We want ENGAGE Oasis to be the LinkedIn of the metaverse.
—David Whelan, CEO, VR Education
VR Education, the Waterford, Ireland-based company that makes the educational social VR platform ENGAGE, has been doing well lately! Last year, they reported that revenue jumped 43%, to €1m (US$1,188,380). And the company just announced that they had successfully raised US$10 million in venture capital.
They’re also launching a new social VR platform called ENGAGE Oasis, aimed at the corporate market (a market segment that I like to collectively call YARTVRA: Yet Another Remote Teamwork Virtual Reality App):
Inspired by the VR simulation known as OASIS in the book and film ‘Ready Player One’ ENGAGE Oasis will be an always on, fully persistent virtual world, where ENGAGE clients can meet and sell products and services directly to each other. Designed for business professionals, corporations, young professionals, and college students, it is best seen as a cloud-based digital city where actual business can be done. Employees from the world’s largest corporations can connect with each other to generate new business ideas and deliver value to their respective organisations. ENGAGE Oasis aims to be an opportunity for corporate users to expand their customer base and provide immersive services at a reasonable price.
All the avatars and virtual locations will be tailored for professional users, and guidelines will be set by the owners of each sector. There will be no limits on digital artists or corporations regarding the virtual building blocks and styles used, allowing for unlimited branding opportunities. As part of this metaverse, a new marketplace will become available for
corporations and digital artists to sell digital items and provide services using non-fungible tokens, fiat currencies and
cryptocurrencies.
Now, as many long-time readers of the RyanSchultz.com blog well know, Auntie Ryan has OPINIONS… 😉
So I am going to go on record to say that “ENGAGE Oasis” is a terrible, TERRIBLE name, and I hope that VR Education changes it before launch! Everybody wants to jump on the Ready Player One bandwagon, it seems; this is the THIRD virtual reality platform that I know of that is called Oasis (here’s the first one; here’s the second one) .
Another big problem with Oasis? As I mentioned earlier, it’s almost impossible to find this game on Google, due to so many other unrelated hits you get from searching on “Oasis”. Search on “Oasis VR” or “Oasis game” and you get the Ready Player One-branded experience by VIVEPORT, or the Chinese game company….Frankly, Oasis is a TERRIBLE name for a virtual world. It’s just too common a name for too many other things on the Internet.
Now, branching out from the profitable educational market (ENGAGE has gained 100 customers in just 2 years!) to launch a corporate cousin is a very savvy move by VR Education. They already have a viable, popular social VR platform, and it’s likely that those features which set ENGAGE apart from the competition (notably, three-dimensional recording and replaying of content) will make it into the Oasis product.
Other platforms, such as Breakroom by Sine Wave Entertainment (the makers of Sinespace), have seen great success recently, capitalizing on the unfortunate situation caused by the global coronavirus pandemic, selling to corporations and hosting virtual alternatives to real-life events such as conferences and training sessions. And I’m quite sure VR Education is also hungering for a slice of that pie!
“If Rec Room and Roblox are the TikTok and Twitch of the metaverse, we want ENGAGE Oasis to be the LinkedIn of the metaverse,” said David Whelan, CEO of VRE, in an official release. “We think that young professionals, corporations, digital artists, and service providers will love all the opportunities being part of the metaverse will lead to. With the pandemic and climate change causing businesses to rethink how they interact externally and internally, the virtual world provided by ENGAGE Oasis has the potential for exponential growth.”
“ENGAGE is already a leader in the world of virtual communications, and our growing client base and proven technology underlines our belief that we can become the leader in the corporate metaverse. We look forward to updating the market on our progress, including launch partners, in the coming months.”
For more information on ENGAGE, visit their website, or follow them on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.