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.

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.

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

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.