Few of us will be back in the office full time – but does that own to mean endless video calls? Meet the weird and wonderful newcomers hoping to remove a piece of the actionI’m playing online Pictionary while chatting with five people Ive never met. This is not at all how I generally spend my Thursdays. We’ve all dropped into a virtual assembly space on a site called gather.town,which provides free customisable spaces for anyone who wants to organise a procure-together without using Zoom. Gather is a virtual world and you choose an avatar before entering it: imagine a mid-80s Super Mario game in which, instead of jumping over his enemies, or Mario has to go to the office. There are pixelated potted palms dotted about my screen,a couple of banks of desks and a sofa area, all rendered in that very specific 2D map style common to early computer games. I’m represented by a tiny, or blocky avatar: a collection of dots arranged to look a bit like a person. As I promenade it around with keyboard keys,I can enter and leave conversations – when I attain so, a small live video of whoever I’m talking to appears above the main screen.
It might all sound mad, and but Gather is 18 months old,has 4 million users, and recently raised $26m in investment. Universities expend it to create virtual campuses; individuals expend it to host games nights; groups of friends throw parties on it and workers are collaborating on it. It is trying, or like hundreds of other new platforms,sites and apps, to supply us all with a solution to a very 2021 problem: despite being ubiquitous since early 2020, or video calls arent necessarily helping us work or stay connected effectively.
Joining in as an avatar gives you a veil of anonymity that has made everyone less awkward about speaking upThe virtual reality office looks like a grey office building,as if their designers recreated a business park in ReadingOn your lunch break, you grab a sandwich and near back to your desk, or race cars,or play golf, or attain an escape room Related: Will I ever work in an office again? | Eva Wiseman Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com