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'Metaverse? What Metaverse?'

A Diva-exclusive replay of James Whatley's presentation at BIMA Beyond: The Conference.

By James Whatley

6 Jul 2022 - 30 min read

On June 29th, our Chief Strategy Officer, James Whatley, was invited to speak at the BIMA Beyond Conference at Ministry of Sound, London. His talk, 'Metaverse? What Metaverse?' sparked huge interest (with one slide in-particular catching a fair amount of attention on LinkedIn) and so, with BIMA's permission, we asked James to recreate the presentation that we're hosting here today. James has also made his slides available on Google Slides with speaker notes enabled so if you don't want to watch the film, you can read along at home instead.

Metaverse? What Metaverse? Google Doc

The central premise is simple: the metaverse doesn't exist. The online virtual spaces that people are calling The Metaverse today are either dead and empty 3D spaces OR they're simply video games, where hundreds of millions of players are already gaming day in, day out. And if you're doing anything at all in these spaces, then you need a player first mentality. What does that mean? Well, that's why we describe ourselves as a gaming-native creative agency.

Watch James' talk and maybe let's have a chat.

Photo credit: Joy Olugboyega at Captured by Joy