Significant cultural shifts tend to start in a place—like Renaissance Florence, Vienna in the 1900s, the Swinging Sixties in London. The location for the next one is the metaverse. It will affect how people experience art, music, movies and, of course, brands.
In the immediate future, we expect to see a period of questioning, learning and experimenting on what’s possible. Any brand or creator wanting to operate in the metaverse must be ready for a lot of trial and error, focusing on the end user’s experience.
Unique experiences will likely be key to attracting people outside the gaming community. Initially, we believe brand owners will establish their own spaces within the metaverse, or look to Big Tech to create metaverse-as-a-service platforms they can engage with. These spaces will then evolve beyond the brand or company websites that are commonplace today, into more neutral spaces where subtle and sophisticated interactions can take place, and in ways that are fluid and free-form.
As everything is 3D-based, designers, digital product developers, creatives and technologists will play a central role in virtual world-building and content placement. Development methods in gaming will go mainstream as more 3D experiences come online—like playtesting for example, where gamers give quality control feedback on experiences before a game launches to the wider public.
Embedding ethics from the start is an absolute must. The harm caused by the current internet experience is plain to see—organizations should do better in the next iteration, with more transparency. As brands seek to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the metaverse, ethics around behavior control, sustainability and accessibility for all must be front of mind.
The metaverse gained huge traction during the pandemic. What we cannot know yet is how its evolution will go from here. It may continue to boom and grow, it may shapeshift into something else. Or it may fizzle unless enough people find continued value or relevancy in it.
We may well be on the brink of a new cultural epoch. If this is true, this shift will be associated with the metaverse. Whatever happens, the metaverse may offer infinite potential as a brave new space for companies to explore, test, and innovate, all of which makes it—to say the very least—tremendously exciting.