Fandom Activities, Metaverse... NFTs Revolutionizing Entertainment Fan Experiences

Dentsu Inc.'s Content Business Design Center is involved in various entertainment content businesses, including anime, film, live entertainment, and e-sports.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that activities like movies, live events, and other gatherings couldn't always be held in their usual forms. However, this also gave rise to new business models, such as virtual live events and virtual experiences.

Amidst this, " NFT (Non-Fungible Token) " garnered significant attention and was even nominated for the 2021 Buzzword of the Year award.

NFTs are a crucial technology that can transform content creation, expression, and even the nature of rights for creators, artists, and IP holders. Simultaneously, they are a technology poised to significantly change the fan experience for content.

This series will explore the digital transformation (DX) of creators, artists, and IP holders, as well as the DX of fan experiences in entertainment content leveraging blockchain and NFT technology, using concrete examples.

In this first installment, Takeda, who promotes NFT business at Dentsu Inc. CBDC (Content Business Design Center), discusses how NFTs are revolutionizing entertainment fan experiences.

*This series focuses on entertainment fan experiences, so technical and legal aspects of NFTs are covered minimally. For details, please inquire.

The Fan Goods Revolution

Have you ever purchased digital fan merchandise?

Digital fan goods might not immediately ring a bell, but LINE stickers featuring characters, smartphone wallpapers, in-app purchases for mobile games, or even skins and weapons bought with in-game currency could all be considered digital goods.

While many of us have purchased such digital items, we don't actually own them. This is because these digital goods depend on the platform providing them. If that platform were to stop offering them, these items would disappear from our possession.

NFTs are a mechanism on the internet that proves ownership.

This technology enables the transfer of ownership rights for digital items from seller to buyer. In other words, it makes " owning digital items " possible.

The Use of NFTs in Entertainment Content

Around spring 2021, news about NFTs became increasingly common. Most of these stories focused on "NFTs selling for astronomical prices!", with some fetching billions of yen.

These stories led to NFTs being featured daily across various media, rapidly increasing awareness. However, it also seems to have created an overly simplistic image of NFTs as "things that sell for high prices." Recently, voices suggesting "the NFT boom is just a passing fad" have also started to surface.

I want to change this common perception of NFTs.

Of course, feeling the "speculative value" when purchasing an NFT is an important motivation. However, I believe the more fundamental motivations lie in how owning an NFT can enhance fan satisfaction, serve as a way to express one's fandom, or act as proof of belonging to a community.

At Dentsu Inc. CBDC, we focus not on the NFT technology itself, but on how NFTs can make existing fan experiences more enjoyable and how they can deliver new fan experiences, thereby promoting NFT business.

The Potential of Fan Support Activities × NFT

Even in the anime field I work in, I believe NFTs can make " supporting your favorite things " – where anime fans cheer on works, characters, voice actors, creators, etc. – even more enjoyable.

Fundamentally, when anime fans purchase goods, they value not only the " thing " itself but also the "experience" value—such as gaining respect within the fan community or declaring their support for the same character—and the " moment" value, like wearing a concert T-shirt to enjoy the live event with a sense of unity.

By utilizing NFTs, this value of the object, the experience, and the moment can be expressed digitally.

For example, when a manga or anime becomes a huge hit, core fans want to say, "I was a fan before it became popular!" In this case, if there were an NFT distributed only with the first edition of Volume 1 of the comic, or an NFT given only to fans who watched every episode of the anime in real time, they could experience the joy of acquiring a rare "thing" from their beloved work. They could also receive digital proof that they were fans from the beginning and use it to showcase their "experience."

Imagine attending a virtual live event where you can dress your avatar in a limited-edition live T-shirt. Wouldn't it be sad if that data vanished the moment the event ended? Issuing and selling this as an NFT allows fans to keep it even after the virtual live ends. Owning it becomes proof that they participated in the virtual live and shared that same "moment" together.

This approach—working backward from the UX (user experience) to leverage NFT technology—is crucial when utilizing NFTs.

From an IP holder's perspective, NFTs aren't just for attaching to digital goods for sale;
but also as a technology to engage fans. For example, they are exploring using NFTs as a means to raise funds from fans, similar to crowdfunding, or to increase ambassadors by granting fans rights for secondary use or derivative works.

By leveraging NFTs, fans and IP holders can build a mutually beneficial relationship akin to shareholders and a corporation.

Digital goods become identity in the metaverse

Furthermore, Facebook's rebranding to Meta in November 2021 has brought attention to the "metaverse," a three-dimensional virtual space expanding across the internet. While we won't delve into the metaverse's details here, it's an inevitable progression that when the 2D communities we gather in online today transition to 3D virtual worlds, we'll naturally want to dress our avatars in clothes and goods that represent our identity within that community.

In the metaverse, the ideal is to be able to take items purchased from any shop into any world, just as in the real world. NFTs make this possible, and blockchain technology truly shines when these items can be traded across different services. When viewed through the lens of metaverse applications, purchasing an NFT becomes more than just "owning digital data"; it means acquiring a "means of self-expression in the digital realm."

In future installments, we plan to introduce Dentsu Inc. CBDC's project, which approaches emerging fields like NFTs (and the metaverse) from the perspective of "making fan experiences more enjoyable" and puts this into practice.

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