Virtual Worlds and its impact during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Thanesharan Arasu

Internship Duration: August 10, 2020 - February 28, 2021

School: Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation

The date is 31st December 2019. A new virus has sprung up in Wuhan, China and local authorities claim clusters of  “pneumonia of unknown causes”. Little did they know, this virus would become one of the largest pandemic in recent time. The Covid-19 virus quickly spread around the world at an alarming rate. Cases began to spike worldwide and panic ensued. Governments around the world with the collaboration of the World Health Organization (WHO) decide to proceed into a complete lockdown. Which entails no travel between countries and no domestic travel. On 18 March 2020, Malaysia began the implementation of the movement control order. This meant people were not allowed to leave their houses. Exceptions were made for food and other basic needs. But, in general most facilities such as gyms,bars,concerts and any type of physical events were shut down. This was the beginning of a long and strenuous process of readjusting to the new “norm”.

Now with millions of people at home without a way to work, many companies started to shift to a work-from-home business model. This is where the first step to the virtual worlds began. Online communication applications such as Skype, Discord, Microsoft Teams and Zoom started to see a huge uptick in daily users. People were now sharing information and communicating through these virtual platforms. Due to the rise in usage, these apps were continuously updated and improved to provide better services and new features to users. Slowly but surely many companies around the world were getting used to their workforce working from home. This did bring its own challenges as many people were experiencing fatigue and  lack of motivation from staying at home all day. 

Education also turned to online classes to replace in-person classes. From primary schools to universities, all education levels were affected by the lockdown. Zoom and Microsoft Teams became quick favorites for teachers and students alike as it offered key features that allowed teachers and lecturers to run their classes efficiently. Students and teachers also faced difficulties in learning from home as many students suffered from lack of motivation as well.

Live events such as concerts,conventions,sports events and many more took the hardest hit as people were not allowed to gather in mass. Even religious places of worship were closed down to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Virtual worlds played a key role in keeping these industries afloat. One example of a creative way to have a virtual concert was done by the team at Epic Games to produce the Fortnite Travis Scott Event. This event took place in the game Fortnite and took advantage of all its gameplay mechanics to produce one of the most interesting and fun online concert experiences to date. Another good example of a virtual event is the Tiger Beer Virtual Street Food Experience. This project was spearheaded by MinistryXR and our goal was to recreate an annual event by Tiger into a virtual space where people could order food ,play games and earn vouchers. The entire experience runs on the web browser so more people can join in without any downloading of apps. This world was created with MXRave which is a WebVR Multiplayer Open World Platform solution created by MinistryXR. This experience was also meant to recreate the social element of an event with users being able to communicate with other users with prompts. Events like this are the beginning steps to a more seamless and interactive online event experience. 

Gaming saw a huge spike as millions of people were now spending most of their time indoors. People were now spending more time in these virtual worlds and also spending money. Games that were based on virtual social spaces started to gain more popularity and companies were constantly updating to keep up with demand.

This included games such as SecondLife, Habbo Hotel, VRChat, Minecraft and many more.Conventional PC and console games also gained users during the pandemic period and during that time two new consoles from Xbox and Playstation were released. This came with its own issues as chip manufacturers around the world were not able to keep up with demand as people were spending more on consumer electronics. Cars manufacturers were affected by this shortage as they needed the chips for their on-board electronics. This is all going on while companies have to follow strict Covid-19 rules to prevent an accidental cluster. 

The idea of a seamless virtual world is not very far away. With the release of the Oculus Quest 2, the price of a good VR experience is now available at an affordable price of $299. This can only improve from here and systems are getting better and are able to run bigger and more detailed 3D worlds. A Ready Player One type experience might not be so far into the future as we think and  we as a society have to be aware of the potential dangers it might bring. Whether it’s a privacy issue or just losing a sense of what reality really is, We have to be ready when it grows and companies will have to be held accountable for any wrongdoing. We witness this with Google and Facebook selling user data to gain a profit. Now we have to be ready for any future threats to our safety and privacy. But fortunately with time and competent legislation, we will be able to build our utopia.