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Multiverse partners with Vivox to bring voice to virtual world developers
Metaverse development company Multiverse has announced a partnership with Vivox, the voice service provider for virtual worlds and MMOs of many stripes. Being able to provide integrated voice chat, 3D positional audio, presence, speaking indicators, and management tools right out of the box will be a definite selling point for developers who are interested in using Multiverse's platform to create their virtual worlds.Vivox is keeping influential company -- other partners include Wizards of the Coast, IBM, metaverse developers Electric Sheep Company, and EVE Online's CCP Games. With strong strategic alliances like these, they're quickly rising to the top of voice provider solutions for the industry. Let's hope their grasp doesn't exceed their reach.[Via Business Wire]
Learning quantum mechanics with Super Mario World
We love science, even if it totally creeps us out sometimes. Take, for example, this video explaining quantum mechanics and parallel universes via Super Mario World. Maybe Tyler Durden was right and we aren't unique snowflakes, after all. (It's okay, we're trying to hold back the tears, too.)Still, we love when science is dumbed down to our level (that is, explained using video games we know and love). This video, for example, teaches Hugh Everett's multiverse concept, using 134 overlaid playthroughs of a Super Mario World hack.We now conclude your Nintendo Wii Fanboy lesson for today (brought to you by the folks at PopSci); make sure to run off and tell your mothers what you've learned.[Via Gemaga]
Bridges backhands Rosedale, Second Life
Corey Bridges, founder of Multiverse another player in the increasingly large virtual world space, had a number of things to say to Worlds in Motion about the announcement that Philip Rosedale was planning to step down as CEO and step up as chairman. A sort of freehand summary would be, "Second Life can't deliver, and Multiverse can. So long, Philip, and thanks for all the fish." Intentional or not, it comes across as unbecoming smack talk, basically.
Multiverse co-founder describes new virtual world order
Multiverse's Corey Bridges spoke at the SXSW conference about the effects digital distribution and the democratization of advanced development tools will have on the industries of gaming, social networks, and virtual worlds.Gamasutra put together a great summary of the talk. The thesis: just as they are stripping the entrenched establishments of the music and film industries of much of their oligarchical power, new technologies will transform online gaming and virtual worlds. According to Bridges, virtual worlds are just getting started. "WoW is not a fad," he said, "it's a harbinger." Furthermore, the virtual worlds will be in the hands of indies, not the major conglomerates, and they'll be synergized with social networks.Bridges also touched on the notion of a more splintered industry made up of smaller projects catering to lots of niche tastes, as opposed to the huge Hollywood-budget productions we see today. A while back someone said that it would take at least a $1 billion super project to take on World of Warcraft. But maybe, as it was with the Roman Empire, the wolves at Blizzard's gate will be countless smaller tribes made up of the so-called unwashed hordes.
SXSW08: Virtual worlds and indie games to dethrone publishers
Multiverse cofounder Corey Bridges' talk at SXSW Interactive may have had the title "Virtual World and Game Development: Rise of the Indies," but it soon became clear that "Rise of the Indies" was a nicer spin on "Fall of Publishers." The talk turned out to be surprisingly inflammatory as Bridges predicted the death of the traditional video game industry in favor of near-universal adoption of virtual worlds. "Video game publishers are dead. They're walking corpses. They just don't know it."Bridges has the track record to back up wild predictions, having been right about things like graphical web browsing, online mail-order DVD rental, and, uh, computer security (by association, as in he was involved with each of these early on). To see this person attached to an MMO development platform is basically troubling for people who would like to continue ignoring MMOs.
SL2MV copies stuff from SL to Multiverse
Notable Second Life blogger and photographer Vint Falken has highlighted Mike Sutton's tutorial videos on moving Second Life content from Second Life to the Multiverse platform. There is quite a bit of work involved and the workflow pipeline isn't for the faint of heart. Only those with a solid technical aptitude are going to be able to follow the process at this stage. However, it is still in Alpha, and who knows? It could well solidify into a more integrated system over time. Obviously this only deals with meshes and textures - not with scripts or directly with component prims. No object permissions apply to the system, since it only operates on what the viewer is generating for display on your PC, however, would-be content exporters should respect the rights of content creators and only perform this with allowable content.
Top 10 MIA MMOs of 2007 - part 1
In the waning weeks of December, we've already started turning our eyes towards the new year. 2008 is already showing a great deal of promise for the MMO community, with the impending release of Pirates of the Burning Sea, Wrath of the Lich King, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Though most of these titles are still a good ways away from hitting retailer shelves, we've already got a pretty good idea of what's in store, not just in terms of assets and information that's already been released, but also from hands-on impressions and beta testing. In other words, as excited as we are, there probably won't be terribly many surprises as it concerns these titles. They're practically a given.As luck would have it, those aren't the only titles we'll be drooling over next year – this much we know. There are a number of games in development out there that have shown up on our collective radar screens over the past few months, but only as tiny blips. For the most part, they still represent riddles wrapped up in mysteries with a side of question mark. We've assembled a list of the top 10 MIA MMOs - those mysterious games that represent the future of the MMO... if only we knew what they were.In the first part of this feature, we'll take a look at the first half of the list.
ASU testing Snow Crash for Google?
Matt Stone at ASU Web Devil (Arizona State University's online newspaper) has gotten a hold of some internal emails between ASU officials that indicate that they are testing a secret project (referred to as Myworld or sometimes Snow Crash), among strong suggestions that it's for Google and that it's in beta with a small number of students right now. ASU is something of a poster-child for Google (who even have an office on one of the ASU campuses), and has been an early tester for assorted Google applications.
A multitude of worlds - the Multiverse platform
Back at the beginning of August, MMO/VW platform developer Multiverse released the 1.0 version of their Multiverse platform. With Multiverse, tools and platform tech is available for any team to build a world, from 3D chatrooms to game-based MMOs. According to Multiverse, their platform has so far attracted 11,000 registered development teams/individual developers. Twenty-eight of those are featured on the Multiverse site, in both game and non-game genres from chat-rooms to victoriana.
Google almost certainly creating multi-user virtual world
World of Googlecraft? GoogleQuest? Pirates of the Google Sea? No, really. It could happen. Sort of.Apparently Google isn't satisfied with how massive it is already; the tech juggernaut might be developing a virtual online world. Okay, so it probably won't really be an MMORPG per say, but it could be something similar to Second Life. Rumors of the project have been gaining momentum for a while now, and we here at Massively are laying out all the evidence right here for you to see.
Think you can do a better job?
Many players insist loudly and long that they could do a better job then the Blizzard devs. If only they had the 3 years and $20 million required to create an MMORPG these days? Now they don't have that excuse any more.Say hello to Multiverse, a free software development kit (reg required) that gives you all the tools you need to build your own MMORPG. Quests, Inventory, movement, combat and monster AI functionality is already built in plus a free set of starter assets is provided. They not only provide code and content, but customers as well. Any player who has played one Multiverse MMOG can play any Multiverse MMOG with the same program. And Multiverse handles all financial transactions.What's left? Your creative vision of what an MMORPG should be. It wouldn't hurt if you had art design skills, modeling talent or class balancing experience. What does Multiverse get out of it? 20% of your revenue. Not a bad deal for all the free service they provide upfront. They also provide a movie of their GDC 2007 presentation that showcases early builds by some pioneering developers.So knowing nothing stands between you and your vision of WoW 2.0, what kind of world would you make?
Multiverse becoming popular with indie MMO developers
According to this CNET article, MMO development platform Multiverse is becoming a hit. The "talk of the Austin Game Conference", about 100 developers are already signed up for the beta, and while some potential products seem to be going the sword-and-sorcery route, others look more interesting.However, as a commenter at Wonderland points out, Multiverse isn't the only option out there. With a high-profile investor in James Cameron, and plenty of publicity, it's overshadowing products like HeroEngine -- more options for development mean more diverse final products, but the 'indie MMO' space could certainly become quite exciting thanks to Multiverse and its cronies.
Film and TV tie-in MMOs on the way
MMO platform startup Multiverse recently announced that movie-makers James Cameron and Jon Landau have joined its board of directors, and this has some interesting implications for the future of MMOs and other entertainment media. While movie tie-in games are ten a penny, and franchised MMOs lurk around every corner, Cameron has a more ambitious project up his sleeve.The plan? Before releasing an upcoming sci-fi flick, Cameron intends to create a tie-in MMO that will get players hooked on the film's setting--think advergame, franchise and viral promotion rolled into one. Similarly, Multiverse is in talks with a TV network to create a related MMO that will help viewers get closer to their favourite characters.The numbers look appealing; Multiverse's low-cost approach means that franchises and developers who have been shying away from the MMO bandwagon can jump without sacrificing millions of dollars on an experiment. However, this could have its downsides--we may end up seeing an endless parade of cookie-cutter MMOs that equate IP with instant revenue without much thought for gameplay or originality.Hopefully this won't happen; it's up to Multiverse, and Cameron's novel tie-in, to set the scene for the future. Their MMOs will be competing with standalone franchised products, and it will be a battle for player revenue well worth witnessing. However, the big question is: when will Uwe Boll get wind of this?
