Late October and Facebook changes the Metaverse conversation forever. Metaverse cryptocurrencies go ballistic in the aftermath, mainstream media likewise. A month ago the search term ‘Metaverse’ threw up less than 10 million results. Now it nestles at 110 million, the number of projects increasing almost as quickly as the Google spiders can keep up.
260,000 players play Alien Worlds every day, 125,000 Axie Infinity, and 47,000 do farming activities in Farmers World. Then there is Star Atlas, Polkacity, Decentraland, Somnium, and the world’s first mobile focused Metaverse, Realm. Nintendo, Sony, Nvidia, Unity. Ubisoft has a blockchain incubator. Atari is in the Metaverse. From Disney to K-Pop, shoe brands to car companies and everything inbetween, the world is encased in Metaverse amber.
Ancient civilisations, exoplanets and space operatic adventure, polygon virtual worlds and robots and dragons breathing fire as they battle your avatars. The Metaverse is every conceivable fiction you can imagine. But it can also be very normal. Office space (I know, right?) and health clubs, augmented overlays of your kitchen. Everyone is different, we want different things. Let’s have a look at five Metaverse platforms which are part of the space.
And because this is Meta Legends, we will begin on home soil.
“The purpose of Meta Legends is to create our own Metaverse: META LIFE. You will be a member of the community, and will decide on the future of META LIFE via the DAO.”
Meta Life will be built on Unreal 5 (check out our blog on Unreal 5 here). What this means is that it the rendering will be cinematic. It will look as clear, crisp and strikingly beautiful as the Mandalorian. It will be breathtaking. You’ll be able to take your Meta Legend, your Celestials and Matrix Angels, your Burners and Roboters, into a Metaverse of your imagination, a world of science fiction at the cutting edge of gaming technology.
Far beyond the graphical interface will be a world of unlimited spectacle, unrivalled entertainment and community. A Metaverse of FPS games, competitions and battles, a unique immersive experience in a world indistinguishable from reality.
As with current Metaverse platforms, you will be able to buy land and build your homes, bases, ammunition dumps and hideaways on it. You’ll be able to bring your Meta Legends community into your Metaverse property for parties, tournaments, and strategy sessions.
Concerts, festivals and special events of epic proportion will be open to all, as will the play-to earn aspects of Meta Life, providing multiple channels for passive income. Only it won’t be passive because you will have to fight. Two cryptocurrencies will be created, one for voting in the DAO governance, the other for the Meta Life ecosystem of staking, in-game collectibles and NFTs.
Partially owned and operated by its players via the DAO, Meta Life will seek interoperability with other Metaverse and NFT collections. We are going to invest millions of dollars, build a crack-team of developers, coders, artists, designers and storytellers, and take the Metaverse to the next stage.
Decentraland
Founded in 2015 and launched in January 2020, Decentraland was the first virtual world owned by its users. As the ground swell for a Metaverse grew, Decentraland was best placed to take advantage. And it did. Just this week, a Canadian investment company bought land for $2.5 million, smashing the highest price paid for digital real estate.
Decentraland is a 3D world of mesmerising opportunity. A place to build and play games or explore galleries and museums packed to the rafters with NFTs. Using MANA, players can buy wearables and art, gamble in casinos, and tickets. You can experience events, and bask in the biggest Metaverse of the age.
How long until the Metaverse looks like this?
At the heart of the Decentraland Metaverse is the land itself. 90,000 plots of digital real estate which can be bought, sold, rented or borrowed. 90,000 plots of digital real estate which, using the Decentraland builder, can be transformed into the cultural, economic and commercial centres you see in any city around the world.
With DAO votes in the pipeline to push for the interoperability with other Metaverse platforms, the possibility of Meta Legends engaging with Decentraland isn’t perhaps as far fetched as it could seam.
Zuck says Meta is about connecting with people. He is forever speaking about glasses and headsets, about taking the Metaverse with you as you go about your life. You’ll be able to bring things from the real world into the metaverse — videos, movies, books — and you’ll be able to project your digital assets in the physical world using holograms an AR.
Are you scared yet? Photo: Meta
The Meta Metaverse is hard to pin down because there is a lot of bravado, a lot of directions to explore. There is Horizon Home — a “homespace” In the Meta Metaverse. Whatever that is. There will be shared working space, shared physical space, shared interactions. Meta are working on augmented reality with their Project Nazare and a suite of AI tools for developers to build mixed reality experiences.
With the addition of Oculus and Mark Zuckerberg’s vision, they will make tidal waves in the Metaverse, of course they will. But will it just be a Facebook hybrid in more dimensions, broadcast onto our eyes through glasses?
You won’t need to worry about knowing what Meta will become over the coming years, each and every move and announcement will be inspected, wrote about and either criticised or praised across every media outlet there is. So we won’t give it any more space here.
Epic Games
In Fortnite, Epic Games own perhaps the second biggest name in the Metaverse. a place of avatars and in-game collectibles, games, concerts, festivals and communities. In V-bucks, it even has a “currency”. And, of course, it has players. Possibly 15 million a day. However, Fortnite is a decentralised platform which, popular as it may be, is far from the finished Metaverse we are after.
Essentially a proving ground for the Metaverse, Epic Games and CEO Tim Sweeney are using it more as the blueprint for what is to come. Away from Fortnite, they are building the infrastructure of the Metaverse, investing in platforms, technology and the gaming studios upon which we will build our digital futures. And unlike Meta and its individualistic drive and ambition, Epic Games see the Metaverse as interoperable. Open. Decentralised.
“The Metaverse will not be the manicured, ad-laden news feed presented by platforms like Facebook,” — Tim Sweeney
Epic Games want the Metaverse to be populated by humanoids. In Metahuman, an avatar creation tool in Unreal Engine, the ability to create unique digital humans of the highest quality, will be available to all developers. Check out the link, Metahuman is a game changer for the Metaverse.
So, rather than one Metaverse platform, Epic Games is fuelling the ecosystem of the entire Metaverse. From Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services and the Epic Games Store, to Rocket League, Fall Guys, Fortnite and Cozy Grove, whether building their own, or investing in the projects of others, Epic Games has both feet firmly planted in the future of the Metaverse.
Star Atlas
“A grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, political domination, and more.”
Built on Unreal 5, a space opera set in the distant future, Star Atlas is the Metaverse closest to Meta Life in terms of ambition, graphics, setting and game play. Star Atlas is a monumental Metaverse of exploration and discovery, of space travel and gaming. There are lands and planets to be bought, spaceships to trade, battles to be planned and wars to be raged.
The world is powered by two tokens. $ATLAS fuels the financial structure of Star Atlas. This is the coin you use to buy your land, build your space ports and purchase ships, weapons, vehicles, skins, and power ups. All assets are NFTs and can be traded on the Star Atlas marketplace. $ATLAS is also used to purchase the governance token, $POLIS.
Star Atlas is easily the most ambitious decentralised Metaverse game of the time. Nothing offers the immersive, cinematic experience and the scope for gaming, staking, investing, trading and exploring in the Star Atlas Metaverse.
Many of the Metaverse projects will fail, many will be absorbed by others, fewer still will rise to the top and be the regal dynasties ruling over the digital frontiers of our future.
What you can be sure of is the future of Meta Life, Meta Legend
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