How ViRSE is Building a Universal Lobby to Promote Brands & Studios | PGC Digital #1

all right ladies and gentlemen uh i'm assuming i'm screaming oh okay i'm scream sharing okay that's perfect um i need to get a little i this this um presentation was sort of put together um last minute in a way but um we really wanted to uh leverage what um the pocket gamer team have curated here and the idea is that with a with such an audience uh primarily in the industry um a consumer-facing talk really wouldn't be of that much um you know value here there's a unique audience that this conference brings of industry professionals and talent uh and so really this is an opportunity for us for the first time to share a little bit of a behind the

scenes uh of our alpha almost beta product before we come to um to launch now one of the things i just want to give you a little bit of history on uh is that our background has become you know from our and our entry into gaming actually came from our experience with the hardware business and some time ago some years ago uh our our company was uh or the predecessor to this company was um the marketer of some unique hardware that was um that enabled 3d viewing and actually i have a sample right here this was it actually right here and i'm just showing it on my little screen you can't really see uh but this is actually called the uh this was called the uh the flight deck tablet and

the tablet does what's unique about the tablet and this was actually marketed in the starting about fourth 2014 is it allowed users to create uh or to consume 3d content stereoscopic 3d content and the following panel actually seth crofton is uh moderating and i recognize that he was a friend of ours he's very familiar with our history in that sense and actually came to us because of it because of it at that time but our experience in 3d technology has uh sort of uh put us into the content creation business because we um developed we we saw the need for um for content for this dev for these devices and to make a long story short we've now created a platform that allows users to um collaborate and create and

and essentially utilize not only our technology but any um platform to um to uh to essentially um collaborate and and um and connect so essentially what we have here and i'm just gonna the one the last site i wanted to bring up the last slide i wanted to bring up was um our actual our actual um um website which is verse.com so um to find out more information and to to download uh and to get in touch with us the best way is to go to this link right here go to verse.com v-i-r-s-e short for the virtual universe and down here it says request download so um if you request download it'll automatically email our info adverse email box and we'll send you a link and right now it's available in android

um and you can actually try out what i'm about to show you today um so essentially our our product actually started and and this uh um and what you're seeing here on the screen are some of the hardware devices that we're actually marketing and what's unique about these devices is that using the stereoscopic 3d technology that's in the hardware it allows a user to um experience the the game or the content in stereoscopic 3d if it is so uh created so what that means for for our platform and that and why we we made that link is because what we have done is we have used gaming technologies uh and primarily our platform is written

in unity which um all of you are familiar with the unity i'm sure uh game development platform and uh no harm no foul to our great sponsors unreal uh who have um a fantastic product as well and one that we are very um uh we're big fans of however we started it started with unity and i do have actually my cto uh who was supposed to host this conference or this this speech or talk but and by the way i'm neil i'm one of the co-founders of verse uh i'm a non-executive co-founder and so i uh i'm i was uh able and also my camera worked so that's why we basically set me up on the uh on the screen versus guy uh but what we what um we've built our product in unity and what we have allowed um um

what we've let let me just double check my chat and see if anybody thanks dave okay all right okay awesome excellent uh let me remove that that chat window uh so yeah so this is verse.com this is the site that we um recommend that you uh visit for um for to get in touch with us so what we have basically done and uh we've created we have our our own verse devices we've created right now an android platform product and the uh and i'm going to give you a little bit of a screen share and what and why we are uh our little videos of the um of clips of the site rather than go into the actual game and share in-game footage directly i thought this might be a little bit easier we thought this might be a little bit easier because it's primarily on mobile and why we actually on this particular track big screen during gaming

is because we have um begun the process of making this cross-platform so what you're seeing on mobile right now i'm showing you the mobile interface uh this will also be um uh functional on pc uh that's our our next um um sort of build uh we are also uh and also mac um ios so big screen gaming is sort of a spot for this but what i wanted to share in sort of a history wise is where verse came from as an idea was um was actually a tool to use gaming technologies to help with design so i have an example here i'm missing one of the videos which is

what i wanted to start with we'll try we'll start with this one what we've done is we've essentially created so so as as many of you know um you know um the you know if you're familiar with games we take it for granted in the gaming industry uh that you know we can move things around and it's not that fantastic to us to see some of the demos that you're seeing here but to the average user that's using like using this um that can use our technology for uh e-commerce this can actually be very very useful so what we've actually done to demo this and how to start how to launch this off is we have created a platform that allows users to configure that configure a space and this is a starting point and we call this space their station so let me just play this clip here i think this one is the one that actually shows how it goes it allows users to use a gaming created interface

to shop essentially and simulate how these different items might actually look in the space that they are configuring so i'm going to replay this video just in case people didn't catch it and now now i hope you guys can all see this what we've done is we've created a situation where this is a real life uh environment that's been recreated in verse which is our technology and what we allow users to do is to essentially acquire that space or recreate a space this is a real life use case and configure it using branded objects which is part of the reason that we kind of moved into the um into the into the following panel as well about incorporating brands and ip because what we've done is we've allowed as you can see here this this environment allows users to choose

branded items and configure them so if this was your if this is your flat in uh london and this would be a very nice flat by the way because it's a two-story loft but this is actually a real life uh apartment in los angeles that has been um that has been um sort of recreated um to allow us to demo this for you so this this is how the idea started is basically we started as a as a utility allowing users to be able to configure their um their use cases and all these items for example are branded now so we titled this um this talk invitation to collaborate and there are a couple of different important you know there's appeals that we are making as a as a company if you will or initiatives that we're taking right now and of course uh you know

this system that we've created first and foremost when creating these um these user configurable scenes does require 3d objects of the items that we are actually um selling now i'm going to just pop you over this might be how i lost you guys the first time but i don't think i did i still have you sharing i'm going to pop you over to the website version of this so you're seeing what you saw was inside the app and um i'm just going to pop you over to the to the website that's under development that hasn't been pushed live um why is that working

and now we are actually in the um we are in um the development i told you this was in alpha or beta we haven't pushed this this live we've only got the page but what i wanted to show you in here is what we call versions and what we versions are versus 3d objects or 3d models and these are really real-life goods that we have a workflow or a process for turning into digital goods so these are all products that are readily that are available now these are samples just so you know but this is how this would work we would have a real life item right here through the web that you could see obviously the web has the actual real life good and these objects can then be recreated and made available in our um in our simulation

and so uh here's another um clip i've started lost i've sort of lost track of which clip is which but so the outgrowth of this just so you know is um is that once a user creates their space they can actually shop online and and buy with confidence and actually the next thing is once you've created your space um the the natural inclination is to share that with others and get feedback and i've put these clips sort of out of order so i don't know if this is uh this is it but this this is the one that um i wanted to show but if you see here we've now gone out of the apartment into what we call our village and these villages essentially allow users to um collaborate and essentially turn create avatar you know it's

express themselves as avatars of themselves um here's another little clip of how our physics works using uh unity and how someone can actually do a um design in the um in the virtual universe so here's an example of a book and this took a little bit of doing um and um so when someone can lay out their their their their um design and lay out where they want to put objects right on on the um on you know on in the virtual world now um one of the so one of the outreaches that we have and one of the invitations to collaborate is definitely for 3d modeling assets so for companies that have the rights and studios and game developers and artists that have the rights or have the talent

to create digital assets we have sort of a um a style guide and we invite um other collaborators to share uh to either create items that we that brands want or we that are that are needed to be created or to share assets that they may have already existing and access to in um their current projects that they want to make available through our platform as well and there is obviously a revenue share that would be involved with that where we make it worth their while to obviously participate um here is an example of our village this is outside of the apartment so once somebody actually has configured their space you can think where they can go from inside outside this apartment was actually uh turned we took

the same loft and we turned this in to a commercial studio called an art gallery now those pieces those art pieces on the wall are actual real life uh fine arts that were created they're exclusive and they are available for sale as well so that they can be put onto the um um they can be put so brands can actually partner with us so that's the second invitation to collaborate first invitation to collaborate is for modelers and artists and asset owners the second invitation to collaborate are with actual brands that want to use this platform to be able to allow users to digitally interact with their products now this is incredibly timely because in a world like the one we have right now that we're living in retail has been

absolutely decimated and um physical retail um and this is a way for um and using this technology and gaming technology we're allowing or we're we're evangelizing the ability for brands to do what we as gamers and game developers have been doing for years now which is shop virtually um you know the same way that you go into a game and you buy a sword or a uh you know upgraded with these in-game purchases take that vision and apply it or that experience and apply it to non-gamers and to brands in the sense that um this is not a game where you're getting shot at or this particular environment is not one where you this is very casual you're not racing around and trying to get avoided

but you're we're using as you can see the thumb sticks uh we're using the um you know the uh ability to uh use to make in-game purchases to recreate that type of experience now the next thing that naturally progressed so this actually really progressed from the idea of being able to configure a a use case uh which is the um you know which is to to shop and and be confident with shopping for an apartment and what we've done is we the next step is we've actually involved additional um you can invite your friends to come and view and give you feedback so in this particular environment example these are other friends of mine that's neil right there and actually um uh we've been enabled uh live chat and you can actually bring people uh your friends

into your creation and get feedback on that and say they could say hey well we don't necessarily like this one or this is fantastic this is awesome and um that's an important factor when um making these buying decisions when people shop they want positive reinforcements to be able to know that they've made the right decisions now as you can see we are very what we've what we are our goal is is to create a prototype or an alpha or to finish the alpha which allows people to um to see all the functionality that we want to um to offer to a certain degree and um let me just see it looks like somebody was trying to chat maybe you guys are fine um and what that allows people to do is now the next the the real work

the real business is once we have this prototypical uh the prototype working which we essentially do on fully on mobile on android um is to go out to the the the market and the business is really to on board more options and more inventory as we showed you in the first uh video and so uh so here's an example of what you can do about something you can do in your to customize and individualize your space you can actually um add a youtube video and right now we support you to youtube but ultimately we want to add additional uh platforms as well so that you can actually add content and customize your space and um turn it into something that's personal for you essentially it's a the

3d equivalent of a facebook page so to speak it's a social media presence that you can actually um use so the third collaboration so the first is modelers the second is uh brands uh the third and actually i guess the third is really could be the same group as the first which is um which are game which are um game developers which allow because because from this platform and why we call this the universal lobby is because we're not necessarily trying to be an rpg like a shooter a first person shooter type game uh ourselves although we use this first person shooter type technology and there's more more features a lot more functionality that we'd love to show people on a one on one basis but that gives you the gist of it what we view our um

our product as is really a um a lobby because from this environment there are lots of opportunities to engage with users and this is an opportunity for us to collaborate with other games that essentially would become sort of uh advertised and promoted within verse so that that gives that helps us and that helps developers because it gives users more activities that they can do and potentially do together like quest like you know essentially you know we can do quests and things like that uh one of the best ways for us to start would be to actually outright acquire ready-made game content that can be unity and android

which would be an easy fit and then basically allow that as a test for people to for our users to move into and um [Music] so we are also looking for to and that's part of the reason that we've been at previous pocket gamers in the past and i want to be actually watching the indie pitch later that's going on um it allows us to collaborate with um with um users to and developers to to work so that's pretty much a summary of what we've done in the three collaborations that we'd like to make with 3d artists and asset owners with brands that want to use our technology to demonstrate their products in these simulations for for greater use and thirdly with other game developers that want to link up with our platform as a universal lobby so uh it was there's more to the story but um i'm gonna let um maybe we've got

a couple of questions yeah we i think you've got some questions so we're running yeah we are running a little short time we maybe got one or two um one or two minutes left i should say that if people do want to connect with you neil um uh or perhaps guy the best thing to do maybe is to seek you out in the meeting system of we have a um of verse staff that have signed up um i don't know how else uh we have our uh so i don't know how to they should be on there as well anybody with a verse email or but yeah if you um yeah but if somebody wants to follow up they can just hit us at infoverse.com and then what i'll do is we can we can coordinate with them and try and meet up on your reading system by the way fantastic job i love how you guys have leveraged this zoom system too um it's worked slightly better for the uh for the these webinars that it has for the the meeting system we've had a few glitches but we're we're getting there and uh it's it's fun i didn't want to i didn't really want to what's the word promote this aspect of

it since but but um i would really like to see [Music] how our technology in a future sort of experiment could could work with what we what pocket gamer is doing as well right well yeah you know i think i think you're right i think certainly the current uh coronavirus global situations made virtual spaces more relevant than ever right so i think any uh technology but you'll have to just have me just there neil thank you very much