McDonald’s metaverse debuts in Singapore

Powered by Bandwagon Labs and Web3 technology, McDonald’s interactive virtual world will run from June 6 to July 7.
Powered by Bandwagon Labs and Web3 technology, McDonald’s interactive virtual world will run from June 6 to July 7.

American fast food chain McDonald’s launched the “My Happy Place” metaverse in Singapore, allowing locals to build virtual burgers and participate in other activities.

McDonald’s Singapore partnered with Bandwagon Labs, the metaverse arm of entertainment media tech company Bandwagon, to build the in-app virtual world for its customers.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Clarence Chan, Founder of Bandwagon Labs, highlighted three key aspects that went behind building the metaverse for McDonald’s:

“It’s multiplayer where players can see others in the world with them. The metaverse is a creative canvas where we let users flex their creativity. And thirdly, it’s packed with daily rewards with different challenges that trigger a reward mechanism.”

Stepping stones for a McMetaverse

Additionally, Web3 technologies are used to boost security, functionality and use cases for holding digital collectibles. “By integrating wallet hosting services like MetaMask, we enable you to securely authenticate your identity and participate in token-gated activities within the metaverse,” Chan explained.

Source: Bandwagon Labs

According to the announcement, McDonald’s has full control over its in-app metaverse. The project will be live for a month, from June 6 to July 7, and its success will determine future deployments or continuation of the services.

Chan married in the metaverse and vouched for the technology’s potential in customer retention and fan engagement. However, he said that current metaverse experiences are crippled by third-party hosting.

“Adding to that, the lack of tangible rewards for people who utilize metaverse sometimes can discourage a large chunk of the audience.”

Metaverse for effective fan engagement

Chan believes that Bandwagon Labs solved these problems for McDonald’s. “Not only can users engage and play with their friends, but they can also win tangible rewards, like fries, by participating on our platform,” he concluded.

Read Cointelegraph’s crypto guide to learn more about the world of metaverse.

Related: Nokia targets ‘broader potential of metaverse’ in 2030 strategy

Magic Leap recently announced “a multi-faceted, strategic technology partnership” with Google to develop new extended reality technologies.

The partnership will highlight Magic Leap’s advances in the field of optics alongside Google’s infrastructure, according to a statement from Magic Leap CTO Julie Larson-Green:

“This partnership accelerates the transformative power of AR by combining our extensive optics capabilities with Google’s technologies to continue to advance immersive experiences to the developer ecosystem and for customers. We are looking forward to expanding the potential of XR – blending the physical world with valuable, contextually relevant solutions.”

The press release did not describe any actual products or announce any potential services.

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