Metaverse meets mobility: How gamification shapes the future of life, mobility & everything – expert talk at CARIAD
Various studies report that around nine out of ten people from GenZ play games on a regular basis. However, not only this generation, but also older audiences – as the average gamer is around 35 years old – have already associated the idea of traveling the world with more than just using physical mobility. Games, gamification, gaming technologies, as well as game economics enable us to visit faraway places (e.g., Minecraft BuildTheEarth), go back in time (e.g., in games with time travel mechanics), explore the lives of other people (e.g., VRChat), or travel into alternate immersive 3D worlds and fiction − all without having to use traditional mobility solutions such as cars or planes.
As part of an innovation talk at CARIAD SE, Prof. Dr. Steffen P. Walz and Prof. Dr. Benedikt Morschheuser took an interactive trip through the emerging virtual game-based universe called ‘metaverse’. They examined current research and practice examples in which gaming meets mobility, and explored the metaverse’s technological, social, psychological, ethical, ecological, and cultural dimensions.
It became clear that games and trends like the metaverse will increasingly penetrate and shape the future of mobility and transportation. It will be interesting to see how the German automotive industry will continue to respond to this trend and what gameful mobility solutions may appear soon.