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Like the cicadas, Bennifer is back. See you in another 17 years?

 
 
 
 
 
 

We met Benyamin Ahmed when he was twelve years old and developing his collection of NFTs. His Weird Whales series went viral and the rest is history. If you missed Benyamin’s tutorial for the Virtual Events Group meetup on how to produce your own NFTs.

 
WATCH NOW
 
 
How to Use the World’s Smartest Image Generators
 

It bears repeating that DALL·E 2 is an AI-based image generator that lets you verbally describe a scene and then have it generated into a visual. Example? “Create a girl in an evening gown walking up the stairs in a pointillist style.” Joining DALL-E are some other AI-based image generators.


Midjourney, still in early beta, lets you describe what you can imagine as “a vegetable vacuuming the forest floor” and then generate it as digital art. Then there’s Google Imagen, which Google describes as a “text-to-image diffusion model with an unprecedented degree of photorealism and a deep level of language understanding.” (Why do they need to make everything sound so wonky?) Want to follow a DALL·E guy having a damn good time playing with images of Bezos and Musk?


Why does this matter? Whether you are envisioning a set design, an art installation, an event exhibit, or something else, programs like these let you exercise your imagination. But your imagination is only as good as your ability to express it. Read this guide on how to begin using AI prompts. It’s a skill set worth cultivating. Also be aware that there is a great debate about who owns AI generated art. 

 
 
This Corgi in a sushi house was generated by Google’s Imagen based on a text description. Image Credit: Google Imagen
 
 
We Like to Game
 
 

How I spent my days at Games for Change Festival 
Photo Credit: The Choice

 
 
 

I keep thinking about how many great novels you might have read or how many foreign languages you might have learned, but no matter. Insider Intelligence (paywall) estimates that more than half (54.2%) of the US population plays digital games. Mobile gaming is the largest segment, with 48.3% of the population (162.9 million people) playing games on their smartphones. Why is gaming having its moment? 

  • A wider, more inclusive group of game developers are creating games to reach a wider audience.
  • Better technologies including AI, AR, computer graphics and cloud computing create more compelling experiences.
  • Activities like finance, shopping, and learning have been gamified and often show increased retention and behavior change.
  • The pandemic introduced many of us to the notion of excess free time and stress relief.
  • For many, mobile gaming is the equivalent of knitting on trains, planes, and automobiles.

Last week I attended the Games for Change Festival, an exciting conference where the power of gaming was showcased in the context of being a catalyst for social impact. I spent a lot of my time there feeling like a Tommy-look-alike (headset, facemask, headphones, and game controller) immersing myself in worlds designed to test my assumptions. 


If you have a VR headset, some of the show’s award winners that are worth checking out include:

  • Goliath
    Narrated by Tilda Swinton, Goliath is a 25-minute-long experience that puts you into the world of Goliath, a guy diagnosed with schizophrenia. It shows how gaming plays a part in his experience. 
  • The Choice
    Abortion debates are dominant in the news, but personalizing the story is the mission of The Choice. The episode I watched featured a Texas woman’s painful choice. Volumetric capture combined with stereoscopy made you feel as if you were conversing with the storyteller. 

The problem with XR games that hope to catalyze change? There’s a heavy hardware requirement (i.e. headsets). That limits the size of the audience and probably prohibits many of those who might need this content most from accessing it. Should every XR game have a “no headsets or glasses required” twin?


Another completely novel game in terms of input is Before Your Eyes. If you’ve got a working webcam and a mouse, you can control the storyline by blinking your eyes. A blink takes you through various memories on your way to eternity (aka death). Honestly, you’ll struggle to NOT blink to keep your memory alive. This game will be released on Netflix in July and is one of the first of Netflix’s new gaming strategies.

 
 
Read more on why marketers are going ga-ga for making the business case for games.
Image Credit: Steam
 
 
Can Robots Help Us Love Hotels Again? 
 

We’re hearing it from both business and leisure travelers. Hotel rooms are overpriced. Service is miserable. Flight fares are high. According to J.D. Power's 2022 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study, travelers aren’t feeling the love and certainly do not feel that they’re getting their money’s worth. With Airbnb stays cutting into hotel bookings, because they are a more cost-effective alternative, some hotels are looking to tech to differentiate. 


Gamifying your Stay
Moxy Hotels by Marriott lets you play at its hotels as a virtual avatar before you even book a room. Upon arriving at the bar (which doubles as the front desk), guests can scan a QR code to view “holographic projections” and snap a few selfies with their avatar. Unlock at least five challenges throughout the hotel game and you can win prizes including an extra night's stay. 


Blockchaining Your Stay 
At Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, you buy room reservations on the blockchain. Just sell it or trade it with transferable room-night tokens on Pinktada’s blockchain. (Sort of the blockchain equivalent of scalping, methinks.) 


Other Hospitality Tech
Call room service? Fumble for your key? Can’t swipe the card? So over. Take a look at what’s happening in the highest-tech hotels in Europe. Or use Venue Butler so you never have to ask the front desk to hail a cab. Guests at Radisson Blu Edwardian Berkshire (London), use their virtual assistant called Edward throughout their stay, helping them with check-ins and checkouts. 

 
 

Why go to the hotel when you can play with it? Credit: Marriott Bonvoy

 
 
 

Go tech or stay home, says this study about the hospitality market.
Image Credit: Research and Markets

 
 
Scuttlebutt
 

Square Fashion is Hot
Once again Tommy Hilfiger is going physical/digital for its runway show at New York Fashion Week. You’ll find avatars wearing the new collections, strolling through the NYC metaverse, and democratizing fashion shows, even if the outfits look a bit too blocky for comfort.

 
 

Image Credit: Tommy Hilfiger

 

Wordle, IRL 
You’ll soon be able to play Wordle, the board game ($19.95), thanks to a deal between NYT and Hasbro.

 
 

Can You Get a 3 Hankie Review with Headsets On? 
HBO Original will release the documentary We Met in Virtual Reality on July 27th

 
 

Image Credit: HBO

 
 

According to the company, “the film reveals the growing power and intimacy of several relationships formed in the virtual world, many of which began during the COVID-19 lockdown, while so many in the physical world were facing intense isolation.” Watch the trailer.

 
 
Don’t Get Summer FOMO
 
Join Virtual Events Group and be a part of members-only events beginning this September. Yes, we’ll still have plenty of non-member events, too.
 
 
 
 
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Robin Raskin  | Founder
917.215.3160 | robin@virtualeventsgroup.org

 

Julie Sylvester | Sales & Marketing

917.868.7160 | Julie@virtualeventsgroup.org