The Headliners: 4 Festivals RLTY would like to see in the metaverse (and why)
“Each year, every city in the world that can should have a multi-day festival. More people meeting each other, digging new types of music, new foods, new ideas. You want to stop having so many wars? This could be a step in the right direction.” — Henry Rollins
Life is a festival of dance, language, music, food, gaming and sport. From the Saga Dawa Festival in the foothills of Nepal to Dia de Muertos via Pride, Oktoberfest, St Patrick’s Day, Glastonbury, Burning Man and The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, festivals are everywhere.
Like you, at RLTY we love festivals.
We understand their importance to those who attend and organise. We enjoy the tradition and history and how they create, sustain and expand relationships. Festivals bring people together and hold culture in place for millions of people. We can dance, sing, eat, play and learn with the best of you.
We are the metaverse events company, so it may sound strange when we say not all festivals should be held in the metaverse. But there are — for reasons of exposure, brand building, profit, community, sustainability, new markets and bigger audiences — thousands that should. And we would like to help build them. Which festivals would we like to see in the metaverse? Here is the RLTY metaverse dream lineup.
4 — E3
Blizzcon, Dreamhack, The Tokyo game show, and the mighty Mid Season Invitational League of Legends — 127 million viewers worldwide. It was difficult to choose one gaming festival we would take to the metaverse. So we decided to go upstream and put E3 at the top of the bill.
The biggest gaming trade event was canceled in 2020. But some of you reading this will know it was resurrected online in 2021, opening the doors to the gamers. (And not just the industry reps it used to be for. The actual game buying public? Who would have thought that was a good idea?) The event was streamed on Twitch and YouTube and shared across Twitter and Facebook. But It wasn’t immersive, it wasn’t mesmeric. It wasn’t what it could have been — and could be — in the metaverse.
Imagine Nintendo, Ubisoft, Square Enix and Capcom allowing gamers to see and play their latest games against each other, in worlds created around the graphics or gameplay? It beats watching a trailer on YouTube. Imagine independent gaming companies creating their own worlds and speaking directly with their fans, away from the massed crowds of God of War?
That’s what we imagine. That’s what we know will develop over the coming years. And it’s why we would like to see E3 in the metaverse. We’ll have to wait. E3 is scheduled to come back to the LA Convention Centre in 2023.
3 — Montreux Jazz Festival — Switzerland
250,000 music fans descended on Montreaux for the 2022 edition of the jazz festival. Over two weeks they crowded on the shores of lake geneva to listen to music from some of the biggest names in the world. As befits Montreux, there was a lot of jazz, but not only. Bjork, Van Morrision, Diana Ross, Celeste and Stormzy played alongside Herbie Hancock, Robert Plant, Dino Brandao and hundreds more.
The Montreux jazz festival is a celebration of music perhaps like no other.
And we would like to see it in the metaverse because rock and electronic concerts make all the headlines, and we would like to see the crossover. A more eclectic musical metaverse full of eighth notes and bebop.
Then there is the visual, immersive potential of taking a festival like Montreux to the metaverse. We’d like to see the mountains, lakes and glaciers of Switzerland reproduced, or reimagined in the metaverse. We’d like to see the streaming of concerts in innovative, creative ways. Fortnite has proved over and over that metaverse concerts can offer something new and interesting. Perhaps the metaverse could do the same thing for jazz.
2 — The Rio Carnival
We’re not suggesting it would be easy to bring the Rio Carnival to the metaverse. But this is our dream event list, so we can choose any event we like.
A little history? Some say The Rio Carnival dates back to 1723 and the Portuguese immigrants from the islands of Açores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. Wikipedia says it goes back even further, citing the 1650s as the start off point. “During that time, elaborate feasts were organized to give honor to the Greek wine gods.” The wine has stayed, the Greek gods less evident.
Samba music and non-stop dancing are the biggest pulls for many tourists (these would work in the metaverse too) visiting Rio. We’d like to see the Rio Carnival in the metaverse for a second reason: Costumes and avatars.
Rio is about the distortion of real life personas, a hedonistic mix that transcends the human condition. People create new — and temporary — identities at the world’s greatest show. Just like they do in the metaverse.
1 — Sundance Film Festival
“For me, the Sundance Institute is just an extension of something I believed in, which is creating a mechanism for new voices to have a place to develop and be heard.” — Robert Redford
Robert Redford could have been describing the metaverse when he spoke about the Sundance film festival, a global independent film festival he founded in 1981 to foster independence, risk-taking, and new voices in American film.
Film3 is the web3 alternative to the legacy Hollywood model. It uses NFTs to fund, write, produce and distribute movies. It is the evolution of independent film. That is why we would like to see Sundance in the metaverse.
