta’s vision uses both mixed reality and virtual reality to blur the lines between digital and physical.

  • Netmarble in South Korea – Netmarble is a South Korean mobile gaming company that’s launched its own Metaverse Entertainment to bring K-pop into VR.

  • Fortnite – Fortnite is a VR entertainment veteran and the company behind it, Epic Games, recently announced $1 billion in funding to build the metaverse.

  • Playboy – Playboy has plans to reboot its brand in the digital world through NFTs, digital subscriptions and a new mansion in the metaverse. The company has already created thousands of NFTs based on the iconic Playboy bunny logo.

  • Namco – Japanese gaming company Bandai Namco is spending $130 million to create the Gundam metaverse. Gundam is a Japanese military fiction media franchise/media mix that features giant robots with the name "Gundam.”

As these trends develop further, entertainment will be among the key reasons why early users adopt metaverse technology. Eventually, it will become “the real thing.”

Paul Gravette