It seems like every company is jumping onto the metaverse bandwagon these days. The latest to hop on? Toy brickmaker LEGO and Fortnite developer Epic Games are entering a long-term partnership to “shape the future of the metaverse to make it safe and fun for children and families”. What this LEGO-Epic metaverse will look like, is still up in the clouds.
But one thing is for certain – they are prioritising kids in this project. They laid out three principles in their approach: protect children’s right to play by making safety and wellbeing a priority; safeguard children’s privacy; and give children and adults tools to control their digital experience.
In a way, both LEGO and Epic aren’t new to the metaverse concept. Epic has evolved Fortnite to be more than just a battle royale PvP game, having held in-game concerts starring the likeness of Ariana Grande and Travis Scott, and introducing a Creative mode; while Lego has been in the creative sandbox toy brick models business for 90 years, as well as having a finger in Lego Worlds, a sandbox procedurally-generated 3D game launched in 2017.
We expect the eventual LEGO-Epic metaverse to incorporate some of these prior elements in them. But since everything is still to be confirmed, it’s anyone’s guess what a working metaverse will be like, though they announced that it will be an “immersive, creatively inspiring and engaging digital experience for kids of all ages to enjoy together”.
Read more about the partnership on Epic Games’s official announcement.
Jimmy is on a never-ending quest to finish his ever-expanding library of games, but he keeps getting sidetracked by a mountain of books to read, and a trail of actual mountains he hopes to climb.
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