The Metaverse: a comprehensive guide to building virtual environments

Have you ever wondered how the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds could be blurred, creating an interconnected and immersive experience? Welcome to the fascinating concept of the metaverse. How do we build this groundbreaking virtual world, and what role do Digital Twins and content creation play in shaping our digital future? Let’s embark on a captivating journey to explore these critical components and unlock the limitless possibilities of the metaverse.

Main pillars of the metaverse

The fascinating and complex endeavor called “metaverse” consists of three distinct parts: the physical world, Digital Twins, and the metaverse itself.

In general, the first step in building the metaverse is to create high-fidelity Digital Twins. These large-scale digital models and entities mirror their physical counterparts, reflecting various properties such as object motions, and functionality. This connection between the virtual and physical twins is anchored by the flow of data, allowing seamless interaction and communication between the two realms.

In the end, the goal is to create a metaverse that emerges as a self-sustaining, persistent virtual world that co-exists and interoperates with the physical world with a high degree of independence. This means that avatars, or users in the physical world, can engage in diverse, real-time activities with the corresponding virtual world, fostering a sense of connection and shared experience.

Our vision of the future: Technology and ecosystem

What is needed to fulfill the vision of a self-sustaining metaverse? What technologies and ecosystems must be created? What do we need to create an experience duality? To answer these questions, we split the future of the metaverse into different innovations affecting the ecosystem and the technology separately.

The vision of technology for the metaverse

The vision for the metaverse revolves around integrating cutting-edge technology to create an immersive and interactive virtual environment. To achieve this, human users can access the metaverse through virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or extended reality (XR). At the core of this vision, technologies like computer vision (CV), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) work in synergy with users, facilitating a wide range of activities within the metaverse through user interactivity and XR.

Edge computing plays a crucial role in enhancing the metaverse experience by improving the performance of delay-sensitive and bandwidth-hungry applications. It does so by managing adjacent data sources and pre-processing data available in edge devices. By leveraging both cloud-based and edge-based services, we can achieve a synergistic effect that maximizes application performance and ultimately enriches user experiences within the metaverse.

The vision of the metaverse ecosystem

The vision for the metaverse ecosystem encompasses a self-sufficient and expansive virtual world that mirrors the real one. Through XR and user interactivity techniques, human users can control their avatars to participate in various collective activities, such as content creation, while remaining in the physical world.

A virtual economy emerges naturally from content creation activities within the metaverse. To ensure its sustainability and growth, we must consider three key areas: social acceptability, security & privacy, and trust & accountability.

Much like in the real world, content creation and the virtual economy should adhere to social norms and regulations. For example, productions within the virtual economy must be protected by ownership rights and accepted by other avatars (i.e., human users) in the metaverse. This alignment with societal expectations fosters a stable and thriving virtual environment.

At neosfer, we are dedicated to establishing a robust and immersive presence in the metaverse. This will provide an engaging and interactive experience for our users. By creating a 3D representation of our website, we bring our brand to life, offering users a tangible and immersive experience. The central hub of our property in Decentraland is the neosfer Lounge – an interactive 3D representation of the neosfer teams: invest, build, and connect. It is located at coordinate -122, 26 on the metaverse platform Decentraland. Visitors can interact with avatars within the lounge and get to know our company through interactive elements such as podcasts, videos, or blog posts.

We are actively exploring and implementing innovative use cases related to NFTs and POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocols), digital identity, and offering learning formats through live events in the metaverse. Our commitment to networking and collaboration extends to partnering with other companies in the space. This includes purchasing a WWF NFT, showcasing them in our lounge and engaging with the Web3 community.

As a thought leader within the financial service industry industry and beyond, we share our expertise and insights through keynotes and demos in various departments of Commerzbank. We also demonstrate our expertise externally by participating in conferences, recording dedicated podcasts, and publishing blog articles. Our goal is to build a thriving ecosystem that fosters co-creation. Following an open innovation approach, we want to enable companies to develop new use cases in the metaverse and Web 3 space, driving innovation together. For this to happen, we support companies from all industries in taking their first steps in the metaverse, sharing know-how and best practices. The central element of the partnership is the development of use cases, which we build and optimize together.

If your company has a metaverse/ web 3 use case in mind or is interested in cooperating with leading players stepping foot in this new space, do not hesitate to drop an email at build@neosfer.de. Further information about our cooperation model can be found under the following link https://storage.googleapis.com/neosfer_media/Metaverse_O%CC%88kosystem_One%20Pager.pdf

How do you take advantage of this future and move parts of your business into the metaverse? You do not need to do the research (completely) on your own, we are providing you with a step-by-step guide on how to get started in the metaverse!

Do your research

Entering the metaverse can be an exciting and a transformative journey for companies. The first crucial step in this process is conducting thorough research to familiarize yourself with the concept and to determine the most suitable approach for your business. Value creation should be a critical analysis aspect in your research. As we highlighted these topics in our last article about the metaverse, companies should focus on creating value for the user when entering the metaverse. So, here’s a breakdown of the research process:

1. Define the metaverse for your company: Start by understanding how the metaverse aligns with your company’s goals and vision. Determine the specific aspects of the metaverse that are relevant to your business and how they can enhance your operations, offerings, or customer experience.

2. Explore available metaverse platforms: Investigate various metaverse platforms and their specific applications to identify the best fit for your company. Consider their features, user base, and compatibility with your business objectives.

3. Study industry trends: Examine how companies in other industries are leveraging the metaverse and identify successful strategies or use cases that may be relevant to your business.

4. Analyze competitors within your industry: Assess how companies in your industry are utilizing the metaverse and determine potential gaps or opportunities that your company can capitalize on.

5. Identify suitable use cases for your company: Based on your research, brainstorm potential use cases that could drive value for your business within the metaverse.

6. Establish criteria for use case prioritization: Develop a set of criteria to evaluate and prioritize the identified use cases. These criteria may include feasibility, scalability, return on investment, or alignment with your company’s strategic objectives.

7. Analyze, rank, and pipeline use cases based on selected criteria: Evaluate each use case against your established criteria and rank them accordingly. Create a pipeline of use cases that are most likely to generate value for your business within the metaverse.

By completing this research process, you will have a solid foundation for entering the metaverse and a clear understanding of how your company can leverage this virtual environment to drive value and growth.

Create your scope and define a strategy

After completing the research process, the next step in entering the metaverse is defining the scope and strategy for your company’s involvement. This will involve building a use case pipeline and planning the necessary resources to ensure a successful implementation.

1. Refine your use case pipeline: Based on the prioritized use cases from your research, refine your pipeline to include only the most viable and valuable opportunities. Ensure that each use case aligns with your company’s strategic objectives.

2. Set clear goals and objectives: For each use case in your pipeline, establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and objectives. This will provide a clear direction for your metaverse initiatives and help you measure progress and success.

3. Develop a phased implementation plan: Create a detailed plan for implementing each use case in your pipeline, outlining the necessary steps and milestones. Consider implementing your use cases in small steps, starting with low-hanging fruit and gradually moving to more complex initiatives as your company becomes more familiar with the metaverse environment.

4. Allocate resources: Assess the resources required for each use case, including human capital, technology, and financial investments. Determine whether you need to hire new talent, train existing employees, or collaborate with external partners to acquire the necessary skills and expertise.

5. Establish a budget: Develop a comprehensive budget for your metaverse initiatives, accounting for all costs associated with implementation, maintenance, and ongoing support. Ensure that your budget aligns with your company’s financial constraints and expectations for return on investment.

Select your metaverse

Selecting the right metaverse platform is essential for your company’s success in the virtual world. The baseline decision you need to make is if you want to build your own metaverse, or if you will join an existing platform. In our case, we chose an existing platform in Decentraland, as it was a smoother way into gaining experience. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you make an informed decision if you follow our baseline choice of joining a platform rather than creating a metaverse yourself:

1. Review your use case pipeline: Revisit your prioritized use cases to determine the specific features, capabilities, and functionalities your chosen metaverse platform must support.

2. List platform requirements: Based on your use cases, create a list of platform requirements, including technical specifications, user base, content creation tools, virtual asset ownership, and monetization options.

3. Compare available platforms: Conduct thorough research on the available metaverse platforms, such as Decentraland, The Sandbox, Roblox, MetaHero, and Bloktopia. Collect information on each platform’s features, user base, development community, and overall reputation.

4. Evaluate platform compatibility: Compare the platforms against your list of requirements, and evaluate their compatibility with your company’s use cases, goals, and objectives. Select a platform that can grow with your company and accommodate potential changes in your metaverse strategy. Consider factors such as ease of integration, platform updates, and the ability to support additional use cases in the future.

By following these steps, you can confidently choose the right metaverse platform for your company, setting the stage for a successful entry into the virtual world. Based on step three, we have created a short overview of the mentioned metaverse platforms.

Please remember that the information provided above is subject to change as these platforms evolve and develop over time.

Get up-to-date on cryptocurrencies

Once you’ve chosen a metaverse platform, the next step is to familiarize yourself with the cryptocurrency used within that platform. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting up-to-date on crypto:

1. Understand the platform’s native currency: Get to know the native currency used in your selected metaverse platform. Understand its purpose, utility, and role within the platform’s ecosystem. This could include purchasing virtual assets, paying for services, or facilitating transactions between users.

2. Pick a suitable wallet: Select a digital wallet that supports the platform’s native currency. Consider factors such as security, ease of use, and compatibility with your devices. There are different wallet providers to decide from and decide if you want to use a “hot wallet” or a “cold wallet” or both:

• • Hot wallet storage: “hot wallets” refer to crypto storage that uses online software to protect the private keys to your assets.
  • Cold wallet storage: Unlike hot wallets, ”cold wallets” (also known as hardware wallets) rely on offline electronic devices to securely store your private keys.

3. Identify the best exchange: Find a reputable cryptocurrency exchange that offers the native currency of the metaverse you have chosen. Compare factors such as trading fees, liquidity, security measures and customer support and availability to open a company account. Look for an exchange that has a user-friendly interface, a strong reputation, and reliable customer support. Depending on the platform’s requirements, you may need to buy the native currency directly or acquire a more widely accepted cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin or Ethereum) that can be exchanged for the platform’s native currency. Assess the current market conditions, historical price trends, and future growth potential of the cryptocurrencies you’re considering to decide the best moment for purchasing.

4. Purchase cryptocurrency: Fund your account using a suitable payment method. Place an order to buy the desired amount of the cryptocurrency you’ve selected, either at the current market price or through a limit order at a specific price point. When you buy crypto, there are gas fees that are due both when you pay for a property in the metaverse and when you make a transaction. Regardless of which currency is chosen for the metaverse, the gas fees can be paid in another currency. In the case of Decentraland, the native currency is Mana, but gas fees are paid in Ether.

5. Transfer funds to your wallet: Once your order is complete, transfer your purchased cryptocurrency to your wallet for safekeeping. Ensure that you’re using the correct wallet address and double-check the transaction details before confirming.

There are also different ways to hold and purchase crypto at later stages. These include payment services like PayPal, Cash App, and Venmo. In addition, there are the following investment vehicles:

• • Bitcoin trusts: You can buy shares of Bitcoin trusts with a regular brokerage account. These vehicles give retail investors exposure to crypto through the stock market.
  • Bitcoin mutual funds: There are Bitcoin ETFs and Bitcoin mutual funds to pick from.
  • Blockchain stocks or ETFs: You can also indirectly invest in crypto through blockchain companies that specialize in the technology behind crypto and crypto transactions. Alternatively, you can buy stocks or ETFs of companies that use blockchain technology.

Create the metaverse architecture

Creating an exceptional UX/UI architecture is crucial for your company entering the metaverse, as it directly impacts user engagement, satisfaction, and retention. A well-designed UX/UI ensures that users can navigate and interact with the virtual environment seamlessly, leading to a more intuitive and enjoyable experience. By prioritizing user-centric design and incorporating clear visual cues, companies can reduce the learning curve for users and foster a sense of familiarity within the metaverse platform and your offering. A pre-existing metaverse platform like Decentraland already provides the foundation, but your job is to create an exceptional experience for your visitors. How do you do this? Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating the metaverse architecture:

1. Define user personas and journeys: Begin by identifying the various user personas that will interact with your metaverse. Outline their goals, motivations, and pain points. Map out their user journeys, detailing the steps they will take to accomplish their objectives within the virtual environment. You have multiple tools to start your process here. Typically, you kick it off with more qualitative research.

Focusing on interviews to collect the first data, followed up by segmentation of the information based on goal, attributes, and behavior.

However, there is also a more quantitative approach, which requires the use of algorithms and previous qualitative research. This way, you already come up with a user segmentation that now will be your hypothesis. Using the previous example, you guess that your customers’ favorite platforms are Decentraland, the Sandbox, and Meta. This way the sample is bigger, and your results will be more accurate.

Oftentimes, the process is more qualitative. Based on the data about your customers and visitors from your current online presence, you will define customer persona and try to address their needs in the metaverse.

Once you have all the responses, you use a statistical algorithm, such as the clustering algorithm, to guide you to a segmentation model. The algorithm combines data from both the online and offline worlds.

2. Establish UX/UI goals: Set clear UX/UI goals that align with your company’s objectives and user expectations. These may include ease of navigation, immersive experiences, realistic interactions, and seamless integration between the metaverse and the physical world.

Participant Experience (PX) plays a critical role in the metaverse. Unlike traditional UI/UX, which focuses on user interfaces and interactions, PX goes beyond these aspects to create a holistic, immersive, and engaging experience for users within the virtual environment.

The importance of PX in the metaverse lies in its ability to transform how users interact with digital spaces, making it crucial for companies and developers to consider various elements that contribute to a positive and immersive PX. The most important elements of a great PX are the following:

1. Functional objects: These objects, such as sofas, chairs, and lamps, serve practical purposes within the virtual environment, ensuring that users feel comfortable and find the space usable.

2. Navigation: Providing seamless navigation options, such as stairs, teleporters, and elevators, allows users to explore the metaverse easily and efficiently, further enhancing their overall experience.

3. Interaction: Incorporating playful elements encourages users to interact with their surroundings and other users, fostering a sense of community and engagement within the metaverse.

4. Immersion: Using features like audio, visual effects, and realistic physics helps create a more immersive environment that captivates users and encourages them to spend more time in the metaverse.

5. Collectibles: Offering collectible items allows users to take and collect objects, fostering a sense of accomplishment and ownership within the metaverse.

By focusing on these elements and prioritizing PX in the design and development of metaverse environments, you can create a more engaging and immersive experience for users, leading to increased user retention, loyalty, and overall satisfaction.

3. Design user interfaces: Create intuitive user interfaces that address the needs of your target audience. Consider factors such as accessibility, responsiveness, and consistency across devices. Incorporate platform-specific guidelines and best practices to ensure a smooth user experience. However, there are a couple of key elements that need to be considered no matter what. Instead of pages we are dealing with stages when designing in the metaverse, and that means that your interface is not in front of the user, but the user is inside your solution. Less of a static designer is required here onwards, and more of an architect is expected.

As you want users to be comfortable and trust your metaverse experience, taking into consideration real-world physics is essential. As the stages are designed to resemble physical spaces with socially agreed conducts, materials must perform a similar role to those in the real world. This accounts to say that stability, gravity, collision, occlusion, and reflection, besides other worldly phenomena, must be carefully considered in the overall experience. The perfect interaction with elements within your metaverse experience depends on the manifestation of expected physical behavior.

4. Develop interactive elements: Design interactive elements, such as avatars, virtual objects, and environments, that enable users to engage with the metaverse in a meaningful way. Prioritize realism and responsiveness to create immersive experiences that closely mimic the physical world. The metaverse being a completely virtual world, UX designers will have to move from 2D sketching tools such as Figma and Sketch to 3D modeling tools such as Gravity Sketch and Tvori. These will help with 3D designing, prototyping, and modeling, as will be necessary when creating design elements for the Metaverse.

5. Plan for scalability and extensibility: Design your metaverse architecture with scalability and extensibility in mind. This will allow you to accommodate future growth, additional use cases, and new technological advancements without significant rework.

Customers and clients who enter the metaverse universe want to experience things and not just see them. Make your metaverse business an experience for your users. Identify the feeling your target audience is seeking when they enter the space. Based on that feeling, you can offer a great experience to users. This will also make them come back to your business quicker. And if users come back, they’ll spend more time and money. Moreover, a great user experience increases customer retention, and you should actually strive for.

Gain traction on traditional marketing channels

You are now set up to communicate your metaverse experience to the outside world. Promoting your metaverse presence and offerings through traditional marketing channels is essential to attract users and raise awareness about your virtual experiences. Although the metaverse is a digital environment, leveraging familiar marketing methods can help you reach a wider audience and create a buzz around your virtual world.

1. Event marketing: Participate in industry conferences, webinars, and networking events to present your metaverse experiences. Use these opportunities to engage with potential users, demonstrate your product, and establish your company as a thought leader in the metaverse space.

2. Advertising: Utilizing digital advertisement to generate awareness about your metaverse presence is a strong tool to use. Target your ads to your specific audience segments and ensure your messaging resonates with their interests and preferences. Especially with modern targeting and tracking tools, digital advertising can help in tracking success and user adoption of your metaverse offering.

3. Partnerships and collaborations: Collaborate with industry partners and complementary businesses to co-create metaverse experiences or promote each other’s offerings. Such partnerships can help you tap into new user segments and expand your reach.

4. Content marketing: Develop engaging content, such as blog posts, whitepapers, and case studies, that highlight your metaverse offerings and demonstrate the value they bring to users. Share this content across your website, social media channels, and email marketing campaigns. This will not only keep your current target audience engaged, but allows you to attract new visitors interested in the topic of the metaverse.

Engage with users in the metaverse

Engaging with users in the metaverse is important for creating an immersive environment. Use interactive experiences, customizable avatars, social interactions, educational content, feedback and support, as-well as regular updates to connect with your audience. Design engaging virtual experiences with innovative elements like puzzles and rewards. Allow users to personalize their avatars and create spaces for social interactions. By focusing on user engagement, you can create a vibrant metaverse environment that keeps users coming back. We just want to bring you some ideas for keeping the metaverse engaging:

1. Educational content: Offer informative and educational content, such as tutorials, workshops, and seminars, to help users learn more about the metaverse and its features. This empowers users to explore and engage with your virtual environment more confidently. Content is not only important in engaging your target audience in your Web 2.0 environment, but even more important when your audience arrives in the metaverse.

2. Social interactions: Create spaces within the metaverse for users to interact with one another, such as virtual chat rooms, meeting areas, and collaborative workspaces. Encourage users to form communities, share ideas, and build relationships.

3. Regular updates and enhancements: Keep your metaverse offerings fresh and exciting by regularly updating content and introducing new features. This encourages users to return frequently and maintain their engagement.

In this article, we have explored the concept of the metaverse and its significance for companies, focusing on creating a strong presence, understanding the technological vision, and establishing a thriving ecosystem.

If you are looking to enter the metaverse, you must begin with thorough research, identifying suitable use cases and defining their target audience. Next, you develop a scope and strategy, building a use case pipeline and allocating necessary resources.

When selecting a metaverse platform, you need to evaluate the options based on various factors such as functionality, audience, and potential for growth. Familiarizing yourself with the native cryptocurrency and understanding the importance of the PX is crucial for success in the metaverse. PX emphasizes the creation of a holistic, immersive, and engaging experience for users, focusing on elements such as functional objects, navigation, interaction, immersion, and collectibles.

By focusing on these elements and creating an immersive and engaging metaverse environment, you can drive user satisfaction and achieve long-term success in this rapidly evolving digital landscape.