Forum sheds light on how metaverse can reshape entertainment industry

'Anyone can be creator in the metaverse'

By Dong Sun-hwa

Hardly anyone doubts that the metaverse is a hot talking point in the entertainment scene today, but many do not have a clear picture of how it can reshape the industry and change the way people enjoy cultural content.

To help them better understand the concept, opinion leaders in cultural fields gathered together at the 2022 World Cultural Industry Forum (WCIF), which was held at Hotel Susung in the southeastern city of Daegu from Wednesday to Thursday.

“With the metaverse, we will build a new cultural ecosystem, in which anyone can be a creator,” Lee Soo-man, the founder of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment that debuted numerous big-name stars like EXO, Red Velvet and NCT, said during his speech, Wednesday. Lee is also the creator of aespa, the first metaverse girl group in the K-pop universe, which consists of four human members and their digital avatars.

“Pursuing creativity is a big part of human nature and everyone loves to create,” Lee stressed. “So we will enable people of all ages to become 'prosumers' in our metaverse world, where they can recreate SM's original content like music videos and make profits. Simply put, 'Play2Create (P2C)' is our new vision.”

Lee's ultimate goal is to set up a “metaverse city.”

“We are planning to craft a metaverse city that can boost cultural exchange among people of different backgrounds and help them bring life to things in a way they have never imagined before,” he said.

Sebastien Borget, the co-founder and COO of The Sandbox, also underscored the significance of creativity and imagination in the realm of the metaverse. The Sandbox is a blockchain-based virtual gaming platform that reportedly has more than 1 million monthly active users.

“We enable our users to truly own all digital assets they create on The Sandbox,” Borget said. “Their metaverse world is empty in the beginning, but they can build what they want using simple and accessible tools we provide, collect assets and use their ownership to become stakeholders. Anyone can be creators in this world even if they lack specific skills. There are no barriers to entry.”

Those who use other metaverse platforms can also play their games on The Sandbox too, according to Borget.

“It is a new form of interaction,” he added.

The future seems dazzling ― it looks like the cutting-edge technologies will enrich the user experience, incubate more creators and promote interaction among people regardless of time and space. But Cha In-hyok, the president of digital service company CJ Olivenetworks, pointed out that the potential risks of the metaverse should not be overlooked.

“I think we have not had enough discussions on the potential dangers of the state-of-the-art technologies,” he said. “What are the roles of an adult in the world of the metaverse? How should people of different ages and backgrounds communicate with each other while avoiding conflicts? I believe we need to seek ways to unite these people.”

To date, CJ Olivenetworks has breathed life to many virtual humans, but has not yet launched them publicly. According to Cha, this is because the company does not want them to go head-to-head with human singers, threatening their livelihoods.

“Our goal is to make our world a better place, but as of now, we have not figured out how we can do so with our virtual humans,” he said. “We are ruminating on different ways to make them helpful for human singers.”

During Thursday's forum, Zhao Jun, a professor in the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, emphasized that the man-machine dialogue system for virtual digital human needs to utilize various knowledge resources ― such as linguistic and world knowledge ― while Hyperreal Digital CEO Remington Scott talked about the value of timeless virtual entities. Hyperreal Digital is a metaverse firm reputed for its ability to make hyper-realistic digital human avatars of prominent celebrities.

Officials from Credia Music & Artists, Kansong Art and Culture Foundation, the SMC Group and Gallerystan also delivered their speeches on how classical music and the art scene can utilize non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Founded by Lee Jang-woo, a professor emeritus of business administration at Kyungpook National University, the WCIF was joined by Kennel AB founder Hayden Bell, SCALe CEO Hah Te-soc, Unisound AI Labs co-founder and CTO Liang Jia'en and DG ICT Industry Association President Park Yun-ha, among others.