Tech
It’s not just a game. It’s not just an escape. This is real commerce | ticker VIEWS
Vans’ collaboration with Roblox highlights the endless commercial possibilities of the metaverse
The Virtual experience inside the video game creation platform Roblox will allow people to create a custom avatar and visit a Vans store, where they can purchase virtual items.
Players will be able to purchase virtual items with in game currency – Roblox – and skate around in virtual recreations of famous skate parks.
The move is an example of commercial businesses exploring the metaverse, which combines virtual and augmented reality.
Mat Cole, from ACT Capital Partners, told Ticker News the experience was another step towards commerce embracing the metaverse.
“The metaverse is essentially a convergence between your physical world and the digital world where you can actually sort of simultaneously in real time connect with people through avatars or shared experiences.” he said.
Cole believes the experience will allow Vans the ability to reach a new audience, through giving people the ability to engage with the brand through the metaverse.
“It allows people to build a really emotional attachment to the Vans brand inside the inside the metaverse.”
According to Cole the metaverse can create an inclusive experience for customers to engage with the world’s biggest brands.
“If I speak French, Italian, German Mandarin, I can log on in my own portal and have a metaverse experience and talk to someone inside the Nike flagship store in my own language and purchase something that is then sent to my house,” Cole said.
“So we know we’ve got this frictionless E-commerce now, where things are delivered in 24 hours, 48 hours.”
Cole does however highlight the potential ethical issues in marketing through a platform geared towards children in Roblox.
“The challenge with Roblox is because it’s got a younger audience. How do you how do you monetize it?” he said.
“It’s an ethical issue of how you start monetizing and getting kids to pay for consumers and consumer goods.”
The metaverse term was first coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1993 sci-fi novel Snow Crash. In the book, the metaverse was the successor to the internet, and was used as an escape by people from the dystopian earth.
People in the metaverse would express their status through the appearance of their digital avatars. In recent years payable skins have become common in video games.
Non Fungible Tokens (NFT) have allowed people to have ownership of digital assets in recent times, and can contribute to the E-commerce that is beginning to boom within the digital world.