Coming Soon: More Ways to Be Yourself in the Metaverse

Limitless variety Fashion items, skin colors, body shapes, hairstyles and other digital identity choices on today’s immersive platforms are already enabling millions of people to be who they want to be in these environments. 2023 will be a breakthrough year for people who have fully realized themselves in the digital space, as more and more innovations for this entertainment, even life changinga form of self-expression and identity comes to more people of older age, in deeper ways.

We believe the wave of innovation that will make the digital identity of people more compelling and real than ever is the gateway that will lead to greater global adoption. metaverse experiences among people of all ages.

Millions of members of our Roblox community today tune their avatars daily just as we all prepare for school, work, or social events in the physical world. Unsurprisingly, this is most common among digital natives who grew up online and are well aware of how integral this way of expressing themselves is.

For this generation, digital identity is a natural extension of themselves and a reflection of their personality. They are recognized in shared immersive spaces by their friends, who notice if they are dressed for the occasion. It is their personal representation in the digital world where they can make meaningful friendships and connect, co-create and collaborate with other members of the community around the world.

It will spread. In 2023, we’ll see more people — in most age groups — get digital representation and customize their avatars. In the end, everyone will have it. And people will not just use someone else’s creation. They will make their own, from head to toe, reflecting their style, personality and physique.

New cutting-edge technologies will help these personalities be more individual and expressive, with greater customization and customization of the body and face of the user-created avatar. This is a big focus for us at Roblox given how important digital identity is to our community. In addition to our work, companies large and small are also working to enable realistic digital identity and avatar interactions, from a wide range of startups to established technology players such as Nvidia, Unity and Epic.

This development follows the latest advances in deep learning for real-time animation of avatars from video and voice. Unimaginable just a few years ago, especially on a large scale and on mid-range mobile devices, it will revolutionize the way people express emotions and express them in immersive environments.

One real-world example that is already in development is our technology to help capture a real-time facial expression from a user’s camera and translate it into your avatar. Since this innovation will include a wide range of facial expressions and non-verbal cues that we are so used to in everyday life, it will make the experience of people together in shared immersive spaces much richer.

We firmly believe that this evolution of digital identity and avatars will have a positive impact. Think of any face-to-face or video conversation: we constantly monitor head position or facial expressions to adjust tone, volume, emotional responses, and what we say. This is also what we are moving towards in digital social spaces – a larger social context that allows for more and more civic interactions.

Early immersive platforms and technologies offered several ways to express certain emotions. For example, emotions (avatar movements such as hand waving or dancing) or voice technologies can already be used for self-expression and communication. However, in the very near future, personalized user emotions and facial expressions created directly by users will become an innovation that will significantly change the consumer experience and pave the way for greater adoption and understanding of the role that digital identity can play. in people’s lives.

As the line between the physical and digital worlds blurs, digital identity will become an important part of everyone’s life, not just a few.