State of Affairs
Like so many people, I can’t compete with my 12 year old in Fortnite. The time he has to dedicate to learning every strategy and trick, plus his ability to practise his game for frankly more time than my wife prefers is always going to outstrip mine. So as much as I want to enjoy visiting that experience, I don’t always do.
But I love gaming and I love being in a 3D world. I love the idea of presenting myself as an avatar from some brand I support, or even creating my own identity with an avatar creator. I enjoy chatting with mates from around the world but I don’t always want to be shooting at them with a railgun, or running from them because they found the gun first. I’d really rather just hang with them. How do we get to this version of gaming and social interaction?
Future Vision
Imagine this as the future. My social media space isn’t a Facebook or Instagram story page, but instead a fully rendered 3D apartment, organised and styled with my own personal flair. The artwork on the walls is a mix of the artists I admire and the moments in my life that I want others to witness. There are digital twins of IRL items adorning my space, because I like that brand of skate gear and I want others to recognize it as my style. The space is streaming in music that I have selected, likely through a partner app like Spotify, where I have built individual playlists to match my many moods. Lighting in the apartment matches my time zone, so when people visit my virtual apartment/social space, they are enjoying the night sky when I do.
And who am I in this social space? I am a fully rendered and animated model that replaced the static 2D PFP that would have adorned my profile picture in the legacy social media space. Today I am a cartoon gorilla, lumbering around my apartment with a cartoonish gait, rearranging the living space to make room for my small group of friends who are coming to visit in a few hours. I am hosting a poker game tonight for my friends scattered around the world. We expect to carouse and carry on as if the miles that separate us have melted away.
Because I will likely want to enjoy a few drafts this evening, I lumber to my virtual kitchen, open the refrigerator, and click on the bottle of brew on the shelf. With confirmation, my cartoon ape has been moved to the craft brew’s website, and I am now bumping through some customers in their 3D shop hosted on their website. Though I think I know the craft brew that I favour, a quick conversation with the shop curator convinces me that a new offering could be to my liking. With a familiar purchase flow, I can expect the new bottles to appear at my IRL location within the hour, delivered by UberEats. With that, I close their website tab and return to my virtual home to await my friends.
How To Get There?
This vision for the future is fairly advanced, and could seem a long way away. However, technology exists already to support this type of flow. The technology includes elements such as pixel streaming, cloud computing, AI assistance, and a DePIN network to bring operational costs to near zero. The limiters at the moment are just few, and I would think mainly just two. First is bringing the shared technologies together at scale, and the second is the imagination to guide them. These two things are the reason for YOM.
YOM has created a decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN) and beacon technology that, once deployed, allows for brands both small and large to host a 3D experience, like the brewery or the apartment in the story above. This hosting can keep the space continuously live at a near-zero cost to the site owner, in opposition to large, centralised and inefficient cloud service providers that now dominate the market. The DePIN network can equally be leveraged for AI support, not at all limited to the example of the AI store keeper in the example above. YOM also has created an SDK package that enables the creation and deployment of these types of 3D engagements onto their websites while utilising Unreal5 and pixel streaming, meaning the graphic quality can be equal to AAA games in a web browser with no latency. YOM has developed a series of interoperable parameters that facilitate the crossover from experience to experience, meaning an avatar created by one project with their technology can visit any other space created in the network. And lastly, YOM has a seasoned team of game and experience developers to help those brands maximise our toolsets and create the type of products and experiences that will appeal to the next generation of web users.
YOM has attracted visionary brands already. Straightfire, the impressive digital media studio who shepherd IPs like XII and Virus, are in the process of developing their various brands into avatars and 3D spaces with an eye to digital product launches and online gaming experiences. They join other major brands, most of whom are choosing to remain quiet to maintain their first-mover advantage, in seeing this vision as important in their next-generation internet strategy.
What is Stopping This Future?
There is still work to be done to bring the general public into this emerging future internet. Onramps for using digital assets and transactions are live and available. Companies like Visa and Mastercard are enabling digital purchases with the ease of every other online sale. And the generation that is coming up recognizes the value of virtual items, enjoys creating, buying, and selling virtual goods, and is steeped in creating digital communities. One thing that the pandemic showed us is that remote access to our friends and family is invaluable when distance separates us. The coming 3D internet is the next step in social interaction and leisure time.
Come Onboard!
So the groundwork is there for building this next generation of internet experiences. It will not be long before a high profile automobile brand decides that an online test drive using true driving physics pixel-streamed in Unreal5 and hosted on their website is the perfect solution to reaching their next generation of buyers. And if that new customer chooses to drive as a cartoon gorilla, even more the fun.
There are many ways to be involved and watch this new future unfold. If you know or represent a brand that sees the potential in this approach to reaching consumers, contact YOM through our Accelerator program to get a demonstration of the tool suite and discuss your proposal with us. If you are interested in building assets to help populate the marketplace that will inevitably spring up around the various companies using this technology, we are happy to discuss our Innovators program with you. And if you understand this vision of the future, we invite you to learn more about the YOM project and structure by reading our Whitepaper linked here.
Without any doubt, where the next generation of storytellers, artists, brands, and innovators is going is a fantastic opportunity. We are excited to play a part in supporting this future with our DePIN network, our tool suite, our economy, and our vision. We invite you to be a part of this transformative space with us.
The Ecosystem Director/CXO
