How the Metaverse Downturn is Benefitting Digital Designers

Avatar company Genies, valued at $1 billion, has set aside $500,000 to incentivise creators to make digital fashion for its platform, making it the latest company to invest in fostering digital fashion talent.
 
Called the Fashion Engagement Fund, the project comes with a new set of 3D design tools and creative prompts under an umbrella called ‘The Workshop’. The goal is to enable independent creators to design, release and earn money from their digital fashion designs, similar to how Roblox creators can currently sell digital designs on the platform. Future prompts will include co-creation opportunities with cultural personalities such as singer Banks, artist Amber Park, singer Au/Ra, style influencer Clara Perlmutter (known as @tinyjewishgirl on TikTok) and others. For example, when an artist releases a new album, a prompt might invite creators to make pieces that are inspired by the album’s theme.
 
The Genies ecosystem is considerably less mature compared to other avatar companies, including Bitmoji, Ready Player Me, Roblox and Meta’s avatars, especially in terms of where the avatars are used and what they wear. However, a 2022 investment of $150 million suggests the investment community sees considerable opportunity. Nigam says the funding has enabled Genies to fast-track its roadmap, which is centred on multiple user-created “minigames” whose assets are interoperable, meaning that the clothing and other digital items created for any of the Genies mini games work in other games created in the Genies platform. It started with the Silver Studio game, where a primarily Gen Z female audience create, wear and thrift digital fashion with their peers. More games are planned by the end of the year, and the fashion and other assets created for each game will be usable in all the other games. The announcement of the Fashion Engagement Fund comes off the heels of Genies’s $1 million Developer Engagement Fund, which rewards developers who build their own games using the Genies developer kit.
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Source: Vogue Business