Why Non-Gaming Brands Need 3D Gaming Content

Introduction

I'm the CEO of Dubit. We help brands engage with Gen Z and Alpha customers inside of Roblox, Fortnite, and Zapetto. But Roblox is our dominant platform today. What we're trying to do is help brands build meaningful relationships with future customers, not just by awareness and simple advertising, but how we get fans of the brand.

Creating 3D Content for Non-Gaming Brands

We do build games, but games in Roblox. We recently launched a game for NASCAR, which is very popular and going well. 

We're building fun zones that might be inside of other popular games on Roblox. Recently, we've built such zones for the Cricket World Cup.

We've also created 3D stores and thousands of virtual 3D clothes items for Adidas. There's a very wide opportunity for non-game-themed assets, whether it's fun zones, virtual clothes, installations, or activities inside already popular games. We've done events for Charlie XCX and Samsung and some BAFTAs in Roblox. These are not games; they're social music experiences.

Why Non-Gaming Brands Order the Production of 3D Gaming Content

There are only 24 hours in a day, so if you're spending time playing a game or doing something else, that's time that you're not watching TV, for example. And we've seen TV viewing for Gen Z and Alpha massively drop. If you're a brand and you want to reach this audience who are spending more time inside, whether it's games or immersive experiences, how do you do that?

What you see here is the natural excitement from brands to be able to reach Gen Z and Alpha inside the immersive worlds where they've been spending time for a long time, but brands have never been able to get there in a meaningful way.

We're all familiar with the ads inside mobile games, but nobody likes them because they disrupt the game experience. If we create a fun zone for a brand like the Cricket World Cup inside already popular games and give away loads of amazing cool 3D merchandise, clothes, and accessories, that's just fun and actually is appreciated by Gen Z and Alpha.

We've built an amazing NASCAR game inside of Roblox, but no one's experience is being interrupted by an ad to visit it. It sounds cool, you can hang out and play in a NASCAR world. It's not forcing advertising onto you in a way that hurts the experience and that, therefore, is very appealing to brands.

Non-Gaming Brands vs Game Developers

With Roblox, you've literally got 30 seconds because somebody can just leave. There's no installing a game. So, the way you think about onboarding and design is very different, and how you keep players coming back also differs greatly.

Demand for 3D & Virtual Experiences from Non-Gaming Companies

A lot of brands are very interested in 3D content. We track how many branded campaigns there are, and they are growing quickly year on year because they are where consumers are. Brands will spend money broadly in proportion to where consumers spend time now.

I think what we're seeing with platforms like Roblox and Fortnite is the potential for small teams of people to create, whether it's games or virtual fashion, be innovative, and be rewarded.

We've created 5,000 virtual clothes in the last 6 months to sell inside Roblox, and of course, 5,000 sounds like a lot, but actually, Roblox players bought 2.2 billion virtual clothes last year.

How Prices Are Formed

There are different models. Generally, there's some creation cost based on the number of hours it takes to build an experience. We usually suggest that most brands integrate or partner with existing popular games. The reason is if you partner with a game that already has a lot of players, you reach people very easily, so you can engage their audience. Secondly, you do not have to build your own amazing game and game loop to win people over. You say that I'm going to put a fun zone, a space. I'm going to sponsor this experience for three months because that's how brands are used to advertising.

What Makes a Price Unreasonably Low or High

Prices in our field can vary significantly due to the nature of the platform we work with. Since we're developing for a simpler 3D engine like Roblox, the costs tend to be on the lower end compared to more traditional game development. The scope of the project plays a major role in determining the price - smaller tasks, like creating individual items, might cost around $50, while larger projects, such as building entire games, can run into the hundreds of thousands. The range is broad, and it's largely driven by the complexity of the work and the specific needs of the project.

The Market for 3D Content for Brands in 5 Years

I think what we see with generative AI is very similar here for user-created 3D. It's making it easier to code, create 3D and 2D assets, etc. You can imagine a world where millions more people can start to create and publish very soon. That's sort of what we think the future is. That's the story we talked to brands about, and we're in the early days of a kind of YouTube for 3D on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite.

We're at the point where it's becoming easy enough for anyone, in theory, to create 3D content and experiences. When you think about opportunities for 3D artists, there are games because games are 3D, but the reality is there are many people who enjoy shopping and hanging out. There are experiences on Roblox that are virtual shops that make tens of millions of dollars a year.

Matthew Warneford, CEO at Dubit