Will Decentraland Property Speculation Hurt Decentraland as a Virtual World? The Founder Argues Otherwise

It's like 2008 all over again! After years of New World Notes coverage of Decentraland, the ambitious, open standards-based social VR world project which sold $25 million+ worth of virtual land last year, it's now being covered by the BBC itself. (Watch above.) After much attention to the virtual tulip mania that's consumed many virtual world/cryptocurrency fans, the BBC gives us some of our first early glimpses of Decentraland the virtual world, which is still in very early development. Some major landowners might be a bit surprised by the rudimentary graphics and interactivity so far. As I put it to Decentraland founder Ari Meilich:

"The more that's spent on virtual land, the more that these investors will expect an AAA-quality game when it launches -- and there will be much more pressure to launch it soon. Don't you think?"

"We feel pressure but not because of speculation," Ari tells me. "But because we’re a team of people that want to create a new market and leave a mark. If they expect AAA-like graphics, they’ve been watching the wrong channel. We’ve said plenty of times that’s not the aesthetic we’re shooting for, but rather low-poly to accommodate even lower end devices.

I tell him that by "AAA", I didn't necessarily mean graphics, but a highly polished, complete experience that could, say, hold up to Minecraft in its current incarnation, but as an MMO. Isn't that what they're shooting for?

 

"What matters is product/market fit. We’re shooting for that. We have a private alpha now but with static content. Shooting for a Q1 [2019] launch with 10+ curated experiences. Curated dynamic and complex experiences, meaning games."

But many developers are hard at work building content:

"We have peaks of up to 100 daily active developers," Ari tells me. "Our SDK is for the really technically-minded though: our focus now is working with a few partners that will create the first few quality experiences. Over time we’ll work on lowering the barrier to entry and ultimately catering to end users."

So we'll need to wait until next year to see, first-hand, how much Decentraland has evolved. To Ari's point, Minecraft graphics were and are decidedly clunky (to make it feel more personal, founder Markus "Notch" Persson told me way back in the day), and Minecraft massively succeeded despite (or because) of them. Then again, Minecraft was first made by a four person team for decidedly way less than $25 million dollars -- and without thousands of outside investors beyond those who bought a working Alpha copy.

Hat tip: Fellow Linden Lab alum Tom Verre. More thoughts on virtual land speculation vs. virtual community here.

Comments

[Rio]

Great article with some interesting points. Will be great to see how Decentraland evolves over time. Maybe next year we'll see more coverage of a successful Decentraland from BBC.

[Carlos Loff]

One more cartoonish crapp, even more cartoonish than previous ones, jesus, give me one thousand part of your funding and I will make a priject on Second Life that reaally makes a difference

[rei]

It is interesting to compare this story to the Inworldz-Islandz controversy.
Apparently, folks think that what they create is intransigent. If you think your stuff will last the ages, I have shoe boxes of punch cards that represent 10's of thousands of hours of work by some of brightest folks I have ever known. (I will sell them for a penny a card - LOL)

The idea to go with a stylized world for Decentraland is a good one, it will add a bit more longevity to the content. After all, if you watch a 50 year-old Bugs Bunny cartoon and it still looks pretty good and you will laff, and if you watch a 50 year-old Star Trek you'll still laff, but that is because it looks ridiculous.

I will not be buying in to the Dencetraland project. Contributions to Firefail and Star Citizen have taught me not to fund this sort of thing ever again. Might as well have spent that money on Lotto tickets......

Rei,

PS: I throw in that book of poems I wrote in college with punch cards for free. No doubt it will be worth a fortune someday.