As Meta works to make avatars a central part of its next-level experiences, it also needs to engage users by giving them more ways to use their avatars across different applications.
Where this could go:
As you can see in this example from app researcher Radu Oncescu, Meta is working on “Avatar Quests,” which would seemingly allow users to engage in interactive gaming or world exploration through their digital representation.
That also sounds like its broader vision for the metaverse, its longer-term, next-level social media experience that it’s still developing in the background.
Presumably, Meta went a little too hard on its Metaverse push in 2021, rebranding the company in line with that vision and promising new worlds and experiences centered around avatar interaction.
That could well happen, but even then, Meta suggested that such a development would be at least a decade away. This meant that the move to the Metaverse was widely criticized and criticized, with Meta’s current VR experiences in particular failing to live up to its futuristic vision.
Since then, Meta has shifted its focus to trendier AI and developed its own AI-based offerings, which will eventually feed into its broader vision as well. So from a meta perspective, everything is one and the same, even if the metaverse is no longer promoted in such grandiose terms.
But a key element here will also be interaction with avatars, allowing people to participate in the evolving spaces through their digital characters. That’s why Meta is developing better, more customizable avatars and…
