Metaverse in Singapore – How will it affect these 5 business industries?
In the last of our trilogy of articles on the metaverse and how it might affect digital business in Singapore, we take a look at five more industries that are going to see a lot of change once the metaverse is part of our daily reality.
Family Products on the Metaverse
As a father (to a young family) who travels a lot at the moment, I feel like I am missing a lot of important family time. When I come back from a work trip I always have to read a bedtime story to my kids. I think I miss it more than they do.
With the metaverse, this won’t have to be the case. Kids’ books can be uploaded there, and holographically I will be transported to my kid’s bedroom and their bedroom will be transported back to me.
Together in the metaverse, I can growl, I can breathe fire like a dragon, and then save the princess from the cruel King. I will see their excitement as the story builds and then see them falling off to sleep as the story nears its end.
Or what about the recitals and sports days at school, if I am away, I don’t have to miss any of them, just beam me in there. You can see a scene like this in the future, couples made up of a physical person and a hologram, holding hands looking proudly at their little ones up on stage.
Meta Fashion
Like other areas we have mentioned, fashion shopping will be improved, we will be able to try on clothes in our homes digitally before we buy, we could have a digital personal shopper in different stores to help, we will be able to change the color of items in an instance, so digitally we will be able to enhance/improve our physical world shopping experience.
But it is our digital fashion sense which is probably most interesting. We will be able to style and dress our avatars to be the coolest versions of ourselves.
As a typical male, I have a terrible Trainer addiction, I have no problem spending $700+ on the latest pair of Travis Scott Nike Air Max 1 “wheats”. I know it’s expensive but they’re awesome.
In the metaverse, I will want to wear them too, so expect to have enhanced versions of physical items of clothing replicated in the metaverse. But also expect people to buy digital-only versions.
As it’s the metaverse and it does not have the physical limitations of the real world, I will want a pair of Nike Air which actually gives me air… I can see myself flying around my living or digital office in the future.
Whatever the trend, expect a huge boom in digital fashion, so for all you clothes manufacturers here in Singapore, think about digitizing the process and design for the metaverse.
DIY in the MetaVerse?
In the real or digital world, our DIY skills are going to improve. In the real world, we will have holographic assistance, either as a person instructing our every move or as precise light projections indicating exactly where to cut…
No more excuses about losing instructions if the baby’s cot falls apart. If you’re a DIY expert, maybe you’re a carpenter, expand your business to offer in-home DIY tutorials via the metaverse.
There will also be a requirement for in-metaverse DIY too. We will all start to use 3D modeling software as we create our own furniture, maybe Ikea will sell flat-pack digital furniture too.
eSports and the Meta Verse
I am a massive sports fan, and my brother loves the premier league. Every weekend we watch Spurs (often losing recently) together, but he lives in Sydney, we sync everything up but there always seems to be a problem, it works but it’s not great.
Via the metaverse, we will be able to sit together at White Hart Lane, in our replica kits singing with the crowd. OK, we won’t be able to eat one of the scary-looking hotdogs you get outside the ground but it will be pretty close to the real thing.
An area of sports that I feel could really blossom in the metaverse is e-sports. All around the world today we see thousands of fans going to live e-sports events.
But they are still pretty primitive, it’s quite cinematic in delivery, in that the crowd sits back and watches a large screen. In the metaverse, the fans will be able to sit inside the game’s environment and watch the brutality of battle up close. Think Roman Colosseum on steroids. Because the fans can seriously mod their Avatar.
Crowd participation will be an essential part of the experience, I might come as a 1-ton Polar Bear. So expect a massive industry around avatar modding to pop up here in Singapore (we have the skillset, let’s take advantage of this new exciting universe), both for esports and traditional sports watching in the metaverse.
Currency and NFTs and Meta
In this new world layered on top of our current physical world, how will we pay for everything?
Meta (then Facebook) launched the whitepaper for the Libra cryptocurrency (a stable coin) back in 2019. The project has since been renamed to Diem and is still in the proposed state, so we know a digital currency is very much in Zuckerburg’s vision.
And it makes total sense for a digital currency to be used in a digital universe, even if it’s not Diem. Since the official announcement of the metaverse we have seen certain coins explode in value (the little-known Decentraland coin increased 400% in value), but does this mean that it should be the coin of choice in the metaverse.
Definitely not, and not because of its limited real and digital world use cases, I think it could have its place there, but that’s all it will be, is a place amongst many coins. Crypto is so tribal, many inside the bubble (it’s still a bubble, as it has yet to really have an effect in the real world) support one coin blindly, following it till the end, unable to see the benefits of other coins. So if one certain coin is chosen, you may see a lot of people boycott the metaverse (as their preference was not/is not being used).
I think the way forward is not in choosing one coin but creating a super-smart wallet that acts as a universal converter. So goods may be given a metaverse cost, which you can pay for in any currency so long as it converts exactly to the metaverse price.
This could mean creating a smart real-time exchange wallet, for someone a lot smarter than me to create. But the opportunity to create something smart and universal is perfect here.
Conclusion
So there you have it, over the three articles we have looked at the metaverse and identified 10 areas that could be affected, each opens a consumer opportunity which a business here in Singapore can solve.
But these are only 10 we’ve written about today (the other 5 Meta Money Makers here)… The metaverse has the potential to affect every part of life, for example, there could be solutions for beauty where the consumer can try on a new lipstick to see its color (or maybe there’s a possibility of Avatar makeup).
What about education?
Look what Duolingo has done for language learning, take their ethos, and explode it on the metaverse… immersive entertaining one-on-one progressive learning.
Maybe medicine will change too, I am not thinking about having our Avatars looking sick if we’re not feeling great in the physical world, but we will be able to get one-on-one consultations even if we live (or are staying) in remote locations, or maybe you need to administer your diabetic needle, via AR younger patients will be able to correctly perform this task.
I could go on and on, the opportunities are endless. But it’s up to you out there in Singapore today, are you going to take advantage of this, or are you going to be another passenger in the next great technological leap forward?
