Ready Player Me has remained at the forefront of avatar development and interoperability for years. The Estonian-American firm has facilitated cross-platform avatars for hundreds of apps, including HiberWorld, TCL, RTFKT, MeetinVR, Sidequest, Spatial, VRChat, and many others.
Users have leveraged the company’s avatars for training and instruction, gaming, and collaborative immersive experiences. Recently, the Tallinn-based firm teamed up with Vogue Magazine and Spatial to develop a world-class immersive fashion experience.
XR Today spoke to Timmu Tõke, Chief Executive, Ready Player Me, to discuss the latest company updates, new avatar interoperability efforts, and the future of the Metaverse.
XR Today: Can you update us on Ready Player Me’s push for greater interoperability across the extended reality (XR) market?
Timmu Tõke: Interoperability is at the core of Ready Player Me. We have over 6,000 developers in our partner network building apps and games supporting our avatar system. Users can already bring their Ready Player Me avatars to thousands of live experiences, like Spatial, HiberWorld, and VRChat.
Our partnership with Faraway opens doors to a new level of interoperability. As with other gaming platforms, users can import their Ready Player Me avatars to Mini Royale: Nations. Moreover, they can also bring their Mini Royale: Nations heroes to the Ready Player Me platform. This is the first time characters from a third-party game can be imported onto Ready Player Me—or any avatar platform—and used in thousands of apps and games.
XR Today: How does Ready Player Me’s bespoke avatars drive social interactions on Mini Royale: Nations’ gaming platform?
Timmu Tõke: With the launch of the Ready Player Me integration, Mini Royale: Nations players can now access hundreds of avatar customization options to express their digital identities.
They also have the option to generate their personal avatar with a selfie, which we see has increased engagement in other games supporting Ready Player Me.
We continue to work on new avatar creator features, giving users even more control. Last month, we unveiled an experimental, AI-powered avatar creator, letting users customize individual pieces of their avatar’s outfit with text prompts. We can’t wait to release more customization features as soon as the next few weeks.
XR Today: What can you tell us about the avatar as our digital passport to the Metaverse and XR platforms?
Timmu Tõke: At this time, Ready Player Me users can create an account on our platform and manage their avatars, outfits, and connected experiences. Every time they use a new app or game that supports Ready Player Me avatars, they have the option to sign in with their account and import existing ones.
We are looking to expand this feature even further, allowing developers to use Ready Player Me as a Single Sign-On option. We also continue adding support for new blockchains.
With the launch of Mini Royale: Nations, we added integration with Phantom wallet and Solana. Prior to that, we supported Ethereum via Metamask and Cardano via Nami. Integrations with wallets enable us to verify ownership of digital assets and unlock them as avatar customization options on our platform.
That’s what allows Mini Royale: Nations’ heroes to work with apps and games supporting Ready Player Me.
XR Today: Can you explain your views on the 2021-2022 metaverse hype cycle? How would you explain to people the resilience and challenges you and similar firms face when developing metaverse technologies?
Timmu Tõke: The Metaverse is alive and well. The gaming market is currently worth $200 billion USD and growing fast and almost 3 billion people play games every month. The long-term trend we’re building towards is here – people continue spending more time in virtual worlds every year.
XR Today: What are your predictions for the Metaverse in 2023?
Timmu Tõke: We continue seeing interest from developers as our network grows at an unchanged pace. There’s also interest from major consumer brands, who have started to see virtual worlds as a new eCommerce opportunity and not just a marketing tool.
Perhaps one of the most important things about the future of the Metaverse is enabling the next generation of content creators. It’s a completely new medium to explore, and with new kinds of AI-powered tools, content creation in Web3 has a chance to become more accessible than ever.
We see a huge potential in artificial intelligence (AI) improving our avatars, both for users and developers. It’s worth mentioning that we are also building content and monetization tools for developers and creators.
Furthermore, we are looking to launch these later this year to make Ready Player Me even more open to external content and help developers and digital artists monetize their work.
