Despite nobody knowing what a metaverse will look like, what will be contained within it and perhaps most importantly, how this next generation of online interaction will be received, companies are charging head first into metaverse investments.
Case in point – local advertising agency M&C Saatchi Abel which has announced the purchase of virtual land in Africarare metaverse, Ubuntuland.
To be clear, M&C Saatchi Abel has purchased a spot on a database. The mention of setting up an office is something said in a press release even though there is no virtual office to speak of.
“The unique afro-themed metaverse establishes local representation in a growing global digital universe and will open our continent up to significant digital and economic growth opportunities for both talent, clients and industry colleagues to come together to solve business and even societal challenges with creativity,” says M&C Saatchi Abel founder and chief executive officer, Mike Abel.
Africarare is a marketplace peddling a few virtual services but with a focus on NFTs. It also has a metaverse called Ubuntuland but what that is aside from the descriptor “metaverse” isn’t clear.
“Build you own environment or application in Ubuntuland,” reads an overview of this metaverse.
“Land is divided up into tokenized plots of land, which can be purchased, rented out, and developed by players. In the future landholders can customise their territory to host shops, produce resources, house NPC’s, and develop their own games and applications! [sic] rented out, and developed by players,” the overview continues.
The catch here is that sales of this virtual land will only go on sale to the public from the second or third quarter of this year. The metaverse was developed by Mann Made and M&C Saatchi Abel worked with the firm to buy its virtual real-estate.
It’s all just very vague and the myriad grammatical errors and the odd inclusion of the statement “Feeding my monster 3rd floor of the Mila Gallery” doesn’t really give us confidence in putting our money here.
Okay so what does M&C Saatchi Abel plan to do in this metaverse?
“Investing in the first African metaverse allows M&C Saatchi Abel and its partners access to a global network through social technology designed to remove terrestrial borders and open up trade, collaboration and regional or global partnerships. Beyond just business opportunities and social interaction experiences, M&C Saatchi Abel Ubuntuland unlocks an accessible home for economic opportunities, decentralised access to global creativity and best practice, as well as skills and knowledge sharing,” reads a statement sent to Hypertext.
It’s all very vague and, we’re sure you’ll agree, much of what is described can be accomplished on the internet right now without further development.
We were sent a preview of Ubuntuland and our experience was awful. The website pushed our CPU usage to 100 percent and the graphics reminded us of games from the early days of the PlayStation.
If this demonstration of the metaverse is anything to go by, we have a long way to go before we’re all interacting in virtual reality for the most basic of tasks.
Perhaps then, companies should focus on creating the technology and infrastructure we need rather than trying to develop solutions and services for today’s internet on something we don’t even fully understand
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
