Shell
Virtual events and an internal metaverse, 2022–2025
2022 · CTO · shipped
Three years of virtual worlds for Shell. It started with an awards ceremony and grew into a two-year subscription, with graduate onboarding, staff festivals and quests across digital twins of Shell's campuses.
Technologies: JavaScript, Three.js, WebSockets
Related expertise: Real-time 3D on the web, Multi-user & real-time systems
Overview
Shell was one of our longest-running clients at Hyperspace. It started with a single awards event in 2022 and turned into a two-year enterprise subscription, with several events every year for different teams inside the company.
Most of the worlds were built around quests: participants explored, collected objects, answered quizzes and unlocked new spaces as they went.
Shell.ai Awards 2022
The first project was an event world for the Shell.ai Awards, held on 15 September 2022.
We built a digital twin of the amphitheatre at Shell's technology centre in Bangalore, where the ceremony took place. Around it we added a Hall of Fame with the previous winners, an exhibition hall for Shell's digital teams, a wellness retreat, a dance club and a race game, the "Amazing MetaRace". Employees logged in with their Shell accounts through single sign-on.
Video: Shell.ai Awards 2022 in the metaverse
In one week the world had more than 7,000 space visits from 1,310 unique visitors. 603 people started the MetaRace and 106 finished it.
A two-year subscription
After the awards, Shell moved to an enterprise subscription on our platform, from April 2023 to April 2025. They took it to get ready for their first Projects & Technology festival, and renewed it for a second year.
Over those two years we built several worlds on it:
- P&T Festival (2023). Shell's first Projects & Technology festival, run as a guided quest through digital twins of its campuses in Amsterdam and Bangalore, with quizzes, a coin hunt and a POAP badge for those who finished.
- Metagrad (2023 and 2024). A world to welcome new graduates, with rooms to meet their peers, a quiz on Shell's history and an onboarding message from Shell's CEO, Wael Sawan. In 2024 we redesigned it around a welcome quest and an art challenge.
- Changemakers of Tomorrow (2023 and 2024). A staff-only world about digital transformation. The environments changed as players progressed, and they earned points, coins and branded merchandise for their avatars. In 2024 we built a new world for it from scratch.
My involvement
- Oversaw the technical side of the account as CTO, from the first event to the end of the subscription.
- Led the 3D artist who built the digital twin of Shell's Bangalore hub and its amphitheatre.
- Improved the platform's graphics for these events, including shadows and avatar clothing.