Why Gaming Co's are leaning hard into the Metaverse! 🎮👾📈
Part One is all about What We Know in our two-part trend report.
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ICYMI in the last 10 weeks we covered:
Since Facebook went Meta... Six other OGs made metaverse moves!
VCs coming in Hot, spending big on AR & VR startups! Into the Metaverse we Go!
OpenSea hits $25 Billion in GMV! Now Coinbase wants in on NFTs too!
When OG Consumer Brands start playing the NFT game too!
When Music Crashes the Metaverse Party!
It's 100% Crazy! But Virtual Real Estate is Here. To the Tune of $30 TRILLION!
Everyone's gunning for OpenSea, the $13.3B NFT Marketplace gorilla in the room!
Social Casino SMS Text Gaming is FIRE!
THIS WEEK’S DOPE NEW STARTUP IDEA COVERS:
* Avatars + Games + Metaverse 🔥
WHAT WE KNOW:
* The Market Indicators & Behavioral Consumer Trends we've identified.
>> [ Rec Room grabs another $145M in funding! ]
Social VR App ‘Rec Room’ Raises $145M Funding, Now Valued at $3.5B
- thanks scott!
The Seattle-based startup today announced it’s secured a new $145 million financing round, bringing the company’s total valuation to $3.5 billion.
First released on Steam in 2016 for both VR and flatscreen play, Rec Room has evolved a great deal over the years, taking it from social VR platform that focused solely on first-party content and minigames to something much more akin to Roblox, including a heavy focus on user-generated content—over 12 million user-generated rooms now, the company says.
Things like in-game objects and mini-games underpin Rec Room’s budding economy, which kicked off this year through a creator program. Through it, trusted creators can sell in-game creations for the game’s premium token currency, which can then be converted back to fiat cash.
>> [ Ready Player Me’s avatars are already used on 900+ platforms! ]
Ready Player Me, a metaverse avatar platform, raises $13M in funding
- thanks rachel!
Wolf3D today announced it’s closed a round of funding for its metaverse avatar platform, Ready Player Me. It raised $13 million, with the round being led by Taavet+Sten, a firm led by the co-founder of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, the co-founder of Teleport.
Ready Player Me’s goal is to offer users a customized avatar that will carry over across the entire metaverse. Players can build their avatar from pictures or from scratch, and then use them across 900+ apps and games. The company plans to use the funding to establish its place as “the default avatar system for the metaverse.”
>> [ virtual commerce spaces comes to gaming, arts, fashion, music, and more! ]
Space Metaverse raises $7M to build virtual worlds for arts and commerce
- thanks kyt!
Space Metaverse today announced it has raised $7 million in a funding round to develop its metaverse project that allows users to design and their own virtual commerce spaces for gaming, arts, fashion, music and more.
The funding round was supported by Coinfund, Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands, Digital Currency Group, HOF Capital and other investors.
Space provides tools for users to design their own virtual spaces – for example shops, galleries or music venues – where owners can display their own virtual goods for purchase. Everything is highly customizable and integrated, with point-of-sale tools provided by Stripe.
Users can join the spaces from a desktop app, web page or a VR headset, making Space’s metaverse extremely accessible. Users are also represented by avatars and the app provides spatial audio, meaning that people can see and hear each other while they’re browsing in the different shops and venues.
>> [ Mystic Moose snags $5M to build a gaming metaverse! ]
Mystic Moose Raises $5 Million To Build Blockchain Game Metaverse
- thanks charlie!
“We are building a platform, but not one like Roblox or others,” said founder and CEO Michael Levine. “Our plan is to have a suite of games based off of Planet Mojo, this new IP we are building. In our games you own your team, and customize them with skins, weapons and abilities and more. They are yours. It reminds me of when I played D&D as a kid, and you had a character that was yours, but you could bring that character to multiple dungeons and adventures. This is the 3D virtual version of that.”
Planet Mojo is a PvP cross-platform auto chess game – a tactical strategy game reinvented for blockchain. Playable in a web browser, the game will allow players to own their teams as NFTs and play-to-earn in ongoing tournaments. Featuring an original IP and characters, players will have the option to own their game assets as NFTs and use them across an upcoming suite of games set inside the Planet Mojo universe.
>> [ RAD pivots into NFTs for all things streaming entertainment! ]
Littlstar Is Now RAD With NFTs For Entertainment Industry
- thanks charlie!
Rad (formerly Littlstar) recently announced the launch of its non-fungible token (NFT) platform, Rad NFTv, for streaming video, creators, and entertainment-based NFTs. The platform allows creators in sports, music, film, television, and beyond to launch NFT projects, fund shows, and provide access to video content on devices like PlayStation and Google TV.
Additionally the company is building an IP collection of the most significant NFT native projects like FLUF World, Jenkins the Valet, Knights of Degen, and Claylings, developing content, merch, promotions, and characters as NFT-first.
Rad also recently signed a deal with Huawei to be pre-installed inside Huawei’s Video and TV portal on 200M devices in 65 countries and will relaunch on Oculus Quest in Q1 2022, in addition to its current PlayStation, Google TV, and iOS apps.
THE DOPE IDEA & THE BRAND EXECUTION:
* Taking the idea and amplifying that into tactical action.
See you next week for Part Two in our report.
We’ll discuss on how to position ourselves as a new player in the Avatars + Games + Metaverse 🔥 space — and get into the development of the Brand IP, securing a legit Domain Name, then making it Internet LIVE.