The Age Beyond Sports: User Experience in the World of Metaverse

Abstract

The metaverse is a new place where people's avatars spend their time playing, working, having fun, cultural outing, and more. Although metaverse offers many experiences to its users, one of the metaverse experiences where users spend the most time is the gaming experience. Therefore, this study investigates the opinions of the participants who experienced the Nikeland sports game, which is the initiative of the Nike sports brand in the metaverse. Within the scope of the research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants who experienced the Nikeland game. Seven themes were obtained: the age beyond sports, atmospheric, feelings, chaotic structure in access, flow, perception of reality and innovative brand in this research. As a result of the findings, although the game initiative of the Nike brand in the metaverse is still in its infancy, it has been seen that there is a belief that this initiative will come to better places in the future. As a consequent of the literature review of the metaverse and the opinions of the users who have experienced the Nikeland game, the researchers have obtained results that the concepts of sports and metaverse are not far from each other and that the sports brands in the metaverse will increase.