Makers of The Metaverse: Rodric David Of Infinite Reality On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

I think ultimately all you need is creativity and imagination. The convergence of all these technologies will empower the Creator Economy and transform entertainment, ecommerce, and social interaction.

The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rodric David.

Rodric is the President and Co-Founder of Infinite Reality — a Metaverse Innovation and Entertainment Company born out of the merger of Thunder Studios, Infinite Reality and Display Social in January 2022. Infinite Reality’s mission is to power the Web3 Metaverse and empower the Creator Economy. Operating out of our 150,000 square foot production studio in Los Angeles, we create, produce, and broadcast programming into and from the Metaverse.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and am a product of the export of American culture via films, television, and music. I came to the USA in the early 90s to attend the University of Southern California, graduating in 1993 with a theatre degree.

Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory starring Gene Wilder I admired the concept of ‘controlling your own destiny’ which Willy Wonka did and I was fascinated by “Wonka-Vision.” Through the Web3 Metaverse, Wonka Vision is now a reality.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.

I’ve always loved Star Trek, particularly ‘The Next Generation,’ and was always fascinated by the concept of the holodeck in which viewers could actually participate and experience stories. Viewer interactivity with stories in real-time has always been the holy grail of the content industry. Through the Web3 open Metaverse and empowering technologies such as Extended Reality production, real-time graphics acceleration, game engine mechanics, VR, AR and MR, we’re finally at that juncture in which viewers and fans can interact with and be a part of the live story telling process and experience it socially with friends and members of their communities.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My business partners Elliott Jobe and John Acunto are inspiring outliers who believed in my vision that the Metaverse was the re-invention of Television. Together we knew we could transform that vision into reality, or in our case — Infinite Reality.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Our company motto is: We power the Metaverse to empower the Creator Economy and is at the core of everything we R&D. We believe that the creators in the Creator Economy are currently exploited by large monopolistic technology companies that control data and distribution. We seek to end that exploitation by providing the tools to creators to build their own Metaverse distribution — direct to the consumer — without the intercedence of a platform company. Brands, creators — anyone — can build and control their own Metaverse including its communities, data, and monetization opportunities. We’re soon to launch SDK and API tool sets into the consumer market.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?

I think VR, AR and MR are creator and viewer tools that can revolutionize the way stories are told and content is consumed. The convergence of these technologies with the social capacity of the Web3 open Metaverse will transform society in ways few currently imagine. It is eerily reminiscent of the emergence of the world wide web in 1993 when I graduated college. In 1993, only 650 websites existed in the world. Today, there are more than 1.85 billion websites. So, three areas I see the Web3 open Metaverse quickly impacting are:

1. Ecommerce — Corporations will quickly adopt a Web3 open Metaverse to create immersive, entertaining, educational, social, and transactional environments. They will build communities for their customer bases and interact with them in new, unique, and mutually rewarding ways. Talent, influencers, celebrities, athletes, basically anyone with an audience, will create virtual stores in the Web3 open Metaverse and curate their style in-store with a broad range of products partnered with brands. Fans will be encouraged to direct their day-to-day real-world transactions into talent’s virtual store, and the talent will reward the transaction with virtual goods, rewards, and custom experiences.
2. Education — Psychologists understand that humans learn through play, so the tools that enable us to interact in virtual environments in the Web3 open Metaverse will come together to create educational time machines of sorts. For example, history will be taught not through a textbook but through a Web3 open Metaverse experience in which students enter an era, explore the environment, interact with historical figures, watch major events unfold — learning while playing in the historical environment. I remember the classic sci-fi film ‘Fantastic Voyage’ in which scientists and a submarine are shrunk to a microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of the human body. In the Web3 open Metaverse, students will be able to learn biology in the same way. Education will be truly transformed.
3. Entertainment — The Web3 open Metaverse will empower the creator economy to develop new formats of content creation, interaction, and viewership. Creators will no-longer be exploited by the platforms they’ve used in the past to build audiences and monetize their content opportunity. I said earlier that the Web3 open Metaverse is the re-invention of television and I mean this in a distribution and engagement sense. The television was an empowering technology that enabled the creation of a multitude of industries from television networks to production companies to advertising agencies and many more. For decades, consumers never paid to watch programming because the advertising value was so rich it covered the cost to create, develop, produce, and distribute content. The Web3 open Metaverse evolves this rich distribution model whilst at the same time fracturing the historical monopolistic control of the distribution. Today, anyone can produce and distribute content into and from the Web3 open Metaverse, build communities, enable transactional commerce within these communities, and represent brand advertising and promotional partnerships without the intercedence of a tech platform controlling the data, making and changing the rules, and charging fees and commissions.

What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?

I think of two primary areas we need to be mindful of:

1. We need to support the Creator Economy and prevent monopolistic practice. In the past, content has been controlled through monopolistic regional cable distribution companies. Recently, content has been controlled by monopolistic technology companies. Web3 open Metaverse fractures the need for platform distribution of content and empowers direct-to-consumer distribution in the exact same way as an internet website.
2. I believe that the anti-social behavior we’ve witnessed over the past 12 years is directly attributable to the rise of social media. Social media didn’t create this behavior, but the social media platforms created the rule set that enabled anonymity in speech and engagement and directed users to ever more extreme content. This has in turn enabled abuses and given rise to the concept of ‘fake news’. The Web3 open Metaverse should mirror the real world. It should enable anonymity between users (just like we don’t know the person we pass on the sidewalk), but it should prevent anonymity to the owner of any Web3 interoperable open Metaverse. This would prevent bad actors seeking to exploit various Web3 open Metaverse communities for nefarious and/or anti-social purposes.

I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?

I think work will be transformed. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to experience remote work, so we now have a much better understanding of the positive and negative aspects. The negatives primarily revolve around the technology limitations of remote work. Real-time interactivity and socialization are very important components of work, and the tools used during the pandemic such as Zoom, Webex, Teams, etc. are real-time communications tools not virtualization tools. In the Web3 open Metaverse, work colleagues will sit in the same virtual office in the exact same way (should they want to) as they would in their pre-pandemic office environment. Real time interactivity and socialization in the virtual environment will mimic the experience of the real world.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”

I think ultimately all you need is creativity and imagination. The convergence of all these technologies will empower the Creator Economy and transform entertainment, ecommerce, and social interaction.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I believe the Web3 Metaverse can be an instrument for societal good in many ways. Where it can have the most impact is in the education of our children. The Metaverse has the potential to end bias in education. It is well understood that the socio-economic reality of parents has a direct impact on the quality of education their children receive, but this could be remedied in part by a computer and an internet connection. Educational syllabuses can be developed in the Metaverse as a tool for teachers to engage their students with course work in innovative and fascinating ways. Learn through play.

We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Yes — Tim Sweeney the Founder and CEO of Epic Games. Tim created Unreal Engine which is a real time graphics acceleration tool that powers the Web3 open Metaverse. He is truly a visionary of the caliber of Steve Jobs and, like me, believes the future of the Web3 open Metaverse is in empowering the Creator Economy and not allowing for incumbent technology companies to monopolize the opportunity and stifle creativity.

Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!