Heineken launches virtual beer in self-mocking metaverse 'joke':
A brewer has created a virtual beer to highlight the extremes businesses will go to to grab a slice of the next big thing - the metaverse. Heineken set up a virtual launch to promote the "product" - an experience described by one attendee as surreal. The metaverse does not yet exist but many believe people will one day spend their time in inter-connected virtual worlds, accessed via a VR headset.
The firm said it was "an ironic joke... that pokes fun at us and other brands".
The mock launch - to which real journalists were invited - took place in a virtual brewery in Decentraland - a virtual world owned by its users. And the beer was described as being brewed with "binary-coded hops grown by NPC (non-player character) farmers".
The firm's global head of brand, Bram Westenbrink, said: "We know that the metaverse brings people together in a light-hearted and immersive way but it's just not the best place to taste a new beer.
"Our new virtual beer is an ironic joke. It is a self-aware idea that pokes fun at us and many other brands that are jumping into the metaverse with products that are best enjoyed in the real world."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @01:01PM
They know how to market themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjAZ5esOBZw [youtube.com]
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hYEKXE-4d0 [youtube.com]
for you to enjoy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Sunday March 20 2022, @01:34PM
I can't believe the media are already referring to the "metaverse" with a small M. This is a dangerous path because the uninformed majority that know nothing of VR will come to believe that the Farcebook VR is the one and only VR. Steve Jobs pulled off the same trick with the iPod and iPhone. I suppose we can only hope it becomes like a Xerox or Hoover, so Z*ckerberg's brand winds up getting used to refer to competitors' products.
Also "metaverse" was already a cool name for a sci-fi concept and now Z*ckerberg's ruined it, and the word meta (which described a wonderful concept too), forever.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 20 2022, @02:23PM
Coca-Cola should have done this long ago.
Branding and perception is 99% of the value of these products. You can produce something quantifiably better, at a lower price, with better distribution, in more attractive (as rated by focus groups) packaging, and it will still get out-sold by the "better" brand.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @02:36PM
....S.
...NFT-
--Meta-
-Crypto-
Currency
What a steaming pile of shit.
Meta is the undigested corn and peanuts.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @02:56PM
We're in the Orwellian future. Maybe I missed their published open protocol, but Decentraland appears to be centralized, except that instead of Linden Dollars it uses OMG BLOCKCHAIN! Plus, I'm not sure I understand how land scarcity makes sense in VR. You might as well call VRChat decentralized, and as a plus, there is no land scarcity, you don't need to buy land in an auction, you can just make whatever the fuck you want.
But what we need is federated VR. It would be pretty similar to VRChat but you could do more with your world since--as I've been thinking about it--your avatar would run on your server and the world would run on its server. You wouldn't be limited to the kind of interactivity that's exposed through Udon. There could be protocol extensions like XMPP that allow avatar and world interactions, like for dungeon crawler worlds and avatar equipment/inventory slots. We need federated VR, but this "Decentraland" thing is not it.
I'd get around to programming that, but I spend too much time struggling with mental illness and being beat down by the daily grind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @03:14PM
*sigh* might as well open a virtual apothecary, selling virtual ivermectin that kills those virtual brain amoebas that virtual cats like to virtually transmit?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday March 20 2022, @03:56PM (10 children)
and there's one thing I don't want to pay for when I buy beer, it's fucking virtual beer drinking parties on the fucking Zuckerverse thrown by the brewer.
As such, if I was a Heineken drinker, I would stop buying Heineken beer immediately.
Fortunately, as I said, I'm a beer lover, so it's no big loss as I never buy Heineken in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @04:13PM (3 children)
It's ironic, bro.
I had Heineken 0.0 alcohol free beer recently. A promotional 4 pack for free. It was ok. I would only buy it for an AA teetotaler.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @05:39PM (2 children)
"alcohol free" - isn't the point of consuming crappy beer that it produces a euphoria from consuming alcohol?
I'm not much of a drinker but I can see the value in social lubrication - meeting people in bars because that's what people do in bars... Survival of the species and all that, booze has played a role in procreation since 3761 BC.
Imitation beer - not seeing the angle here. Unless it's something these parasites can market to children.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @06:08PM
The low-alcohol beer [wikipedia.org] market is expected to double by 2024, with one third of sales in the Middle East, and rising sales almost everywhere. Sober bars and mocktails [archive.is] are also rising in popularity. The under-0.5% products have been around since the Volstead Act.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @06:42PM
They're is no safe level of alcohol consumption, just levels where people are willing to tolerate the consequences. Some people like the taste of her, but don't want to put up with the consequences of drinking alcohol.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday March 20 2022, @05:16PM (4 children)
Oh, the Zuckerverse doesn't charge you admission - you can "virtually drink" your virtual Heineken in the Zucker virtual beer bash for "free" - but of course they will be integrating all of your attendance and behavior data into their cloud to serve you better [wikipedia.org].
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday March 20 2022, @06:00PM (3 children)
So you think no-one at Heineken was paid to put together this marketing stunt?
That's whom I don't want to pay and what I don't want to pay for with my beer purchases, not Zuckerberg. Well, I don't want to give a cent to Zuckerberg either, so I don't patronize Facebook or his VR world so I don't end up giving him data he can monetize...
(Score: 3, Touché) by Mykl on Sunday March 20 2022, @09:56PM (2 children)
Lucky for you, Rosco, that this wasn't held in Zuck's Metaverse, but a different VR world called Decentraland. I know nobody RTFA's, but it's in the summary for crying out loud. Maybe lay off the real-world beers before posting?
It seems to me that your complaint is wider that than though - am I right in saying that you object to any business with a marketing budget?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 21 2022, @03:20AM (1 child)
No. But I as a customer have a right to stop purchasing a company's product because I reckon the company funds idiotic or revolting things with the money I give them.
If Heineken funded marketing research to better focus on their customer base, I'd be fine with that. It's good, normal use of marketing.
If they spent money redefining their corporate identity - usually a ludicrously expensive for no real returns - I might object. But ultimately the goal ultimately is to dust up a company's image and boost sales. So why not.
When they fund a virtual beer party on a Zuckerberg server where one CAN'T TASTE A REAL BEER, mocking their own event, calling it ridiculous and telling people they're better off enjoying a beer in real-life, that's utterly stupid and it promotes Zuckerberg's endeavors, which I strongly object to.
To my credit, I thought Decentraland was some virtual reality place in Facebook's VR universe, I didn't know it was a competitor. I don't know the first thing about these things, just that Facebook - and all the others too - use it to extract more private data out of their patrons.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Monday March 21 2022, @04:09AM
I would argue that the event was designed to denigrate VR by telling people that real life is better (especially with a Heineken!) and therefore work against Zuck's interests, but your mileage may vary.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday March 20 2022, @10:19PM
Eh, you're just pissed off. Or maybe virtually pissed on [youtu.be].
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @06:38PM
I drank six bottles of virtual beer and then drove my virtual car home. Got pulled over by the virtual police and since I'm Black I got tasered. Fortunately it was a virtual Taser and didn't hurt that much, but #BLM nevertheless.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 20 2022, @08:12PM
nope
(Score: 3, Informative) by inertnet on Sunday March 20 2022, @11:23PM
Back when Freddy Heineken was still alive, he always made sure that Heineken commercials were in a league of their own. Under his influence they were always innovating, and probably very expensive compared to the rest in the Netherlands.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21 2022, @01:14AM (1 child)
Virtual Beers are only cool when Linus is involved.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday March 21 2022, @01:47AM
Followed by virtually cursing out all of the virtual developers :P
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday March 21 2022, @01:54AM
If I drink enough virtual beer do I start seeing the virtual world spin? Do I get virtual headaches and blow virtual chunks?
Not to mention but do all the other virtual people start looking better? (Essentially turning VR goggles into Virtual Beer Goggles)
Gratuitous Simpsons clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7lTnG-ZrLY [youtube.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21 2022, @03:58PM
I guess if you're drunk you might as well be in another universe or your brain might as well be. You can't tell the difference, right?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21 2022, @06:34PM
That cheap NPC labor is putting us players out of quests! Now the big corps just hire NPCs to farm virtual hops instead of paying prevailing wages to low level quest-needing players! How are we supposed to grind gold now?
Free the NPCs! Pay a living wage for hops collecting!