The Secret Of The Success Of Virtual Worlds: Compelling Avatars

The next generation of web technologies – blockchain, smart contracts, artificial intelligence, collectively known as Web3 – empower people to connect with each other directly without having to become a customer of any company. This will be primarily experienced in virtual worlds, also called metaverses. For next-generation interactions in a metaverse to be popular and effective, people must be able to establish an emotional connection with each other – and with their own digital self. This is accomplished through an avatar: a digital representation of oneself in a virtual world. Why is this emotional connection important? Is the ideal avatar a representation of one’s actual image or an act of escapism? What is an avatar’s role in remote work, branding, social interactions and education?

Background

With a class of experienced, ambitious master students, I was leading an exploration of business opportunities in virtual worlds. We started in DecentraLand, which is a metaverse based on open-sourced software that uses blockchains and smart contracts to empower participants to buy and sell services, virtual accessories and virtual real estate using its own cryptocurrency. Because it is accessible in a two-dimensional form through a computer, without need of a VR headset or fast computer, and because it is not owned by any one company or code, it seemed like a great place to start this adventure.

The concept was sound; my lesson plan was weak. The class was going badly. Many of the students concluded that this virtual world was a trivial game that was inferior to most contemporary multi-player games like World of Warcraft or Call of Duty. This virtual world even paled in comparison to children’s game such as Roblox or Minecraft.

Enter Camilla Brossa. She is a former (stellar) student of mine who is now a program manager at a Web3 company in California that provides tools for building avatars. Her visit to my classroom and explanation of avatars significantly changed everyone’s mind, convincing students – and me – that virtual worlds are not trivial or inferior. She made two vital points. The first is that virtual worlds are not yet ready for prime time. They will require a few years to mature to a level of experience that will be acceptable to most visitors.

Camilla’s second point was less about business and more about humanness. For people to consider spending time in a virtual world, they require more than communication or fruitful transaction. They expect an emotional connection to other people. This is the role of a person’s avatar: a self-selected digital representation of their identity. (In order to ensure the reader that this article is an objective, albeit anecdotal, examination of the role of avatars in virtual worlds and not an advertisement, Camilla’s company will only be referenced at the end of this article.)

History

Digital avatars are not new. Gamers have used them for decades in video games. If we define an avatar as a digital representation of one’s identity, then edited selfies with the filters and touch-ups available with every smartphone are the first generation of avatars. The second generation of avatars intentionally morphed an image to show a feeling. For example, a person expressing that they are sad over a recent life event sends a “photo” of themselves hooked crying into a pile of tissues with a wreath of birds circling their head like a cartoon. The third generation of avatars is a simplification of one’s self-image, with a wide variety of skin coloring and clothing. It moves semi-realistically, but only with one speed and one expression. (The image to the right is my amateur-ish avatar.)

We can start to see the fourth generation of avatars with more elegant, realistic movement and fashions. The image at the top of this article is Camilla’s avatar.

Representation

In the extreme, the construction of an avatar can take one of two paths. On the one hand, avatars can be a tool to convey a digital, ultra-personalized and realistic representation of someone’s self, matching one’s IRL (in-real-life) self. According to a study conducted by the Institute of Digital Fashion, more than half of 6,000 people interviewed expressed their desire to have their avatar fully represent their IRL self. Most avatar tools enable non-binary gender options, religious garments, inclusive skin tones and body shapes, and even tools to overcome physical challenges, such as crutches or wheelchairs.

On the other hand, avatars can be completely fictitious characters, with no resemblance to the person’s actual likeness. For example, Miquela is a computer-generated character created in 2016 who now has 2.8M followers and is the first virtual influencer. She is one of TIME Magazine’s ’25 Most Influential People on the Internet’ and makes approximately $9M per year.

Similarly, Lu do Magalu has 47 MM followers known among her Brazilian audience because of her kindness and innocence. K/DA and Pol Songs are virtual singers who have released multiple successful albums and collaborated with global brands like Adidas. Noonoouri is a 19 year-old digital activist who has attended several fashion events as a model for Louis Vuitton.

This fiction offers several benefits. First, it reflects the outer visage of who the person sees themselves in their idyllic dreams. Second, it can let people experience interactions in someone else’s shoes. In the real world, I am a white middle-aged American male with a penchant to navy suits. In DecentraLand, my initial avatar was a young Asian woman wearing loud polka dots (see image to the right). Third, an avatar can change instantly to suit one’s mood, circumstance or ambition.

Connection

One of the most useful applications of avatars will be to connect people emotionally and intellectually in virtual worlds to each other and to products and services. Several fashion brands have opened digital stores. For example, Nike built Nikeland, a virtual sportswear space in the metaverse of Roblox, Bloomingdale opened a digital immersive store in a virtual world created by Emperia and Adidas launched Virtual Gear, their first digital collection for virtual worlds. These stores empower users to try on virtual apparel, personalize it, and buy both digital and physical versions of it. Food and beverage companies can display their entire supply chain as a virtual experience from the ingredients’ origin and harvest to the processing and packaging of the final product. Imagine an immersive virtual journey in Colombia following a coffee bean from field to market to roaster to cup, where your avatar can interact with the employees in the value chain to hear their stories, get proof of sustainable processing through embedded smart contracts, and ultimately click on ‘add to cart’.

Avatars also improve the experience of remote workers such that they can represent their identities at their virtual office, interact with colleagues’ avatars, and feel a deeper sense of inclusion in the company. What is now a Zoom screen a teammate faces (sometimes live, sometimes a still photo) could become a virtual kitchen with its own virtual water cooler.

Social interactions will see entirely new ways of hanging out with friends or meet new people. Online dating, to name one instance, will take a whole new meaning, increasing the safety of users while enabling the users’ avatars to virtually spend time and get to know a stranger. Communities from different countries and backgrounds will be able to interact and exchange opinions on politics, climate change, music, or fashion. This is the dawn of a new wave of globalization.

As a final example, education in some parts of the world is inaccessible, extremely expensive, and even prohibited. Virtual worlds can overcome most of these barriers for people with a fast internet connection. The ability for these worlds to get and retain a student’s attention have already been proven through immersive video games. The potential for skills-based immersive online education is just around the corner.

These examples are certainly utopian. Avatars in virtual worlds could also follow a much darker path. Fortunately, Web3 technologies give the user power to enter – or exit – risky environments instantly with anonymity. There are shadows in the real world and the current internet. Metaverses will be no different. But they

The next few years will see a rapid acceleration in adoption and potential of virtual worlds. Experts like Camilla Brossa, who has contributed many of the lessons and examples in this article, and her company, Genies, which offers tools to build avatars, will drive this next wave of technology and human connection.