OCBC’s metaverse branch shows virtualisation is tough

SINCE lenders started offering fixed deposits that pay more than the Central Provident Fund, many have complained about how long it takes to be served at a bank.

Even with those long queues, however, a physical OCBC branch is probably still easier to access than the bank’s newly opened branch in the metaverse. And, for now at least, the physical branch is still far more functional.

On Apr 5, OCBC opened its newest branch: OCBCx65Chulia.

Located in Decentraland, a virtual world, the branch is built in the shape of OCBC’s logo. That shape, unfortunately, makes the space difficult to navigate. The path that a user has to manoeuvre is narrow and tricky, and the shortcuts to click on are unintuitive.

Lest anyone attribute my poor experience to my own incompetence, I asked several other colleagues – including younger ones – to take a walk through OCBCx65Chulia too. The user experience was described, variously, as slow, glitchy, and even a bit disappointing.

One colleague recounted that, after navigating the gauntlet of OCBC’s history, he reached a small room where he expected to use the bank’s services. What he found, instead, was a link to the bank’s website.

Undoubtedly, there are many limitations – from infrastructure to software and regulation – that prevent OCBC from offering too much at its metaverse branch.

Still, it can’t be a good thing if visitors are left wondering about the purpose of the virtual branch. As another colleague put it: Why would OCBC customers or Decentraland users be interested in dropping by just to read what employees are saying about the bank?

Bold first move

To be fair, OCBC is breaking some new ground. While DBS was first to sign an agreement with The Sandbox to develop a metaverse space, OCBC is the first local bank to get its metaverse initiative up and running.

Besides offering information about the lender, the branch also offers a short financial literacy quiz, as well as links for users to sign up for accounts and other financial products.

This is a bold step for a Singapore bank, but perhaps OCBC could have afforded to have more features ready at launch.

A day before OCBCx65Chulia debuted, asset manager Fidelity International launched a Decentraland outpost. But it has more games and activities to hook users with, and an incentive system to keep them coming back.

Changi Airport Group has gone a slightly different route in its virtualisation, creating a digital version of its airport in the popular online game Roblox.

Roblox already had 53.8 million daily active users in the fourth quarter of 2022. More than half are under 13 years old, and about three-quarters of them, under 18.

The recreation of Changi Airport in the Roblox universe includes a go-kart racing game. The player with the fastest race time each month gets a pair of plane tickets. Singapore players can fly anywhere that is accessible via a direct flight from the city-state; foreign players can win tickets to fly to Singapore. This contest is slated to run for the next six months.

OCBC has said it is rolling out gamification features in the third quarter of 2023, tapping a winning hackathon idea by a student team from Nanyang Polytechnic’s School of Media and Design.

What comes after the games, though?

Even if Fidelity’s metaverse property is more exciting, what benefit does that bring to the company? And why does Changi Airport need to court Roblox users?

The bigger picture

Even as OCBC commits to building up its metaverse presence, other companies are easing off on their ambitions in the virtual space.

Facebook operator Meta has announced layoffs in its division focused on the metaverse, Reality Labs. Entertainment group The Walt Disney Company was reported last month to have eliminated its metaverse division as part of larger layoff plans. Software maker Microsoft has reportedly also stopped work on its industrial metaverse project.

User reviews of various metaverse experiences have generally been in line with my own experience of OCBC’s attempt: glitches have proven tough to solve, the user experience is mostly unexciting, and interest is very limited.

The total value of all land in the metaverse has fallen 4 per cent over the past year to US$830.3 million, according to analytics from WeMeta. The number of average concurrent players is down 4.2 per cent to 701.

The median sale price of a plot in Decentraland has fallen from above US$8,285.87 on Apr 18, 2022, to a little under US$1,951.73 on Apr 10, 2023. At The Sandbox, another virtual world, prices have fallen from US$5,366.46 to US$741.51 in the same period.

It is too early to tell whether this metaverse bet will pay off for OCBC, but any investment in an online world will come with risks.

And an early hit is no guarantee of future success. The child-friendly Club Penguin, for instance, shuttered in 2017 due to declining user numbers. Fidelity too seems to have shuttered its Decentraland outpost.

For investors, the metaverse is perhaps best seen as a branding exercise for OCBC, rather than a customer-acquisition campaign.