Gen Z, moving between virtual and reality

Gen Z, moving between virtual and reality | Passcode Z

电通创意

2021-09-27

导读：Virtual vs reality, Gen Z prefer real experiences.

Passcode Z, a column written by dentsu Z, focuses on China’ s digitally savvy young consumers. As dentsu’s pioneering force of Gen Z young creatives, dentsu Z proactively explores innovative ideas by putting cutting-edge technology into practice and creates deep cultural experiences to connect the brand and the consumers of the next generation.

A few days ago, the whole dentsu Z team went to see the movie ‘Free Guy’. Well, we have to say, the love story of the programmers is so romantic and yet expensive. While our art friend has been counting the numbers of equipment used to create the modules...

In short, ‘Free Guy’ is a combination of ‘Ready Player One’, ‘The Truman Show’ and ‘Westworld’ in which a non-player character called Guy, the world's first self-aware AI, saved the virtual world.

What impressed us most is that Guy becomes the idol of all Free City players after crazy leveling up with some buff (no spoiler). Think it over, isn't it currently the most discussed virtual idol?

So today, let's have a talk on virtual idol and virtual world.

Is virtual idol really popular among Gen Z?

Let’s start with the big data. From iiMedia’s report, the value of China's virtual idol industry in 2020 was RMB 3.46 billion, increasing by 70.3% year on year and expected to reach 6.22 billion in 2021. We saw great development from Luo Tianyi, the one and only virtual singer, to the rising and popular digital human.

Then let’s have a survey on people around us. J*e (he asked for anonymous) the bigger bro in our Z team says he spent the whole day last Saturday on Bilibili watching some uploaders’ videos. Yes, right the whole day! If you ask him what Vtuber he is following, he will keep recommending his favorite Vtuber…

The recent ‘earthquake’ in entertainment industry and the idols’ scandals impelled some of our friends to start following virtual idols instead of real idols. With the virtual invasion into real life, virtual idols are full of possibilities and have become the new favorite of Gen Z.

How many types of virtual idols?

Post-pandemic, virtual idols have become the new money maker. We find ourselves following different types of virtual idols.

Hyper realistic virtual idols

Ling, a virtual oriental influencer created in combination of technology and traditional Chinese style, has been featured in variety shows, magazines and brand endorsements. She aslo collaborated with several brands such as Tesla, Tissot and Nayuki Tea.

Real celebrity transformed to virtual idol

Virtual anchor Nanako on Bilibili, reached 6 million views within 25 minutes’ live streaming which immediately made it No.1 on the platform’s popularity list.

What's surprising is that this self-proclaimed little sweetie turns out to be Cai Ming, a well-known 60-year-old actress!

Real uploader turned into virtual idol

Lingyuan Yousa,a virtual idol on Bilibili, changed from a normal uploader to an animated virtual anchor. The number of her fans quickly increased from 1.4 million to 3 million.

Real celebrities’ virtual images

Celebrity Huang Zitao launched a cross-dimensional image ZTAO’S MAN, while actress Dilraba’s virtual image is called Lengba_action. However, these two images did not show up very often and gained less popularity (Huang and Dilraba’s fans please forgive us…they are still YYDS).

Virtual idol group

The virtual idol girl group A-SOUL (see pic above) created by Yue Hua Entertainment, debuted less than a year ago, but each of them has generated over 1 million fans on WeChat, and their offline concerts are also always crowded with fans. (We have to say Hua the owner of Yue Hua, is really good at making money [thumbs up])

How is virtual world going?

Gen Z, the digital natives, are unconsciously moving between virtual and reality every day. The evolution of technology provides various new visions for creativity, which in turn changes the presentation and evidence of technology. The Cyberspace built and enabled by VR technology extends our senses and the strong sense of presence gives us new experiences.

As the metaverse shown in Free Guy, players enter a new world in the game, while the UGC ecology allows users to have a personalized virtual experience in the metaverse which meets Gen Z’s unique personalities. Facebook, Tencent and ByteDance all started to deploy the metaverse, ushering in a new era of the Internet.

In August 2021, Ariana Grande held five concerts in eSports Fortnite (see pic above). This immersive online experience upgrade enabled tens of millions of netizens to dance with Ariana Grande in the virtual world. In collaboration with Chinese rock band New Pants, all Moles are dancing in the Mole's World to celebrate the opening!

‘THE9 City of Virtual & Reality XR Live Concert’ created by iQIYI allows fans to create their own virtual images and personalized dress up, and have an immersive experience in the virtual concert with fans around the world, to interact and even play games.

Virtual vs reality, we prefer real experiences.

In real life, we pay for virtual idols while in the virtual world we experience the pleasure of parallel time and space. Nowadays, it is not just virtual invading into reality, but also reality has started to invade virtuality. The boundary between virtual and real is getting more and more blurred. Eventually, they will blend.

For Gen Z, we have been freely switching the dimensional world between virtual and real since birth. We don't care who transmits the information, but more about the information itself and the real experience. Compared to virtual, we want the truth more.

We are ending with 6 posters by the leading actor Ryan Reynolds to celebrate Free Guy’s sales breaking 600 million. Congratulations!