American fast food chain McDonald’s has introduced the “My Happy Place” metaverse in Singapore for residents to build virtual burgers andplay various games.
McDonald’s Singapore collaborated with Bandwagon Labs, the metaverse division of entertainment media technology company Bandwagon, to develop an in-app virtual world for its consumers.
Clarence Chan, the founder of Bandwagon Labs, emphasized three critical components of McDonald’s metaverse construction process during an interview:
“It’s multiplayer where players can see others in the world with them. The metaverse is a creative canvas where we let users flex their creativity. And thirdly, it’s packed with daily rewards with different challenges that trigger a reward mechanism.”
Moreover, Web3 technologies are implemented to enhance the security, functionality, and use cases of digital collectible preservation. “We facilitate the secure authentication of your identity and the participation in token-gated activities within the metaverse by incorporating wallet hosting services such as MetaMask,” Chan clarified.
McDonald’s has complete control over its in-app metaverse, as declared in the announcement. The initiative will be operational for a month, from June 6 to July 7, and its success will determine the continuation of the services or future deployments.
Chan married in the metaverse and endorsed the technology’s potential for fan engagement and customer retention. Conversely, he asserted that third-party hosting harms the current metaverse experiences.
“Adding to that, the lack of tangible rewards for people who utilize metaverse sometimes can discourage a large chunk of the audience.”
Metaverse for Audience Engagement
Chan thinks that Bandwagon Labs resolved these issues for McDonald’s. He concluded, “In addition to the opportunity to interact and play with their friends, users can also earn tangible rewards, such as fries, by participating on our platform.”
Magic Leap has recently disclosed “a multifaceted, strategic technology partnership” with Google to create new extended reality technologies.
According to a statement from Magic Leap CTO Julie Larson-Green, the partnership will underscore Magic Leap’s advancements in optics and Google’s infrastructure.
“This partnership accelerates the transformative power of AR by combining our extensive optics capabilities with Google’s technologies to continue to advance immersive experiences to the developer ecosystem and for customers. We are looking forward to expanding the potential of XR – blending the physical world with valuable, contextually relevant solutions.”
The press release should have provided information regarding actual products or potential services.
