Epic Games’ India GM on why interactive, 3D content will be key in metaverse

The metaverse will be creator-driven with new storytelling experiences and for brands to ex in this space, interactive content will be crucial. That’s how Epic Games views the next version of the internet, according to Quentin Staes-Polet, its general manager for India and South-East Asia.
Most crucially, Epic is hoping that its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 game development software could be a key to building many of these hyper-realic and interactive experiences of the future. Unreal Engine 5 will let companies and creators build games and other real-time content, though it is still in the testing phase. The software is supposed to offer advances in real-time rendering and make it easier to create hyper-realic scenarios.

One example of such interactive content that the company has already showcased is the technical demonstration of the Matrix movie, built entirely on Unreal Engine 5. This experience recreated an interactive version of the film and was available for players on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Everything from camera angles to actors to the sequence of shots to the set was created digitally in this demo.
“This is a fully interactive and immersive content environment that we would use for a game and it is being used to create a high-quality cinematic experience,” Staes-Polet told and added that this was done without having a set or any actors. Players on PS5 or Xbox Series X/S could interact with all the elements in it, be it the cars, the buildings, etc.
Epic thinks such interactive experiences will define how story-telling evolves. More importantly, interactivity will be valued more than photo-realism. According to Epic’s India GM, the company’s Unreal Engine will make it very easy for brands to create such experiences, and could take over the traditional non-real-time rendering process that is currently used to create movies. “We can use these tools in Unreal Engine 5 to create interactive content because that’s what games are,” he said.
He also gave examples of platforms such as Roblox and Minecraft and how they provide fantastic engagement with the consumers who spend hours on them, stressing that this was driven due to interactive elements and not because of photorealism.
Quentin Staes-Polet, Epic Games’ general manager for India and South-East Asia.
Regarding the metaverse, he admitted there is no clear definition just yet, but added that Epic has some thoughts on it. He stressed that the metaverse will need to be a creator economy, without sacrificing user privacy or forcing them to consume ads. In the metaverse, microtransactions could drive many of the payments.

“The other thing is that we think that it should be an open space,” he said and added that open standards will be crucial in order to allow innovation in the metaverse and that brands cannot afford to be locked into one platform.
Epic also thinks 3D content will define the metaverse. Staes-Polet gave the example of SketchFab, a 3D platform they have acquired and how it has over six million users. “We think in three to four years, people won’t just take videos and pictures; they’ll scan stuff. We believe that over the next five years between the hardware and the software solutions, 3D will become as freely available and as common as video and pictures are at moment,” he said.