Jackie Lee
⚛️

Jackie Lee

Hours
15
Expertise
Metaverse
Mentor
Brian Felsen
Day ONE
March 17, 2022
End Date
June 12, 2022
Presence
Active
Telegram

MIT CS Ph.D. ⚛️

🌌
Blue Metaverse Workgroup

- Metaverse, WebXR, Oculus

(added free keys for Oculus Quest apps)

GDC 2022 Takeaways
  • [Blockchain game] Play-to-“Earn” may not stay long in the game industry. Play-to-Earn game play is backfired by the game dev community. The “Earn” pre-sets users’ expectation and their emotion journey. This draws a different crowd.
  • [Blockchain game] Games look asked for tokenomic design supports. Game devs interested in integrating NFTs and tokens frequently asked about Harmony’s help on tokenomics.
    • Skillz e-Sports platform
  • [BAYC] Bored Ape owners want to see their apes living in games and videos. Multiple BAYC owners request to have their apes appearing in the 3D games and videos when they saw the Blue Ape Unreal Engine demo.
  • [Metaverse] Games are one kind of experiences in the metaverse. There can be a variety of metaverse activities including playing games.
  • [Metaverse] Live performances are coming to the metaverse, including:
    • Alex’s VR immersive theaters with actors’ live performance
    • Virtual idol events = virtual idols (Ryan and few others, TODO: find contact) + metaverse stage (can be supported by the Blue Metaverse infrastructure)
    • Mocap full-body
      • [suit + room] OpticTrack
      • [video-based AI] Plasko
      • [real-time video-based full-body motion sensing] P.K. Chan, pk@nex.inc, https://www.nex.games/
  • [Metaverse] Metaverse is empty and let’s fill it.
  • [AR] Remixing the real world
  • [NFT game-related] Let’s combine gaming and NFTs
  • [Game dev tool]
April 2022 deliverables

Metaverse Creator Toolkit prototyping and planning, Blue Metaverse NFT game showcase, Blue Metaverse experience planning and showcases. 70/100/100

Off-site 1x yes + 1-pager execution plan

Jackie: Metaverse Tools: Wix-like UX for enabling NFT collectors and creators to set up web-based 3D meetup spaces pre-built with customizable environments and popular web3 utilities (e.g., .crazy.one ids, membership NFT minting, NFT collection, token-gated access and privacy control). Metaverse is a growing area with NFT community’s full attention. 50% of the OpenSea Top 20 NFT holders will be early 3D metaverse residents (i.e., Yuga Lab’s The Otherside treasure hunt game and Nike RTFKT OnCyber’s creator galleries and events).

Metaverse Tools
May 2022 deliverables

Metaverse webxr + gamefi prototyping, Harmony metaverse ecosystem support, Blue Metaverse experience showcases. 90/70/100

  • Metaverse tool that maximizes web3 commerce in 3d worlds. Integrating popular web3 utilities into webxr games and experiences: ENS, .crazy.one, NFT minting, erc20 room currency, and in-game mini-marketplace.
  • Harmony metaverse ecosystem support and facilitation, including 1MusicDAO, Heavenue, VeVerse, Skullapes (launch grantee)
  • Blue Metaverse showcases x 8 (out of 8 planned)

Join our TGI-Metaverse weekly showcase Telegram group, see event detail here:

June 2022 deliverables

[NFT NYC, 6/15-24] WebXR FPS + treasure hunt 3D game template dev, Skullape NFT game dev support (Harmony Grantee), verifiable in-game activity prototype. 80/90/30%

July 2022 deliverables

Aug 2022 deliverables

Skullape NFT game launch support (Harmony Grantee), WebXR FPS NFT game platform dev, 1k users. 0/0/0%

Sep 2022 deliverables

WebXR FPS game template platform growth, Skullape NFT game dev support (Harmony Grantee), tgi-metaverse event growth. 0/0/0%

Bio

Jackie Lee, Ph.D (MIT Media Lab ‘11 in Affective Computing) is a hands-on software and hardware builder navigating the boundary between what is possible and what can be possible. Jackie has been creating and inventing technologies to understand human emotions (since his MIT time) and visualize abstract ideas (since ‘17 when ScienceVR was founded). He has been exploring the next generation of learning with storytelling, simulation, and immersive experiences focusing on topics like science and history. “I see the future before my eyes.” - one of ScienceVR users commented. ScienceVR connects the source of knowledge directly to the end user with enhanced immersion. However, the most limiting factor of growing VR usages has been its hardware usability.

Jackie lives and breathes in the metaverse (VR/WebXR) since the pandemic. In 2020, the world became virtual and remote mostly powered by internet-connected personal workstations. This phenomenon shifted Jackie’s mindset about virtual workspaces and digital lifestyles. Why not taking advantage of the most prevailing infrastructure - the web browsers (available on both desktop and mobile) to deliver learning experiences? Jackie and the ScienceVR team have been prototyping such virtual experiences into 30+ virtual events for about 20-30 attendees participating in talks, escape room games, treasure hunts, theater performances, and meditation exercises in 2021. Each experience forms a mini informal social circle centering around a specific topic in history and science.

Jackie’s crypto journey started in summer ‘13 (plz do not ask him what happened from ‘13 to ‘20). Since 2021, it’s becoming more obvious that the virtual worlds need to be built on top of economics of ownership. This was when Jackie fully dived into web3 metaverse and became a believer of a digital lifestyle, i.e., a person can learn, create, and earn in a purely digital world regardless the person’s background, prior knowledge, age, and ethnicity. To understand how to draw web3 users into the metaverse, Jackie started collecting NFTs for getting into NFT communities and learning how web3 communities are bounded.

Jackie found the Harmony communities are bounded in a deeper way. So here he is.

Related links:

Here are 3 metaverse initiatives focusing on different aspects of shaping a web3 metaverse: emotional bounding (Blue Metaverse), tool enablement (creator toolkit), and community-based viral growth (MetaverseDAO).

1. Blue Metaverse (for emotional bounding)

What is Blue Metaverse? Or what is “metaverse”? I think anyone asking this question may need to put his/herself into a variety of metaverse. One’s metaverse definition likely represents one’s digital lifestyle.

Why Blue Metaverse? Why it needs a specialized focus on social and emotional bounding? Since metaverse is intrinsically social and spatial, most metaverse experiences are shaped by people and virtual environments. An interesting and memorable metaverse experience emerges when people become friends with shared interests while they share these precious moments. Blue Metaverse aims at emotional bounding formed during these moments. To catalyze emotional bounding within virtual environments, we need key human initiators who are able to trigger deep emotional resonance and metaverse interactivity to facilitate personalized experiences.

Blue Metaverse (in the next year) consists of digital festivals (rich immersive experiences) where people connect, find alignment, and form emotional bounding.

  • in 6 weeks (mid May)
    • Prototyping weekly metaverse small events (curated interactive experiences for 10-20 people, e.g., Metaverse Fridays)
    • designing metaverse interaction focusing on emotion bounding and social interaction
  • in 3 months (July)
    • Setting up monthly metaverse medium events (interactive experiences for up to 100 people)
    • Prototyping integration projects with Harmony partners (i.e., musicians, game studios, NFT collections)
  • end of 2021 (Dec)
    • Aligned and converging with the Harmony’s DAO-verse

Open questions about metaverse games vs. experiences:

  • The criteria of categorizing games and experiences will be based on emotional journey of storytelling instead of interactivity (because an experience can be very interactive like a transitional game).
  • The economics of games and experiences would be very different from the start. For experiences, creators can issue membership NFTs to define exclusive access of the experiences but do not degrade others’ experiences. For games, NFTs may be able to significantly influence gameplay that may also influence others’ experiences.

2. Metaverse Creator Toolkit (for more custom interactivity and a metaverse marketplace)

Metaverse is an enhanced social tool to provide rich expressions embodied within the virtual (2D/3D) environments. In other words, there will be more ways for more people to express themselves and more ways to be seen in the metaverse than in the real world. A toolkit is needed to empower custom expressions, especially for creators who have their own audiences but little knowledge of web3 and metaverse. Creators who provide storytelling and emotional experiences play key roles for engaging other metaverse users as well as supplying their creative works. There are existing web3 metaverse places for showcasing creative works such as Decentraland etc... However, most of them provides gallery-like passive experience and there are unfulfilled opportunities to provide more interactivity for engaging audiences with a custom emotional journey. This toolkit will evolve into a metaverse marketplace.

Metaverse Creator Toolkit (webxr) allows creators and developers to build and create custom interactive experiences with custom virtual places to catalyze emotional bounding between creators and their communities. Yuga Lab is planning to build a metaverse SDK (and using Unreal Engine rig as a snapshot).

(from Yuga Lab deck)
(from Yuga Lab deck)
  • in 6 weeks (mid May)
    • Prototyping emotional bounding activities and social interactions
    • Supporting weekly metaverse activities (e.g., virtual TGI events)
    • Streamlining metaverse games and experiences infrastructure with Harmony testnet (webxr and unreal engine pixel streaming)
  • in 3 months (July)
    • Integrating tokenomics and marketplace
  • end of 2021 (Dec)
    • Shipping a cross-chain metaverse in-game/in-experience marketplace (app store)

3. MetaverseDAO (for web3 metaverse communities)

MetaverseDAO provides a cross-metaverse governance at the toolkit (for new creator’s single/episodic metaverse experience) and at the protocol level (for existing metaverse). MetaverseDAO adoption should be viral because a successful experience within one community may enable community members to start their own community. In one year or so, Blue Metaverse and Metaverse Creator Toolkit will gradually converge into MetaverseDAO operation.

  • in 6 weeks (mid May)
    • Working with Harmony metaverse-related projects to specify avatar and wearable NFT interoperability and have two projects implement prototypes.
    • Defining cross-metaverse features (e.g., cross-chain avatar protocol, cross-chain ownership/license)
  • in 3 months (July)
    • Working with Harmony DAOs to use Metaverse Creator Toolkit for creating their own townhall spaces.
  • end of 2021 (Dec)
    • Launching MetaverseDAO governance token to self-sustain and support metaverse infrastructure.

References:

ScienceVR had an immersive bookchat virtual event series in webXR. This event series was nominated as “Event of the Year” in the Poly WebXR Award. During this series, a variety of event formats were tested, including talks, poetry reading, meditation, immersive theater, and treasure hunt games.

Timesheet 2022 - Jackie Lee

MonthDateTaskHours

Cultural Self Assessment

Cultural
Values
Read More
Self Assessment + Personal Story
Empathy
Communicative
conversation turn taking
5: I usually talk too much or listen too much.
disconfirm own beliefs
9: I learn from insights from others’ minds and am willing to update what I believe in.
self-aware & articulate
7: I have been becoming more articulate since starting using Notion.
Personal
share a drink
10: anytime
spend 10 hours daily together
nurture & mentor
Collaborative
make everyone shine
people over process
dare to disagree
Passion
Devoted
long-time craftsmanship
obsess over details
hungry & foolish
Aligned
share the mission
optimistic about flying off a cliff
your 50-year dream
Authentic
consistent with own actions
make tough decisions
admit mistakes
Excellence
Technical
top 1% superstar
effective tooling
relevant to our needs
Potential
10x growth
voracious learner
contrarian thinker
Impact
accomplish important work
activity < productivity
thrive in chaos