TL;DR
- A panel of industry leaders at the 2023 NAB Show delved into the potential for immersive experiences at the intersection of entertainment and enterprise, with an emphasis on virtual worldbuilding.
- Moderated by MetaCities executive producer Gregg Katano, the panel included EndeavorXR founder & CEO Amy Peck, Wild Capture co-founder and head of studio Evan Pesses, and worldbuilder & strategist Rachel Joy Victor.
- The idea of the metaverse has evolved from Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” to a spatial computing platform that provides digital experiences, including digital twins of cities and completely abstract, fantastical worlds.
- Interoperability remains crucial for the metaverse to function, allowing companies and brands to deploy content in a range of formats and experiences.
Watch the full NAB Show 2023 session, “Metaverses for Entertainment and Enterprise: Capitalizing on Worldbuilding” above.
Once primarily a playground for the media and entertainment industry, AR, XR and other immersive experiences are taking off in the enterprise sector, offering engaging, interoperable virtual worlds that are revolutionizing business operations and experiences in real estate, manufacturing, healthcare and more. A recent panel of industry leaders at the 2023 NAB Show delved into the potential for immersive experiences at the intersection of entertainment and enterprise, with an emphasis on virtual worldbuilding.
Entitled “Metaverses for Entertainment and Enterprise: Capitalizing on Worldbuilding,” the panel discussion was held in the Capitalize Experiential Zone at the LVCC’s West Hall. It was moderated by Gregg Katano, executive producer at metaverse event production company and consultancy MetaCities, and included EndeavorXR founder & CEO Amy Peck, Evan Pesses, co-founder/head of studio at Wild Capture, and worldbuilder & strategist Rachel Joy Victor. Watch the full session in the video at the top of the page.
The panelists explored the potential for immersive experiences in both entertainment and enterprise, discussing how virtual worldbuilding can be deployed across business sectors and how these experiences can be monetized.
Katano kicked off the session by pointing out that the idea of the metaverse has evolved from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which conceived a three-dimensional virtual space where humans represented by programmable avatars can interact with one another, to “a spatial computing platform that provides digital experiences,” including digital twins of cities and completely abstract, fantastical worlds, “anything that our wildest dreams can come up with.”
Peck, who advises companies on developing immersive experiences in her role at EndeavorXR, said that it’s important to dispel the hype surrounding these new technologies, which leads brands to leap into making investments without a clear strategy. “We’re in this interesting moment where technology gives us superpowers,” she said. “We were in a mindset of incremental change, and leveraging technology to optimize incrementally, but we have the opportunity to really leapfrog into the future. And we have agency in that future, especially in aggregate.”
When we talk about the metaverse, Victor said, the conversation usually surrounds the visual aesthetic of building virtual worlds. “And that’s kind of what the metaverse is,” she continued. “But I think the real unlock of the metaverse is really a computational unlock of being able to have this really bespoke data when we’re working within the context of volumetric worlds, or when you’re translating to the spatial web of having really targeted data of people as they move about the physical world and city space.”
There are two sides to this data, Victor noted, user data, and “this really in depth data about the world space.” When those two pieces are put together, “you can have emergent experiences that take both things into account,” she said.
“So if we’re talking about this virtual world that exists, and we know that each kind of thing that exists within that world, every asset, everything is a computational data point. And now the user as they’re moving through that world is also a data point. It’s not a linear experience. It’s not even a nonlinear experience. Now, it’s this whole network of possibilities. And each thing that the user interacts with is very responsive. It’s just a very targeted type of experience, a targeted way of thinking about narrative now.”
Wild Capture, a suite of AI-driven tools that enable the integration of volumetric video and realistic digital humans, is an integral part of creating the special environment that will form the backbone of the metaverse, Katono said.
“We’re all about digital human technology,” said Pesses, describing how Wild Capture helps people bring assets into digital worlds. “What we believe is interoperability. We believe that the same asset goes all the way from the highest VFX film all the way to WebXR on your phone all the way to AR,” he continued. “We believe that the same asset not only goes to all those places, but can be handed off to different artists to do different things, as well as the opportunity for businesses to have multiple licensing opportunities.”
There are different ways to tap into what interoperability means for your specific IP or brand, said Victor. “Something that happens a lot is there’s this pressure of ‘Everyone is doing this, and I need to jump into this space. So let me see what everyone else is doing.’ But I think it starts from that brand story, from that IP story perspective.”
One important first step, said Victor, is understanding the story your brand is already telling, interrogating the mechanics involved along with what your audience is already interested in. “A lot of times, if you’re talking with a brand like Nike, they already have a really great community story around competitive acquisition of a product,” she said. “And so that translates into a mechanic of here, let me let me put out these digital assets and see who wants to procure them. But if you’re another shoe brand, that might not be the same mechanic that you know, that your consumers are used to participating in. So I think it’s about that point of translation, understanding how to be authentic and in your story.”