On Day #600
of lockdown, it’s become clear that Jim Halpert’s fourth-wall-breaking
eye contact isn’t enough social connection to sustain us.
One solution: The metaverse, virtual worlds, the digital "third-place"...whatever
you want to call it when you and your friends’ avatars hang out online.
The cheapest ticket to get there is a game and/or console, and COVID-19
has poured jet fuel on growth.
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Games: Animal Crossing: New Horizons' three-day sales set a Nintendo record, Roblox usage surged 40% in March, and 350 million registered Fortnite players logged 3.2 billion hours last month.
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Consoles: Nintendo sold a record number
of Switches in March, and sales of Sony PS4s and Microsoft Xbox Ones
both rose more than 25% over last year, despite all being 3+ years old.
Some people are even going full Ready Player One, with Facebook attributing the lion’s share of its non-advertising revenue in Q1 to Oculus virtual reality hardware.
Going virtual is the non-Zoom option
As COVID-19
shut down social schedules, more people have turned to online games to
recreate canceled gatherings, giving us a glimpse of a world reborn in
pixels. Here are four in-person events that were converted to immersive
virtual spaces this year:
- Students from Brown, MIT, Penn, and many more rebuilt their closed college campuses and roamed the halls.
- Parents hosted playdates and birthday parties for their cooped-up kids.
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Several couples tied the knot.
- One family held an in-game memorial service for a gamer who died of the coronavirus.
While some games (Roblox, Minecraft) were built for this kind of free-flowing donothingness, Fortnite just added a new mode called "Party Royale" to encourage players to spend more unstructured time emoting their way through virtual time and space.
What’s next? Even as Fortnite
dance moves return to IRL clubs and concerts post-pandemic, COVID-19
has accelerated the creation and widespread use of a virtual shared
space. And industries from music to retail won’t miss the opportunity to
meet their customers there.
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I AM A REPUBLICAN BORN AND BRED
IN AMERICA .I BELIEVE IN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.I SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE
MAJORED IN GEOLOGY AND MUSIC AND WENT TO ANGELO STATE IN SAN ANGELO, TEXAS
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