Opening New Worlds: How Genies is Empowering a Future of Interoperable Digital Identities

And what better time than now to be at the forefront of a digital zeitgeist that’s rapidly segueing into engrossing experiences than as the company Genies, which last week announced that it had hired the former Netflix Games creative director Andrew Chambers? ‘We’re building a world where digital identities intersect with one another in ways that are always multi-dimensional, vibrant, and wonderful.’

The Rise of Digital Avatars: A Game-Changing Strategy

Genies, a pioneer in social avatars, is attempting to do for the entire interface of the web what platforms such as Roblox have done for avatars. With an array of open-source tools and interoperable architectures, Genies hopes that anyone can now build ‘their own avatar experiences, avatar platforms, and potentially any other kind of interactive experiences at all’. Adam Arrigo at Genies calls this vision an ‘open-source Roblox model’, geared towards a day when all digital experiences are interoperable.

The Visionary Behind the Scenes: Andrew Chambers

With more than two decades of experience in renowned gaming studios such as Blizzard Entertainment and Netflix Games, Chambers has brought the wisdom of his experiences to Genies, which he believes will be a gamified, persistent, interoperable digital identity layer for the internet. ‘We want to empower users to build their identities and invest in their persistence,’ he said. ‘And those identities could be the user handles of the future internet.’

Empowering Innovation with the Genies Interoperable Frameworks

Chambers’ appointment carries urgency in a world that sorely needs interactive and immersive universes. Genies’ open-source model is a safe space for empowerment, and the ability for people to program their own little digital realms enhances creativity and addresses the pressing need for ‘personal and persistent identities in an increasingly immersive online world’.

Celebrating the Power of Personality: The Core of Genies' Strategy

What is at the centre of Genies’ interoperable identity layer are also two pillars of interoperability: visual interoperability and behavioural interoperability. In order for a user to feel like they are the same person from one platform to another, how they appear – whether it be hair, accessories or digital fashion – and how they act needs to remain the same. At Genies, this is done by building avatars’ digital identities from the ground up.

Visual and Behavioral Interoperability: Shaping the Future of Digital Interaction

These two facets of your user – visual interoperability, controlled by Genies’ in-house technology, and behavioural interoperability, controlled by detailed metadata – can serve as your true, unified digital self. If they’re designed and deployed correctly, identical avatars can move seamlessly from platform to platform: your avatar will continue to wear the clothes it’s wearing on Snapchat on Discord; you’ll remain rude and hungover on both Telegram and within your favourite videogame. If all these conditions are met, the avatar’s ‘lesser known’ nature falls away. Whether it’s your Discord avatar or your telepresence in a videoconference, it is you – or as close to you as possible. And the potential for this ‘you’ to roam freely, without restriction, through space and time and the galaxies of the internet seems limitless.

Unlocking Creative Potential for Everyone

Genies’ open-source tools and interoperable frameworks can be applied across the entire value chain, from developers and artists to celebrities and the general public alike, from Hollywood celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Rihanna to artefact and brand owners, and the public at large. This technology could democratise the creation of digital identity.

The Future is OPEN: The Impact of Interoperability on Digital Experiences

Photo courtesy of Genies Looking into the future, the stakes of Genies’ efforts start to come into view. By creating an interoperable ecosystem of avatars that can move across different bits of the digital world, Genies completes a kind of second aspect of game space, but one that could have implications for how we all think and act in the digital sphere. The vision behind interoperable digital selves could presage a more consistent, bespoke internet that prizes individuality and creativity.

Understanding OPEN: The Philosophy Behind Genies’ Innovation

Genies’ manifesto is founded on open-source development: what Genies are building is open to all, with the mantra of ‘contribute to an algorithmic offering of what humans can be’. An open ethos facilitates connection. If you want to recreate a digital utopia, you have to discount animosity and create avenues so that people can participate, contribute and consume. With open development, developers and artists have the scope to bring their own skills and technology to this shared digital infrastructure. This is why Genies is embracing open-source and open standards, with the hope that ‘people will create their own worlds and bring their own versions of digital creativity’.

Conclusion: A New Era of Digital Freedom

He stands there on the cusp of a new metaverse that won’t imprison us in our digital selves but will let us freely, seamlessly, interoperably, become who we want to be. With Andrew Chambers driving the ship and a commitment to open-source development, Genies isn’t just making avatars – it’s building portals from world to world – and everyone is invited to come along. The future of online identity is open and Genies wants in.