Cinema and cricket are the two biggest religions in India. We are a nation that believes in hero worship and would want more from our idols. The proliferation of social media has bridged the gap between the milky way where the stars reside & their followers and now the web 3.0 aims at breaking that bridge to create a homogeneous milky way where stars and fans will reside side by side.
Metaverse is here to stay, grow, thrive and shine to the level of being a gateway to everything for the current and upcoming generation. Stumping all the naysayers, the metaverse has been drawing attention from brands and celebrities alike and on top of it all, consumers are spending not just hours but also the money in metaverses.
Brands won’t spend if users are not there and users will not keep coming if there’s not enough for people to do in metaverse so the loop is already complete in the metaverse and picture is just getting clearer & clearer. New use cases and formats are evolving every day, attracting footfalls. Yes, we are at a nascent stage and the chunk of traffic is event led at this juncture but Rome was not built in a day. We are at an interesting inflection point and if market forces are an indication we are only expecting to grow in the foreseeable future.
We are moving to the world where the users will be in control of their data as it’s completely decentralized instead of one company owning it up which paves the way for the wholesome Metaverse definition where it’s not just the immersive world but has creator’s economy and blockchain integration. We, at PartyNite, were very clear from day one about our vision for Metaverse which just didn’t focus on immersion alone. However, immersion definitely is the visible layer and is an important part but what users can do or can consume in the metaverse is far deeper.
We launched our platform earlier this year with Bhangra King Daler Mehndi and the event gave us instant success. A huge number of users experienced the event and got a taste of a wholesome metaverse engagement. Mehndi himself went hammer and tong with the promotions and went onto buying a plot of land on PartyNite. We launched the land parcel roping in McDowell’s who had set up stalls showcasing their products. A brand and celebrity engagement will eventually give way to a phygital integration in the future. If you are on a date at PartyNite and order a coffee from a cafe, a cup of coffee will be delivered to you physically as well to complete the experience. People are already using these tables at café for private conversation, discussions and completing the loop with phygital deliveries of the menu items.
A couple of months back we were invited by the I&B ministry to represent India at Cannes. My days were packed with meeting different production houses all over the world wanting to tap into the power of Metaverse through better audience engagement. This is a space that allows a user to interact with the stars first hand. Immersive trailer launch came out strongly as a use case that the entertainment world wants to lap up. Soon after I got back there was news of the matinee idol Ajay Devgn launching the trailer of Rudra on a metaverse. Just last month, ace designer Anamika Khanna announced a fashion show on the metaverse. The uptake of entertainment is significantly growing on the Metaverse, hinged on two pronged outcomes- experiential set up and scalability, which the physical world can’t match up. However, there’s a lot more that can be offered as immersive trailers in metaverse than just a watch party format of trailer. We are redefining what didn’t change in the last 100+ years. Metaverse gives way to new forms of 360 degree data analytics, democratization, community building and revenue possibilities.
Metaverse allows creators to come and create their content on the platform, trade/sell on the platform and earn from the platform, making it THE PLACE for the digital natives. Soon there’ll be meta influencers. There’s a surge of meta-architects already who customize the world for brands etc. Imagine you record a song inside the metaverse with your friends’ playing instruments from different parts of the world, record it and mint it as NFT on the platform itself. Anybody can play the music in their parties and the original band/singer earns from it. There are many revenues streaming within metaverse for brands, celebs or even Metaverse society.
PartyNite engaged with Airtel Xtream opening up a 20 screen Multiplex on the platform playing out content pieces from their OTT partner’s slates. This got us straight into the conversation of scalability. Even the biggest multiplex chain in the country does not have a 20-screen multiplex. What we achieved with Airtel Xtream is just the tip of the iceberg. Airtel intends to drive traffic through their megaplex on Partynite and give the users a peek into their services through a brand-new experience which will guarantee engagement. We also did a collaboration with ‘Eno’ with the stand-up comedian Zakhir Khan and a bunch of other comedians talking about food habits and acid reflux. Audiences got to meet their favourite comedian through their avatars and got a first-hand experience of the brand. The platform allows the fans of a celebrity to attend a show or an event irrespective of their geographical location, a show in the physical world therefore can never match the numbers. How is that for scalability?
Another important thing to know about metaverse is that it’s social yet personal. Imagine a physical world car launch where concert happens, CEO/Design engineers come and talk about the car and show the car of their choice and only handful can get their hands on it so you are restricted by audience size and experience both, compare this with youtube launch where there’s no restriction of the size but experience is still unidirectional. In the metaverse, users can experience everything that the physical world or youtube offers but it doesn’t stop here and users can customize the car of their choice, making it an absolutely personal experience. We call it Social Yet Personal. Everybody in the room is for the same brand and same messaging but what they consume and experience is very personal to their tastes. One of the reasons we simply call Web 3.0 as the Web of Participation where Web 2.0 was all about interaction only.
Multiple use cases are coming up every day in the entertainment space and there is a huge uptake for entertainment as a whole on Metaverse. Anybody with a public presence will eventually want a foothold in this virtual land and if Covid taught us anything then it is to develop a strong virtual presence. Metaverse is the way forward and will become a way of life just like social media has. Not just the brands and celebrities, educational institutes, banks, advisory companies, legal companies all of them are coming to Metaverse and PartyNite is already working pretty much all of these with the promise of building a place for tomorrow’s generation today.
Article by:Â Rajat Ojha, Founder & CEO, Gamitronics (PartyNite)
