FlickPlay's social metaverse app brings augmented reality to Santa Monica

2 years ago 453

App users cod coins that unlock integer collectibles and beforehand section events and shops.

A concern improvement non-profit successful Santa Monica is utilizing augmented world and an interactive representation to bring much radical to its downtown shops and events. The Downtown Santa Monica squad hired FlickPlay to make a customized mentation of the company's societal metaverse app.

SEE: What is the metaverse?

FlickPlay is an iOS app that displays an interactive representation of tokens scattered astir the Third Street Promenade and the surrounding neighborhood. The integer experiences successful downtown Santa Monica person a vacation theme. One coin unlocks a bosom made from Christmas lights. There's 1 with a sparkly histrion and different with a VW van and a "Merry Christmas" sign. There's euphony excessively truthful users tin person seasonally due songs to spell on with the videos.

In the Santa Monica map, players usage yellowish tokens to unlock experiences oregon bargain items from section retailers. Blue tokens unlock collectibles and uncommon greenish coins travel with a reward. Coins are stored connected a integer wallet wrong the app. The institution is readying a blockchain integration, which volition enactment ETH, Solana and Polygon wallets.

The "social metaverse" crippled feels similar Pokemon Go arsenic users navigate a representation of a existent metropolis to find virtual items. Users pat a coin to cod an item, which goes successful a library. The adjacent measurement is to spot the point successful your surroundings and past grounds a video with the item. The institution presently has an advent calendar run counting down the days until Christmas. The prize for December 22 was a unicorn lasting successful a solid ornament.

A communal acquaintance connected the Downtown Santa Monica squad and FlickPlay. The city's initiatives align with FlickPlay's imaginativeness of shifting the storyline of however radical interact with cities wrong the metaverse, CEO and laminitis Pierina Merino said.

"Our extremity is to marque FlickPlay's representation a go-to for visitors and locals to entree unsocial experiences, information, and perks portion rediscovering the metropolis done 1 singular metaverse experience," Merino said.

Previously, Merino developed a 3D printed merchandise enactment that was picked up by Nordstrom successful much than 30 stores. She said she learned from that acquisition that entrepreneurs often overrate the worth that radical enactment connected the exertion itself without reasoning astir the existent inferior and user value.

"I hardly speech astir AR exertion oregon representation infrastructure erstwhile I picture FlickPlay due to the fact that they are simply the tools that span a seamless user acquisition and not wherefore FlickPlay exists," she said.

The FlickPlay squad works with retailers and lawsuit organizers to physique consciousness and ft traffic, and it has noticed a inclination among returning users, Merino said.

"The longer users stay, the amended the videos become, and the much they make the benignant of societal collage they aspire to physique with their integer collectibles," she said.

The AR task is scheduled to past for a year. Merino said the extremity is to marque it much appealing for users to unlock and ain location-specific integer collectibles successful the area.

"FlickPlay's extremity is to go a one-stop store to observe metaverse events happening successful the city, alteration micro-economies to thrive, empower owners to 'rent their integer objects' to visitors for social flexing," she said.

Merino predicts that integer collectables specified arsenic non-fungible tokens volition grow beyond marketplaces successful 2022 and go taste objects alternatively of conscionable purchases.

"In 2021 successful the acquisition of integer objects, astir collectible owners interact with their integer assets successful marketplaces, wherever the attraction goes to the prices, bids, and transactions alternatively of societal flexing," she said.

She sees FlickPlay arsenic a span betwixt this existent astir communal acquisition with integer collectibles and the adjacent signifier of the sector.

"Flexing is 1 of the astir primitive ways of gathering the societal graph and worth of the things we ain physically and our wide societal status," she said.

FlickPlay is based successful Santa Monica and has 20 employees. Merino raised $5 cardinal successful effect backing this year.

Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. is simply a non-profit enactment that works with the City of Santa Monica to beforehand economical stability, maturation and assemblage beingness wrong the neighborhood.

Mackenzie Carter, manager of selling and connection for Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., said the metropolis is delighted to beryllium moving with a cutting borderline section institution to bring vicinity to beingness successful the metaverse.