Multiverse Empowering Online Gaming Feature

In their mission statement US company Multiverse Network Inc. is aiming to become the world's leading network of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and 3D virtual worlds. Multiverse's own pioneering technology platform has been designed to change the economics of virtual world development by providing independent game developers with the resources they need to enter and compete in the $2 billion online game market.

With Online Gaming seeing a big up turn in gamers now buying in on the online experience and with more publishers seeing this as a lucrative long term revenue earner a number of companies like Multiverse is sharing their expertise with developers so they can bring to market MMOGs and virtual worlds.

Corey Bridges, Co-founder and Executive Producer at Multiverse, expressed the company's vision, when we spoke to him, that they are there to help and to empower people who want to develop MMOGs and other virtual worlds. The full Multiverse team also includes video game industry veterans, so they understand Online gaming from all the angles.

Right now, independent developers simply can't afford to make an MMOG or a virtual world and even fully funded game studios are daunted by the huge technical challenges in building them. Multiverse's mission is to change all that by offering a free set of technology client server tools, functionality plug-ins, and so forth to aid this process. Then game developers can concentrate on building their unique games on top of this infrastructure. In the short term their model is to make it really low-friction maintenance for developers, especially independent developers so they can begin prototyping and building virtual worlds.

These worlds are all accessible by a single universal client, the Multiverse Client, so players are just one click away from any game built on their platform. This means, from the players' point of view, they have access to a whole network of MMOGs and other virtual worlds. Enabling this distributed network is their long-term goal. It enables all sorts of good stuff - more experimental design, more niche content, more revolutionary games.

One of Multiverse's initial tasks is to spread the word and influence the development community pertaining to their own vision and with Online gaming on such a big up this task could be pretty seamless as it appears lots of independent developers are dying to get into the MMOG space, but they've been barred entry, due to price and technology issues. Corey explained in some detail that it now takes at least $20 million to make an MMOG these days. So in turn developers are very excited about the Multiverse Platform.

Multiverse has a short history and were unveiled in December 2005, and in that first week, over 1000 people registered with them to be early developers on their beta platform. That number is up over 3000 now.

"As for how we spread the word, we pretty much just don't sleep. We were selected to premiere our technology at the annual DEMO Conference and were just named as finalist for the Red Herring "Top 100 North America" awards list as a company with "the most promising technology." We've also been really pleased at how interested the press has been in what we're building. For a relatively small company like ours, we've gotten some great attention from organizations like Business Week, Red Herring, CNET News.com and Game Developer Magazine - to say nothing of TVG! And, of course, the blogosphere is critically important in getting word out about what we're doing. Again, we're really pleased that our vision has struck a chord with folks at blogs like Slashdot, Terra Nova and many others."

Multiverse is a team that enjoys talking about what they are doing and is eagerly planning to participate in several video game and virtual world conferences and summits this year to personally meet with folks.

The most important focus for the team in spreading the word is to maintain their own aggressive development schedule and deliver their platform and tools as promised. 'Once the technology is in folks' hands, they'll keep talking about it.'

So apart from costs and the expected benefits of becoming a Multiverse developer and platform beta tester what other goodies and even support will be on offer? Initially focusing on North America because it's easier to launch something new where you have a common language and culture they do have plans to move into the rest of the world soon and have partners and launch plans in place for several key international markets.

The beta process is incredibly valuable for any technology company and they are looking forward to getting our 'tyres kicked', as it were. Already the handful of early developers working with Multiverse is receiving a lot of personalized attention from their internal team, in exchange for their direct feedback... As they expand the beta to include dozens of additional developers, they will obviously have to scale back that one-to-one communication, but there will be a solid developer support program in place with forums and a reasonable amount of personal contact.

You could easily see a dichotomy if you think about the kind of technology offered and the kind of development team that will undertake being a developer. Teams that are into creating online games pretty much understand the requirements and costs involved and set themselves up accordingly so the question posed is 'will this tip the balance with your average game developer to change direction and possibly create an MMO title or could this even entice the creation of new teams to form utilizing the low cost Multiverse solution?'

This is absolutely what Multiverse wants to see happen. Their technology will free the independent developer to actually compete in this space and bring to market a high-quality MMOG or 3D virtual world in far less time and for far less money than ever before. It will suddenly be economically feasible to experiment, so they believe we could see a tremendous explosion in creativity.

Multiverse also has some other interesting events going on within the company and with the famous movie director James Cameron, responsible for creating/producing/directing films such as Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, True Lies etc on the company's advisory board of directors, it has sparked rumours about his current screenplay/Movie Project 880 being earmarked as being one of Hollywood's first major projects that gamers could play online. Multiverse was reluctant to make any statement on this but Corey did briefly explain the reasoning behind James Cameron's position on the board.

"Jim's earned the right to speak for himself, so I don't want to put words in his mouth. That said, I can tell you that he's really interested exploring the differences between the medium he's an expert in - film - and virtual worlds. He's obviously one of the world's best storytellers in the linear medium of film. Virtual worlds are not stories, and they aren't linear. He's also hugely technical. He was physics major at college, you know. The first time we showed him the technology, the first thing he said was 'Hmm. How many polygons in that guy?' So he is interested in this space as both an entertainer and a technologist. The head of our advisory board, Maria Wilhelm, has been working with him for a few years on some top-secret stuff. She figured he might find our work interesting, so she introduced us. After meeting, it turns out that there's a lot of overlap between Jim's and our visions of the future of entertainment."

The company was very strategic in its pursuit of each member of its advisory board and sought out individuals who could augment their capabilities and help infuse the team with their rich experience, industry knowledge, and expertise. The board we were told is excited about the company's vision and everyone's very happy to remain closely integrated with regular scheduled advisory board meetings, as well as direct contact as necessary with specific members.

Although the movie and game industry are moving closer each year it has never been the close knit synergy that was envisaged by media experts and Multiverse believe there is still some work to be done to find the perfect model, but conversely there is a trend that's already starting to emerge. The combination of film and online entertainment can be very successful with Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), a good example - at least pre-NGE(New Game Enhancement). Corey also mused that he believed that SWG could have been an even bigger success, but it's sure as heck not a failure and went on to mention the failure of The Matrix Online. It was too buggy, and although it had a fantastic story to draw from, it's not really getting a chance to capitalize on that now, which is a shame as the Wachowski brothers are providing input on the MMOG storyline, and the head writer, Paul Chadwick, is world-class.

"I'm a huge fan of his. I was really hoping that they could chart new ground with a mainstream property, in terms of maintaining both an open world and having a pre-planned storyline. That's a supremely difficult thing to do."

"What I'm personally really excited about is the Hollywood folks I've spoken to who say 'I don't understand all of the ramifications of this new entertainment medium of virtual worlds. How can I learn more?' Being open to learning and experimentation is a great way to proceed. Humility is not really something we saw from Hollywood the last time they made a big splash in the gaming industry. I think this bodes well for the future."

Coming to the end of the conversation with Corey he focused on Kothuria: The World's Edge, which is built on the Multiverse platform and offers some interesting features. One unique aspect is that Kothuria, currently in private beta, is going to be the first moddable MMOG. It is planned to give it away free for developers to do whatever they wish with. Install it on your own server and go to town. As for the version of it that Multiverse host, it has a number of cool features. For example, players' actions can change the ecology, borders, populations, economy, cultures, storyline and more. They are also developing some really cool quest technology that will generate meaningful, exciting quests based on the state of the world. And Kothuria offers a non-restrictive skill system, freeing players from dead-end character development paths.

Multiverse likes to be seen as a lean, mean startup, with nine full-time employees, most of whom are R&D, the process of evolving and growing has already begun. Even their CEO has an engineering background, so he rolls up his sleeves from time to time and slings code. Multiverse also has a host of contractors around the world doing work for them and they will be hiring several full-timers per quarter from now on.

One interesting aspect to remember throughout is although the Multiverse platform is available to developers for free, the company makes their money through revenue-sharing, but only if the developers charge players/consumers to play a game or visit a virtual world. The platform will support many ways for developers to make money -subscriptions, in-game transactions, etc. If a developer never charges a consumer/player to enter a world or play a game, then Multiverse don't take a percentage.

Concluding the interview Corey was positive about the future when asked did he feel that Multiverse could be a central hub for cross pollination of ideas from developers and was this one of their visions!?

"You're on the right track. In addition to our technology, we also plan to create an online forum where developers and contributors of all sorts can gather and communicate. Having the ability to tap into a network of peers is truly valuable for independent developers. In addition, we plan to launch the Multiverse Developer Marketplace, where developers can buy, sell and trade models, animations, sounds, UI packs, and so forth. Having this full ecosystem, where developers of all professions can participate in this virtual world revolution will enable the creation of unique MMOGs and virtual worlds that we could never have imagined."

More information on Multiverse can be found here.