Ariana Grande’s collaboration with Fortnite is set to briefly transform battle arenas into virtual concert arenas. This momentary de-gamified experience feeds into wider needs for traditional offline experience to digitise themselves and for virtual spaces to evolve.

The Sandbox’s partnership with Snoop Dogg has introduced a previously detached community to the blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse. With emerging metaverses competing for users as interest grows, how important will established celebrities, brands, and intellectual property be?

As the reality of the metaverse comes nearer, companies are attempting to create a way into that world. Facebook is well placed to create an accessible entry point to the next level of the internet and Horizon is its attempt to offer an immersive VR world for socializing, home working, and beyond.

NFTs have become the buzz of the art world in 2021, but even though there’s so much art, there are few places to view it. Virtual reality galleries like Spatial are providing these online cultural spaces for people to access artworks, signaling how leisure activities can traverse from IRL to VR.