Virtue Worldwide, the creative agency powered by VICE, has created an office inside the metaverse for VICE Media Group (VMG). The virtual building will be open to multiple VMG businesses, including Virtue and VICE, and act as a permanent residence for the group in Decentraland.
Decentraland is a virtual world browser-based platform. Users can buy virtual plots of land as NFTs via the MANA cryptocurrency, which uses the Ethereum blockchain. It was opened to the public in February 2020 and is overseen by the nonprofit Decentraland Foundation.
The initiative was created by Virtue Futures – the innovation division within Virtue that helps brands to find new platforms, technologies, and spaces in culturally relevant ways. In mid-2021, the Virtue Futures team launched Coca-Cola’s first NFT marking one of many examples in 2021 of how brands and agencies can leverage blockchain technology.
Vice in Decentraland
Built inside Decentraland, the space will serve as the agency’s virtual innovation lab where teams can experiment with NFTs, DAOs, and Web3, applying insights directly to brands looking to leap.
Morten Grubak, Global ECD Innovation, Virtue Futures, said: “The creative opportunities within the metaverse are hugely exciting, and as we’re already helping brands navigate this new space, it makes sense to have an office there ourselves. Working with the world-renowned architects at BIG, the vision has taken on a new reality.”
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) designed the virtual building, the pioneering architectural firm behind The Pyramid in Manhattan and Google’s Mountain View North Campus.
Metaverse news agency
A news desk could see Vice start to tackle metaverse news as well as real-world events. Vice has carved a solid niche delivering culturally focussed, engaging, and sometimes outright controversial content since 1994.
They could potentially cover and report on the happenings and events inside the growing Decentraland platform. Similar to outlets such as the Somnium Times, dedicated to metaverse news exclusively from the Somnium Space virtual world.
Virtue Worldwide says the Decentraland HQ is a central node in their global borderless team setup. A place where clients and collaborators can meet for meetings, presentations, and hands-on demonstrations of projects. It will also serve as a launchpad for digital field research into the sociology of digital communities.
Metaverse madness
Recently, South Korean electronic giant Samsung unveiled their new line of S22 devices at their virtual 837X space in the Decentraland virtual world. While the Fashion Street Estate in Decentraland sold for a $2.42 million price tag earlier this year. Additionally, McDonalds filed ten patents a few weeks ago as they lay foundations to launch a virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods with further plans to offer home delivery.
The metaverse bug arguably kicked off by META last year is heating up as the battle for eyeballs and relevance continues and organizations become more engaged with blockchain.
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