Am I a Tamagotchi (yet)?
Musings on Design at the dawn of the Metaverse.
I never had a Tamagotchi. When the toy fad of the 90’s reached my classmates, the 9-year-old me did not grasp why I would nurture a digital pet. Just to show to classmates? Yet here I find myself two decades later wondering: Were my classmates the early adopters of what’s to come? And more existentially: Am I a Tamagotchi myself (yet)?
Ownership in Cyberland
Many heard that recently the first ever Tweet was sold for $ 2,9 m, using NFT based ownership certificates. A month earlier, a designer sold a set of virtual chairs for $ 450k on an auction. Being a designer myself, I wonder if it is already time for me to create things to be owned or used digitally. Either by us here or by our future avatars in the Metaverse.
Metaverse? Yes, why not. It sounds far-out to some, but the future moves faster than we think. It might already be here. And if not, it’s always good to look a bit ahead anyways (sorry Eckhart).
Thinking about digital ownership takes me back to the Tamagotchi time. If I had raised the digital pet in Cyberland, what would it be worth now? I know some game characters sell for a couple thousand dollars, but I never owned any of those either. Do I have any other nurtured, curated, digital creations perhaps? Something old... unique... worthy of NFT exchange.. ?
Yes, you are thinking what I am thinking. Perhaps I-am-a-gotchi. I am the pet, the avatar of the extended realities. I could start grooming the digital me for online auction.
Can you show me your …?
The online auction of me is actually not so far-out. I basically auction of my traits every day just by browsing. In that way, Big Tech captured me long ago. And when I moved to Shanghai, I entered an even more developed data industry. Everything is used to capture the Tamagotchi-me. Even getting toilet paper in public restrooms. I mean... I really wonder how much of me I still own myself.
“Do I really need to show you my Tamagotchi just to make small talk?”
So if Tech owns me, can I buy myself back? And should I? It is probably often advantageous that they own a part of me. It makes many experiences smooth. On the larger scale though, it is bound to tap into our lazy, subconscious brains, creating these homogeneous agglomerations of traits. If that happens to apps, logo’s, articles and products… it happens to me too. And that of course reduces the potential (auction) value of a truly unique me.
But upon looking closer at the smaller scale, it does not seem to be increasing my inherent value there either. Let’s take YouTube as example.
Bad parenting
It takes me one click at a “How to fix your ….” video to turn my feed for eons into a DIY school. In theory, that could help to increase my value. I mean, acquiring all that knowledge and skill… But the problem is, I don’t need it and I don’t want it.
They could have asked me long ago: What do you actually want to see, beyond your brains’ lazy patterns? Shall we set some learning goals with video playlists? How do we make you relax best, and at what time of the day do you want that? Shall we create different versions of yourself to switch between, depending on your mood? (Or at least make work/personal tabs??)
Yet, the only thing they ask (daily) is if I want to become a Premium member. That’s the difference between nurturing a Tamagotchi and simply trying to feed it as much as you can. That’s not really nice.
Imagine how that translates into an extended reality. Will we always be surrounded by our most recent problems and purchases? For sure we’d be entertained for an evening, but anyone with an interest in designing their own environments, experiences and with it, themselves, can only pray for more tools to do so than clicks and likes.
Taking back control
But like sustainability, users increasingly expect control of the things they consume. I was surprised that it took so long for privacy labels to come into app stores. And luckily Apple rolled out more iOS features to get us back behind the wheel. Maybe we will even see data collection become taxable. All helpful, but all on symptoms level.
But a new paradigm is bound to come. Starting with bitcoin, the decentralized web is now through NFT’s creeping further into our lives. It promises us a place where people control who profits from their time and information. We might even profit from it ourselves. Add on that the layer of 5G enabled XR and soon we will find ourselves floating like special snowflakes through Cyberland. Carrying just our PODs, our AI assistants and whichever virtual chair we bought with us.
Now I for one am quite a slow digital adapter. And not a gamer at all. So why bother about this “metaverse” thing? Well, as creators we do have a responsibility to understand (potential) futures. On the one hand to grasp its challenges in the Socio-Cultural and Ecological space. On the other hand to understand the opportunities in the Innovation space. And in this case, I am curious if it will bump up the value of me, in the Tamagotchi space. Clearly, by gaining control over our digital selves, we gain control over our ‘real’ selves too. It sounds like it will allow us to shape desired identities.
Designing identities
It seems we are getting somewhere for my auction. But we are also running into a problem. How could we auction something that is in constant flux? Our identities don’t even always represent who we “actually” are. Or maybe just a part of it. Digitally that is exponentially more true than in the physical world. You can change your name in a minute. Switch profiles in a click. Find new friends every day. The options are endless.
Right now, this constant adaptation and shedding of identities is unnoticeably offered in exchange for our time and clicks. But in a more controllable future, isn’t that a true opportunity for products and services: to actively help us develop desirable identities? To help us create ourselves? And the systems, tools, idols and (virtual) objects that we can build our identities upon for the next decades.
Maybe I don’t need to sell the digital me after all. I could sell the ‘How to become me’… at some point. Trust me, it is not only the technology that is lacking behind. The “How to design yourself” then. That sounds better.
So …. ?
So…. Yes, I might be part Tamagotchi. There you have it. A creature to be carefully raised to make its owner (me) happy, healthy and sane. Jokes aside, it is an interesting lens to look at things.
On the business side, tapping into potentials for human development can create truly lasting customer bonding. Relevant questions to start asking as businesses are: How can we help our customers grow into the people they want to be? What can we create for them in the physical world, and what in other extended realities? Where can we give users control over our products to improve their long term experience?
On the personal side, being aware of the growing symbiosis between the physical and digital space will help us to make better choices for how we spend our clicks. The true opportunity for designers is therefore not to design bespoke virtual chairs, nor to sell our curated avatars. It is to help people navigate into that future with autonomy, sanity and excitement.
So... you will not design any virtual chairs?
An important way for people to form identities is by ownership. The sales of tweets, digital chairs or digital property is not just an example of new economic developments. It actually shows that the boundary of what what comprises human identity has already shifted into the metaverse. So yes, the future is already here. It’s been around for a while. And in that sense, it does make sense to start creating things across different realities for people to own, use and love.
This really does not only apply to developers in the Valleys. These realities are intertwined. Whether you are designing meeting halls, sports clothing, fitness trackers, miniApps, VR experiences or virtual services — or even better: if you are building all of that in a multi-reality ecosystem — as long as we create with human growth in mind, we will find ourselves in ten years time in a surprisingly nonlinear future, awash with experiences that turn us into happy creatures, both in this reality, and the new realities to come.
NB:
If anyone is interested in buying my I-am-a-Gotchi, I am open to bids. 😉
