Article reprint source: Metaverse IP Encyclopedia
Original source: White Whale Out to Sea
Author: Xin Tong
In addition to the basic configurations of virtual social products such as character displacement, Avatar system, and distance-based voice interaction, the magic of ParaSpace lies in allowing users to "clone the Avatar of nearby users with one click." With one application and one consent, users can immediately obtain all the other party's costumes for free.
There are many apps that help users create a second identity, and there are also apps that clone the user's real image, but there are indeed not many products like ParaSpace that allow users to directly become anyone they want to be.
ParaSpace is a multi-person Avatar interactive social app. I don’t know if it is a coincidence that it has the same name as the well-known Web3 project.
According to Diandian Data, since its launch in March this year, ParaSpace has received a total of 186,000 downloads, of which more than 50% came from the United States, and the rest mostly came from Southeast Asia and Europe.
Cloning, skills and teleportation, ParaSpace's innovative attempts
In a sense, ParaSpace may be more like a game.
ParaSpace sets up three systems: world, room and Avatar. The world contains rooms, rooms contain users, users can have multiple Avatars, and different Avatars may have different skills.
ParaSpace provides three interesting gameplays: "Portal, Avatar Cloning and Avatar Skills".
(1) Cloning: After a user selects a world and enters a room, he or she can directly apply to "clone" another user's Avatar. Once the other party agrees, the user can obtain the Avatar and replace it immediately.
The introduction of “clone mode” allows interesting Avatars to be spread more widely and quickly.
(2) The setting of the portal allows users to interact with each other across scenes and rooms. When a user jumps directly from one room to another, the user only needs to establish a portal between the two rooms and complete the transfer through the portal within 120 seconds.
During the process, the portal is visible to all users in the room, and users in two rooms can travel through each other. In fact, when I was evaluating other virtual social apps, I encountered a situation where "I had a good chat with a user but I was not familiar enough to add him as a friend, but I wanted to try another scene, but when I returned to the room, the other person had disappeared, so I was forced to lose contact."
(3) The emergence of special skills makes the Avatar more closely connected to the scene. For example, Transformers can transform into cars, dancers can attract butterflies by dancing, tigers can jump, and dragons can breathe fire.
In addition, since ParaSpace provides many different types of virtual scenes, different Avatar requirements may arise. For example, on the beach, users may need a bikini, in the jungle they may need a cross-country suit, and in the snowy mountains they may need a down jacket.
In addition, different Avatars are given different interactive effects, which allows social interaction to be smoothly integrated with virtual images and scenes.
The richness of appearance and the special skills that Avatars may hide provide motivation for users to create, collect, purchase and socialize with Avatars.
One painting, one world, connecting scenes and Avatars
According to different usage needs, the ParaSpace world map is divided into five major categories: chatting, games, images, strolling, and movies. But in fact, there may be subcategories such as music, dance, LiveHouse, etc. under the major categories. The world is divided into two types: created by the official ParaSpace Studio of the platform (PGC) and created spontaneously by users (UGC).
The scenes include Chinese architecture, Japanese architecture, swimming pools, islands, villas, squares, ships, trains, clouds, forests, playgrounds, cinemas, bars, deserts, classrooms, bedrooms, grasslands, iron towers, castles and many other types.
Moreover, there may be different settings in different worlds. Taking the game world as an example, there are already games such as "blind date, escape room, hide and seek, and racing". The games are usually simple but the settings are relatively complete, and most games require at least two people to start, focusing on the interaction between two people.
Before entering a world, users can view basic information such as the world's cover, name, current number of online users, and cumulative number of likes.
When users click on a world, they can view detailed information such as the traffic required to load the scene, the open range, creation time, update time, number of favorites and likes, etc. They can also see the creator's introduction and regulations for the world.
After selecting a world, users can view the number of public rooms currently online and choose the room they are interested in. They can quickly join a room or create their own room. However, in either form, users cannot change the scene decoration in the room. Users have three main ways of interaction in the room: cloning and obtaining Avatar, character interaction, and taking photos.
(1) Clone the Avatar.
Users can move freely in the virtual scene. When they see an Avatar that they are interested in, they can get close to it and apply to clone the other party's Avatar. Once the other party agrees, the copy is successful and the user can try it on immediately.
Based on my experience in the world, the vast majority of users do not mind having their Avatar cloned, and the response rate for cloning applications during the trial period was 100%.
There are many types and image designs of Avatars. For example, the Avatars I obtained through cloning include Transformers, Elf Tigers, Charizards, Dinosaurs, Japanese Girls, Ninjas, Robots, Samurai, Dancers, Statues, etc. There are also users who have created Avatars of related IPs such as "Detective Conan, Monster Darlings, Spirited Away, Demon Slayer", etc. However, I don’t know if there may be potential copyright disputes involved here.
In addition to cloning Avatars, users can also purchase them in stores, copy fixed Avatars in scenes, or create Avatars themselves through Unity. Each user has a maximum of 25 Avatars. When all quotas are used up, users can delete existing Avatars. Users can also select up to 6 of their favorite Avatars to display on the homepage.
To encourage users to create their own worlds and Avatars, ParaSpace has set up creation streams on multiple pages. Users can create worlds by downloading Unity and using the plug-ins recommended by ParaSpace.
(2) Character interaction.
In addition to basic interaction settings such as adding friends for private chat, text group chat in the room, and automatically generating a voice room when approaching, ParaSpace also introduces expression interaction, two-person interaction, and action interaction.
Emoji expressions include clown, cool, question, peeking, sad, drinking tea, angry, holding a gun, stunned, happy, laughing and crying. When the user clicks to send the expression, the Emoji will be displayed above the user's head.
In terms of action interaction settings, in addition to the basic actions commonly used in virtual social apps, such as waving, dancing, getting angry, bowing, and clapping, different Avatars under ParaSpace may also have exclusive actions, such as Transformers can transform from robots to cars, dragons can fly, tigers can jump long distances, dancers can attract butterflies, etc. Users can switch Avatars at any time and interact with users through corresponding actions.
ParaSpace currently only has three two-person actions set up, including holding hands, hugging, and high-fives. Two-person actions require two people to complete them together.
In fact, in addition to character interaction, ParaSpace provides interactions with the environment such as sitting down and picking up surrounding objects. In the escape room space in the game world, users can also use a magnifying glass to view clues and start dancing on a dance mat in the dance room.
Compared with similar products, ParaSpace's Avatar is more convenient to interact with scenes. Users do not need to search for suitable actions one by one. The system will automatically recommend the actions that best suit the current scene.
(3) Take photos.
Users can record the images of themselves and other users in the room by taking photos. During the photo-taking process, users can adjust the angle and direction of the camera at any time, choose the first-person or third-person perspective, and choose standard photo taking or tripod photo taking.
In addition, users can also set the camera to display their own information, strangers, friends, avatar nameplates, etc., and can also adjust the portrait size and depth of field. A variety of settings help users take more satisfactory photos.
Although ParaSpace has only been online for a short time, it has proposed a good solution in terms of social perfection and content interaction scenarios. Although ParaSpace has not yet started to monetize, from a commercial perspective, it is entirely possible to set up payment points on the Avatar in the "clone mode". Although the scale is not large, ParaSpace is already a relatively interesting virtual social product seen recently, and its idea of introducing game functions into social products is worth learning from. The integration of social and games may be more obvious in Internet products in the future.
However, ParaSpace may still need to continue working hard to increase its user base and lower the threshold for creation.
In rhythm, gentle growth
ParaSpace is currently conducting marketing promotions through multiple channels including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Currently, ParaSpace has 2,741 Instagram followers, 1,628 Facebook followers, 8,742 TikTok followers, and 72.9 million views of#ParaSpacerelated videos. It has released 42 videos on YouTube and has accumulated 1,020 followers. Although the channels are basically covered, the results are not very good.
However, it is worth mentioning that ParaSpace has done a very good job in user operations in the Discord community. If users want to join its Discord, they need to first answer three questions: "From which channel did you learn about ParaSpace, which geographical area are you from, and do you want to know new things about the product?" The system will set different identity tags for the user based on the user's answers and place them in different communities, so that users can establish connections with similar users more quickly and learn about ParaSpace.
According to the survey results displayed on Discord, the three channels through which users know ParaSpace the most are TikTok, ParaSpace official website and Instagram.
Currently, 11,900 users have joined the ParaSpace Discord community, which is a good result among virtual social products. However, this may be because ParaSpace's Avatar contains a large number of two-dimensional elements. The community stickiness is very high. There are more than a thousand users online in almost every time period, and almost every time you open the chat channel, there are users with two-dimensional avatars chatting.
ParaSpace is capturing more and more loyal users with a moderate growth rate.