The Tokyo Metropolitan Government introduced the virtual Tokyo Metaverse on Roblox to promote the city as a tourist destination.
Interactive portal ‘HELLO! TOKYO FRIENDS” uses AR photos within the leading immersive platform Roblox to provide users with an authentic Tokyo tourism experience.
“MODERN TOKYO” hosts “treasure hunt” activities to learn more about Japan’s capital, with cityscapes based on Tokyo’s iconic landmarks, including Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Station, Tokyo National Museum, and the Odaiba area.
The Tokyo government summarized the app’s functions and purpose in a press release: We guide people around Tokyo and interact with each other.
“We say HELLO! TOKYO FRIENDS will help promote Tokyo’s appeal as a tourist city and foster Tokyo fans!”
“TOKYO HUNT!” lets you use the web app to turn your smartphone into your gateway to exploring an interactive version of Tokyo.
Users can add ‘hololive friends with you’ dolls to attach to their Roblox avatar by completing quests within the world.
By visiting one of nine checkpoints, users can collect ’emblems’, and for every three emblems collected, they can unlock rewards in the form of unique Roblox items. At four of these checkpoints, you can use the AR camera to take pictures with characters from HELLO! Tokyo Friends.
In addition, promotional benefits will be provided in line with the game release of collaboration items related to Tokyo Tourism Promotional Ambassadors, and Hololive Production’s VTuber will be provided free of charge.
Tokyo Tourism Survey
The launch of HELLO! TOKYO FRIENDS coincided with the launch of Tokyo’s Current Attractions 2024, which collected responses from 3,000 Tokyo residents aged between 15 and 49 about what they would like to see included in their virtual Tokyo.
When asked about the possible benefits of the new Tokyo metaverse, respondents were fairly evenly split between exposing the city to the world, finding out more about the city itself, and connecting it with other parts of the world. This appears to be consistent with the creators’ expectations.
There was also a quiz about the types of interactions they would like to experience with people overseas within the game. The majority of respondents aged 20 and older chose to help people learn about Japanese culture and educate foreigners about their city. On the other hand, 15-19 year olds were mainly interested in talking about common interests and playing games together.
Elsewhere in the Roblox world, the Enterprise Metaverse Expo 2024 took place at Cannes Lions earlier this month. This included the platform’s announcement of a strategic program to grow immersive advertising in the Metaverse.
The program aims to foster innovation and build a global ecosystem for immersive advertising.