Welcome to The First Metaverse Nation
Up until now, the Metaverse has been a bit niche and hasn’t been embraced by as many people or organisations as quickly, as hoped. But that is now starting to change as non-typical users start to get involved and actively become users. Once mainstream users get interested, then you just know that it’s becoming widely accepted.
The small UK-based country of Wales – not normally known for its cutting-edge policies – has become the first nation in the world to actively advertise itself and the wonders of the country on the metaverse.
Keen to show the country in the best possible light, the Welsh Government has gone all out on VR technology to create a virtual world that embraces many of the most iconic parts of Wales in virtual goodness. You can teleport into Castle Croeso i’r and from a special portal, learn about many of the other castles in the country, including Castle Caenarfon and Castle Coch via short video presentations. The main castle itself is littered with walk-over information points, each of which pulls up an interesting factoid to give you a little more insight into the history.
An interactive map in the castle takes you to real websites for other Welsh sites and attractions via new browser windows, so you can dip in and out of the places you want to investigate more. In this way, you can virtually visit many of the Welsh iconic areas, either as visitable worlds or as flat websites.
Hannah Blythyn, Welsh Minister for Tourism, is quoted as saying “the Wales Metaverse has been created to reach new audiences – wherever they may be in the world – and inspire them to visit our awesome nation for real. By showcasing some of the best Wales has to offer visitors in this incredibly innovative way, we’re putting Wales in an online sphere where millions of people already meet every day.” The light and airy look and feel of the project is certainly likely to do that, and its interactive fun makes tourism kinda’ quirky, but leaves you wanting more. With that said, it is a perfectly good basis for expansion, and the addition of more virtual areas as they are built. Who knows, but given time they might be able to incorporate other interactive features such as the world's longest zip-wire (currently) over the Penrhyn Quarry lake, or a feast of drunkenly-imbibed virtual kebabs in downtown Cardiff on a Saturday night (yeuch).
In the current world, you can take a boat trip, and visit many of the country’s best tourist hotspots. You can take a cable car ride. You can get to different base areas that allow you to do more interactive things and experience more. On a PC, you move around using the standard WSAD keys in combination with your mouse and SHIFT to run and SPACE to jump. I have to say that getting up to the Wyt ti’n gwybod high spot, which then leads to the cable car takes some doing, as you have to run/jump while trying to manipulate the move keys and mouse – yikes!!!!
Promoting Wales’s tourism might reach a large audience as the metaverse is now used by around 600 million people annually and rapidly expanding. This new venture has struck when the Welsh government is trying to promote the nation more effectively in order to boost travel and investment. We expect that others will be watching with interest.
Of course, being slightly puerile, I find that it’s always a joy to see what you can’t do; you can’t get in the train tunnels in the castle, and the train will just go through you. You can change your avatar, but I have to say that I found being the default lady quite refreshing. If you fall off the world – something I did quite frequently whilst trying to get up to Wyt ti’n gwybod – you end up teleporting right back to the start, though this isn’t too onerous since the world isn’t huge anyway.
The one downside to the world is that it is made with Spatial.io and if you go off the page and then try to return, it sometimes refuses to reconnect – maybe use Unity next time, eh, Wales? On the whole it is good and interesting and we applaud their efforts to bring Wales into the 21st century.
Though it is the only country in Europe and the only one in the UK to truly promote itself through the metaverse, this is not the only method it does it. Visit Wales is also promoting the experience of travelling to Wales with billboard advertisements in the virtual environment of Roblox. Wales is probably going to gain far more attention by partnering with the major brand, and this could well be a model for future countries to follow.
If you are considering developing a real-time application like the Wales system, come and talk to us at Unity Developers, and see how we can help.
