Posts tagged Fortnite
Lessons for banking and finance from video game interface design
Lessons for banking and finance from video game interface design

We’ve had this write-up in some various mental states floating around for a while, and better done than perfect. So treat this as a core idea to be fleshed out later.

Payments and banking companies should be looking at how people purchase and store digital goods and digital currency in video games. That experience has been polished over 40 years, and is what will be the default expectation for future generations.

For those interested, here is a website that collects user experiences of shopping across hundreds of designs.

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visual art, NFTs and digital objects, metaverse, augmented realityLex SokolinRobinhood, Amazon, Travelocity, Fortnite, Gen Z, Wealthfront, Advizr
Virtual communities and digital worlds are the difference between Finance Incumbents, Fintech, and DeFi
Virtual communities and digital worlds are the difference between Finance Incumbents, Fintech, and DeFi

This week, we look at:

  • How the medical reality is accelerating remote work and digital commerce, including the success of buy-now-pay-later companies like Affirm and Klarna

  • The emergence of virtual worlds and video game environments that generate $ billions in revenue and have millions of participants, with examples of Zwift, Fortnite, Tomorrowland, Roblox, Genshin Impact

  • How to connect digital environments to digital communities and their economic activity, including through mechanisms like non-fungible-tokens in Rarible and Async Art

  • Advice for shifting thinking from manufacturing financial product, to starting with the customer, to leveraging the community

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digital transformation, metaverse, decentralized finance, NFTs and digital objectsLex SokolinAffirm, Klarna, Zwift, Fortnite, Tomorrowland, Roblox, Genshin Impact, Radible, Async Art, IPFS / Filecoin
Fintech in the Metaverse, plus NFTs, Crypto Art, and Epic Games
Fintech in the Metaverse, plus NFTs, Crypto Art, and Epic Games

Today, we’re joined by Angela Dalton to explore the fun and fantastical world that sits at the intersection of gaming, immersive technology, crypto and economics, namely, the Metaverse.

Angela is the Founder and CEO of Signum Growth Capital, an M&A advisory firm focused on emerging opportunities in fintech, especially blockchain, and digital media.

In this conversation, we discuss expectations for both recreation and work in a digital future, technological advances in recent years that underpin coming changes to immersive virtual experiences, the economics of virtual worlds and more.

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metaverse, visual art, NFTs and digital objectsLex SokolinAngela Dalton, Signum Growth Capital, Decentraland, Ethereum, World of Warcraft, VR Chat, Microsoft, HoloLens, Fortnite, Epic Games
How should Fintech react to Epic raising $2B on Fortnite's 350MM users, NY Times photogrammetric environments, and Apple's AR glasses
How should Fintech react to Epic raising $2B on Fortnite's 350MM users, NY Times photogrammetric environments, and Apple's AR glasses

Within a decade, the form factor for computing will radically change from staring at screens with flat imagery, to participating in embedded virtual worlds with fully navigable, hyper-realistic environments. Those environments will be filled with software agents, some hybrid human and others entirely AI, that are entirely unrecognizable as anything but real to 90% of the population.

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artificial intelligence, metaverseLex SokolinUBS, OpenAI, Epic Games, Fortnite, GPT-3
Apple's augmented reality leak, and what Fintech should do for the coming Multiverse
Apple's augmented reality leak, and what Fintech should do for the coming Multiverse

This week, let's dive into the Apple augmented reality glasses leak, the Magic Leap $350 million financing, and the uncanny imagery created by Epic Games' Unreal Engine. We summarize and pull apart the thesis of the Metaverse -- a virtual world as realistic and economically important as our own -- and how media and financial companies should think about the opportunity.

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augmented reality, metaverseLex SokolinDisney, Netflix, Unreal, Fortnite, Alethea, Magic Leap, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Stadia, Epic Games, Tencent
Double Standards -- Fortnite game praised for black-out, neobank Chime upsets 5 million customers
Double Standards -- Fortnite game praised for black-out, neobank Chime upsets 5 million customers

Let’s look at the recent Fortnite blackout and compare it to neobank Chime's embarassing down time, as well as explore the business model implication of what it means to be the social square where people hang out. Does Finance have such an equivalent? Maybe it is Venmo, crypto Twitter, or the credit unions. We also look at statistics behind influencer marketing, and how influencers have usurped the position of music labels. Perhaps banks should get ahead of this game too.

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metaverse, neobank, credit unions/small banks, marketing, music industry, social & communityLex SokolinFortnite, Twitch, Chime, Venmo, Galileo, YouTube, Instagram