- Digital Babel
- Posts
- šØļø Metaverse in 2023: Doomed or Developing?
šØļø Metaverse in 2023: Doomed or Developing?
PLUS: Our first issue, NFL's big Roblox mistake, and more!

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Digital Babel!
Our mission is to help marketers be smarter about branded experiences in Roblox and other digital environments. We created Digital Babel because we saw far too many clients making bad decisions ā from making large investments in digital environments with no traffic, to creating Roblox experiences that were awful for the target audience. Our team consists of agency veterans augmented with a staff that has grown up on Roblox and Minecraft. With each issue, we will cover current news, showcase whatās working, and give a review of a branded experience by our team.
Hereās what we got for you today:
Top 5 Recent Roblox Games and Experiences
Blockchain and Metaverse Continue to Garner CMO Interest
Is the Metaverse Doomed or Just Growing Pains?
The NFL Made a Game Aboutā¦ Taxes
Metaverse In the News
Top Current Roblox Experiences

The NFL has been scoring touchdowns recently with their two branded experiences!

Blockchain and Metaverse Continue to Garner CMO Interest
Just 10% of surveyed marketers think the metaverse is irrelevant to their industry, demonstrating continued optimism in the face of recent metaverse skepticism.

Although 45% of those same marketers viewed metaverse development and implementation as a hefty challenge.
Click the button below to read Marketing Diveās article on how marketers are approaching this new āfuture-facingā technology.
Is the Metaverse Doomed or Just Growing Pains?
Industry experts estimate that by 2026, at least 25% of people worldwide will spend a minimum of one hour a day in the metaverse. Despite this metric, metaverse skepticism has been on the rise, and even recently Microsoft shut down one of its top industrial metaverse projects.
āThere are two things brands need to know about implementing their products in the metaverse. First, ignore the pessimistic perspective that the metaverse is dying and not profitable. Second, brands are still actively engaging in the metaverse for product sales and overall workplace efficiency,ā
The development of the metaverse is a long-term investment with a focus on Gen Z and Gen A audiences. Organizations need to continue to hone their skills in connecting with consumers in this relatively new medium.
The NFL Made a Game Aboutā¦ Taxes

The NFL really fumbled this oneā¦
Iām currently 18 years old and I grew up on Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite. In these reviews, Iāll be evaluating organizationsā attempts at creating Roblox branded experiences, from the perspective of someone in the target audience. And to say the least, the NFL definitely missed the goalposts.
In paid partnership with Intuit, the NFL released Super NFL Tycoon, a Roblox branded experience advertised to allow users to ābuild an NFL empire including a stadium, training facility, and more!ā Surpassing just past one million visits in five days, it seems this game has been a success as the NFL attempts to branch out into the metaverse. But is Super NFL Tycoon truly a well-made game?
I decided to jump in and build my own stadium to find out.
When you spawn in, you pick which NFL team you want to represent, and then you are guided to areas where you can collect money and areas where you can build upgrades for your stadium. In typical tycoon game fashion, you start with basic upgrades, and you eventually work up to more expensive upgrades. Unlike most tycoon games, Super NFL Tycoon does not have a leaderboard, which I feel takes away from the core competitive aspect of most tycoon games.
I can guarantee you the average Roblox player does not know or care about the answer to thisā¦
The biggest drawback of this game is the chokehold that Intuitās branding has on every aspect. From the start, youāre asked advertising-related questions about Intuit, as if the average football-loving Roblox-playing kid knows anything about taxes. Every money collecting station is called a QuickBooks Business Center. Every time you gain a free gift, itās a Turbotax employee giving you a tax refund. Itās distracting and makes the game a whole lot less fun.

Overall, I wish this game had more emphasis on actual football. The NFL wouldāve been much more successful if they created a Super Bowl simulator, or something similar. On a scale of Noob to Pro, this game gets a Beginner rating: there is a lot of potential, but it is a monotonous paid-partnership-focused tycoon game.
What Everyone Else is Saying
Why Digital Babel? Babel plays a role in the novel Snow Crash, where there was a theory that language is just code and that Babel was a real historical event. This coincided with the vanishing of the Sumerian language, and afterward, languages tended toward divergence rather than convergence. We may not all like the term āMetaverseā but we need to give Snow Crash its due.

Subscribe so we donāt look like this
Did someone forward this to you? Sign up for our newsletter to get Digital Babel delivered to your inbox and stay informed on branded experiences in Roblox, Minecraft and more!