I visited Home Depot in the metaverse to try to understand why retailers are flocking to it, and the experience left me baffled but somewhat impressed

Sun, 03/12/2023 - 05:07

dalna — My virtual avatar in the virtual Home Depot.
Ben Tobin

I visited Home Depot's Virtual Kid Workshop it launched it Radcliffe City on gaming platform Roblox.
The virtual Home Depot was as a brilliant advertisement for kids, though extremely bizarre.
I found virtual supplies and built virtual items like a bird house and 2-seat car at Home Depot.

Hope Depot recently launched its first foray into the metaverse in Roblox, so I decided to visit and see what it was really like.

I'd never played on Roblox before, so I had to make an account.

Roblox is a free gaming platform with over 100 million active users, many of whom are children.

Source: Insider

Once I finished creating my account, I was prompted to download and install Roblox.

While I'm not great with technology, the platform gave me an easy five-step guide to downloading it.

Overall, the setup process only took a few minutes.

And then the anticipation was almost over, as I could enter the "Radcliffe City" game where I could visit Home Depot's Virtual Kids Workshop.

I was asked to select between a "peaceful" and "loud" mode and opted for the latter.

After selecting my mode, I received a message that Radcliffe City had a map update, including "The Home Depot Event!"

Finally, I arrived in Radcliffe City, where I immediately was greeted by a Home Depot facade with a bright door instructing me to come in.

But as someone new to Roblox, I wanted to familiarize myself with the features of the platform, including free costumes for my avatar, before heading to Home Depot.

I also explored what tools were available at my disposal...

...and decided I'd be best equipped to explore this world with some bread.

I also played with various emotes for my avatar, with the dance pose action being my favorite.

After dressing up my avatar and playing with emotes, I decided to explore Radcliffe City and see what it had to offer, including a toy shop called "Toys N' Things" and a childcare facility called "ABC Daycare."

I also visited a playground...

After a whole lot of dilly-dallying through Radcliffe City, I decided I was ready to visit the Home Depot Virtual Kids Workshop and was told very clearly on my screen that the game is an advertisement for the company.

I arrived outside of a virtual Home Depot shop after walking through the bright doors.

I headed straight into the shop and was greeted by a "KIDS WORKSHOPS" sign in colorful letters. The experience here was supposed to resemble the real-life Kids Workshops the chain holds in its stores.

The graphics were quite ugly, and I was baffled by the world, but I was also impressed with the recreation of The Home Depot environment on a virtual platform.

From labeled aisles to products from paint to power tools, the virtual Home Depot seemed like a pretty good advertisement for kids who might not be going to home improvement stores.

After exploring the store for a little bit, I was admittedly a little bit confused about what I was supposed to do in there.

I finally found a kind virtual Home Depot employee who told me to ""talk to my teammate at the Kids Workshop table to get started on your build."

I did as told and found the Home Depot employee at the Kids Workshop table, and I asked them "can I start a build?"

The Home Depot employee kindly agreed and sent me on my way to collect lumber.

When I found the lumber, I was then instructed to collect a hammer...

...and then nails...

...and then paint...

...and then I was finally ready to build.

The instructions were pretty easy, as I first clicked on a circle to "measure and cut the lumber."

Then I clicked again to grab the hammer.

For the third step, I clicked again to hammer the nails.

And finally, I clicked one last time to paint the bird house.

And voila, I had a bird house after the scavenger hunt and building process.

I did this whole process two more times for two other items.

First, I built a flower garden, following a similar collecting and building process.

Come the third item, a 2-seated car, I was a pro at finding items and building, so I completed the task quickly.

At that point, the building became a bit redundant, and there was nothing left to build, so I left the virtual Home Depot.

After toggling with my keyboard for a bit, I discovered that I could put the car I built to action and drive it around.

I drove it around, both (legally) on the road and (illegally) on grass.

It was the most fun part of this bizarre experience, and I decided I'd leave the metaverse on a high.

So I left the metaverse about an hour after toiling around, unsure if I'll ever come back. I can see what Home Depot is trying to do — connecting its in-person and virtual spaces — but I'm not sure how engaging or useful it really is to the average kid on Roblox.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Retail, Tech Insider, Features, Business Visual Features, Home Depot, metaverse, The Home Depot, roblox

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I visited Home Depot in the metaverse to try to understand why retailers are fl…