“Gamification can help us create incentives and make them fun”: Anshul Agarwal, Co-founder of XR Central

Interactive design content, or rather “Gamification”, through immersive technologies such as VR and AR, has been known to solve many real-life industry problems.

While there is a fair bit of misconception and mistrust surrounding the metaverse and similar immersive experiences, multiple industry leaders are of the opinion that they are indeed the means to a variety of amazing solutions.

In a conversation with Abhishek Mallick of Sportskeeda Esports, Anshul Agarwal, Co-Founder of XR Central, spoke about the opportunities that interactive media opens up for business, the various positives of the metaverse, and the vision behind the metaverse-builder, MetaQube.

Here is an excerpt of the interview.

Q. Anshul, tell us a bit about XR Central, how it came to be, and some of the visions and expectations that went into its making.

Anshul: XR Central is a start-up based out of Gurgaon. We specialize in metaverse creation for a diverse array of industries, as well as creating interactive design content using immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR).

XR Central was founded by the two of us, Shrey Mishra and I. The organization’s vision is to democratize the way XR (Extended Reality) technology is used to solve real-world problems.

Q. What were some of the biggest hurdles that you have faced over the years? Especially when looking to solve problems with Gamification, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and the Internet of Things.

Anshul: Educating about AR and VR and their potential has been the biggest challenge. Enterprises want XR on the strategy table, but are not sure of its potential. We started doing paid POCs for our clients just to show the potential. The POCs were later converted into larger projects, but then, we had to start from scratch.

Our solutions of metaverse run on the mobile as well. We pride ourselves on a mobile-first approach. However, the challenge has been the optimization and automation for mobile-first design and technology stack.

Q Tell us a bit about your most recent venture, the game engine-based metaverse builder called MetaQube. What would be the real purpose of the product, and what type of service would it be looking to provide?

Anshul: MetaQube is a powerful game engine-based tool for building your own metaverse. Its clean design will make designing and publishing your own specially designed spaces on the internet smooth and effortless. For casual users, it will serve as an immersive, personalized place on the internet. For more specialized users like creators and developers, it will be a breeding ground for innovation.

For industry and enterprise users, the metaverse builder will provide them with a platform in Web 3.0 which they can use to make operations more cost-effective and faster than ever before.

Q. What are your thoughts on the Indian video games and esports scene as it stands today? What would you say were some of the key factors that attributed to its growth over the last couple of years?

Anshul: An increase in social media participation and a need for gaming and esports content has powered a lot of growth in the gaming and esports sector. There has been a huge explosion in the number of content creators in the esports and video game scene in India.

We’ve seen people from all walks of life participate in playing and reviewing games on YouTube, Instagram, and Discord. There’s a thriving community on social media platforms, with a dedicated audience base, which is only set to grow as the metaverse brings gaming even closer to the mainstream.

Q. How does interactive design content, or rather Gamification through immersive technologies, like VR and AR, help solve real-world industry problems?

Anshul: As human beings, we are powered by incentives. Gamification can help us create incentives and make them fun. As part of our work, we can take these basic tools and apply them to almost any industry to solve problems.

The power of the metaverse lies in its ability to unite people across distances to solve problems better. For example, using immersive technologies, a subject matter expert living in Malaysia can be virtually present on an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean to provide specialized guidance to the rig crew.

Q. What are your thoughts on the future of VR and AR technologies in a region like India and South Asia as it stands today? Where do you see it in the next 5 years? Would it slowly start becoming the mainstream solution?

Anshul: Absolutely, we are convinced that it will slowly become mainstream. Even now, in the early stages of adoption, we have seen a lot of interest in metaverse technologies from technical industries. Stakeholders and senior management are starting to see the long-term benefits of XR adoption and are actively engaged in finding new ways to put XR technologies to use in their own fields.

In Asia and India specifically, there is a need to speed up the adoption of new technologies to strengthen us, make us independent, and make us knowledge leaders on the global stage. We want Asian countries to emerge as leaders in the field of XR.

Q. There have been plenty of misconceptions around the metaverse, with a lot of people being quite apprehensive about its merits. Tell us a bit about some of the problems that the technology faces today, especially on the user front, and some of the solutions that can help deal with this problem.

Anshul: The financial aspect of the metaverse can be overwhelming for many people, and we’ve seen many sinking their money into betting on a new cryptocurrency in order to get rich quickly.

Another problem is the scarcity of access. A lot of people across India, in fact, probably most people, do not have access to the kind of devices and high-speed internet connections needed to participate in the metaverse.

It will take time for the industry to be able to produce high-quality VR headsets that are not very expensive, but until that happens, a good way to introduce immersive technologies to large populations is via mobile device-enabled AR features.

Q. What’s next for XR Central? Are you already working on any other product apart from the MetaQube?

Anshul: We aim to expand our geographic presence and venture into markets like the UAE, EU, and the Americas. We also want to evolve MetaQube with more scalable features to fully democratize the way XR experiences and metaverses have been thought about.

However, we will be fully focusing on MetaQube, which is a DIY SaaS-based platform. It’s an online metaverse studio that enables anyone to create and publish personalized metaverses within minutes.