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Meta Consumer explores how the metaverse and virtual worlds are economic sites for content production and consumption. Combining studies into consumer behaviour alongside the analysis of ‘gamer types’ using Bartle’s taxonomy of players, MetaConsumer creates experimental retail experiences, leveraging how people instinctively engage with virtual environments. The game is constructed around a system of agents containing both consumer and gamer profiles. Players must create structures that appeal to both the consumerist tendencies of these shoppers and the ways they are predisposed to interact with virtual environments, using combinations of different generic elements which then become attractive to agents based on their personality type. ‘Killer’-type players, who thrive on competition, will be attracted to vertiginous structures inspired by games such as Doom Eternal. In contrast, ‘explorer’-type players will seek out structures providing unexpected journeys, drawing upon the aesthetics of games like Minecraft. As players perceive game worlds in fundamentally different ways according to their personality, MetaConsumer uses this in a shifting landscape of experiences and consumption.
An in-game screenshot of a MetaConsumer environment, showing elements that are being perceived and explored by the different player types corresponding to different game types, and 'blank' structures that are not currently being visited.
The MetaConsumer environment is one that oscillates in and out of meaning, with the world physically changing depending on the player personality type of the user experiencing it.
Players acting as retailers combine different basic architectural elements into spatial forms that attract different player types. These will then be perceived and explored by consumers within the game.
By composing different base components into second-order structures, players act as retailers, attracting different agents to consume by leveraging the way different player types perceive their surroundings.
Different player types were analysed and mapped to existing game archetypes. These games are then used to create the symbolic and architectural language of the world, demonstrating when a structure has resonated with one of those player types.
Studies into how different player types are attracted to different spatial forms. Killer-types, looking to dominate their surroundings, will be drawn to high ground or difficult objectives, while explorer-types will seek out branching paths.
Exploring how the different elements of the MetaConsumer environment change over time depending on the player and consumer type of the agent visiting them, and the player's actions around them.
Prototypes towards creating the game in Unreal engine. These include the development of AI agents using research into Bartle's player types alongside consumer trend analysis, and systems that create structures from combinations of base components.
A view across a MetaConsumer environment, showing the different symbolic structures that are attracting players at any given moment.
The urban environment of MetaConsumer is continuously oscillating between meanings, with referential architectural forms from popular games signifying a structure that is attracting a specific player-type towards it.
Game archetypes are used to draw consumers towards structures, such as Minecraft appealing to explorer-type visitors or Animal Crossing appealing to social-type consumers.
As the environment changes dynamically, retailers see prevailing consumer and player trends in the world through the architecture, understanding how the environment is shaped by the way players perceive the basic structures placed in front of them.
By embodying the eyes of an agent, players can also walk through the MetaConsumer environment, seeing how it changes in response to their unique player-type perception.