The Metaverse is Here: Now in Open Beta After 6 Years of Development, Dual Universe's Lead Creator Speaks

Just in time for the long weekend, the Metaverse is here: Dual Universe is now available in open beta. A single shard, fully persistent world with user-generated content and an internal economy, many believe Dual Universe is the closest thing we have to a metaverse worth the name, and now it’s open to all. 

Reached just a couple hours ago at NovaQuark's studio in Montreal, lead creator J.C. Baillie confirms that the Dual Universe that’s playable now is the Dual Universe that will permanently remain -- the key features are activated, the gameplay is locked down, and there are no plans to reset its reality. 

“It’s been 6 years since we’ve been working non-stop to get this baby out,” Baillie tells me, somehow sounding both haggard and enthused. “It’s very rewarding.”

Even shortly after launch, gamers are already plowing deeply into it, especially on Twitch, where one player even streamed his Dual Universe experience for 13 hours straight. (While he declines to report total user numbers, J.C. Baille tells me that “thousands [are] connected at any given time.”)

The fact that it’s persistent has actually created interesting interactions between Dual Universe streamers and players. 

Unlike a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft, as J.C. points out, “where there’s sort of an invisible wall” of many different shards, someone watching a live Dual Universe stream can log in, travel to the streamer’s in-world destination, and join them on camera. (A feature Second Life users are already quite familiar with, but pretty unique to MMO fans used to sharded worlds.)

Baillie likens that to watching Game of Thrones and then somehow being able to teleport into the show and become a player in it while it’s still being broadcast. “This is a very powerful thing that’s not been explored.”

But is this metaverse for you? Here’s some assorted notes -- on avatars, system requirements its similarities to Second Life, and tips for getting started from the lead creator himself:

The Future of Dual Universe Avatars

J.C. acknowledges that the world’s avatars are a weak point for now (everyone has a helmet, and customization is basically limited to color change). However, while “we have to choose our battles, in the future there will be avatars you can buy” and then customize. (To keep them consistent with the world’s lore, however, the base avatars will be designed by Novaquark.)

Point to Point Teleporting -- But Logical

Currently reading my book about the launch of Second Life, (“Amazing to see how we’ve been on the same path, though I take different directions”) J.C. tells me they recently added SL-style point-to-point teleportation. But because Dual Universe is set in a logically consistent world, even that is made to make sense:

To travel across great distances to other planets or solar systems without journeying there via space ship (as would usually be the case) players can use a “surrogate VR station” where they can remotely guide a robot and use it to explore a far away location. So without breaking the reality of the game world, this “makes the world entirely accessible”. Players are already advertising their own places for visit via surrogate VR, and charging people in-game currency to take these trips.

Thin Client, Streamed Reality

The world itself is accessible by a client download of around 7 gigabytes. (Tiny compared to most MMOs -- even old ass WoW requires 70 gigs of free space.) That’s because the world, being fully persistent and single shard, is streamed to a player. Which also means you do need high broadband: 20-25 meg/sec download is the entry level.

Two Tip for Getting Started in Dual Universe, By the God of Dual Universe

1. Don’t Skip the Starting Tutorial: While it clocks in at one hour, “Don’t skip it, it’s meant to give you a taste of the complexity” of the world, says J.C. “It’s not a simple game where you get a weapon and there are monsters.” Players who skip the tutorial are likely to get lost or overwhelmed. Also, at the end of the tutorial, you’re given a plot of land and a fricking ship, and why miss that.

2. Join an organization. “You don’t have to, you can live in a deep cave if that’s your thing.” That said, organizations can share ships and other resources with you. J.C. fondly recalls one player who joined an org, attempted to travel to its home planet headquarters, but ran out of fuel, and proceeded to drift in space. So the org put together a risky Martian-style rescued mission. “Which is very difficult to do, actually. That was a beautiful story.”

What happens now is in many ways in the hands of Dual Universe's player community, as the world its creators imagined for years (watch my 2019 interview above) is given over to people from around the world who'll use it to tell and create stories of their own. Especially now, with the real world still wracked by a pandemic and a whole other host of horrors.

“Your actual reality sucks and you’re stuck in it," as J.C. Baille puts it, "and we offer you an exit door.”

Comments

[Iggy 1.0]

Windows only! No Mac, No Iggy. Sigh...90% of my students carry MacBooks.

World designers, I know it's a lot of work, but make 'em cross platform. Still, that may not be your business model. I'm sure there's money to be made in the high-end PC-gamer market.

Good luck. It does look stunning, but I'll play elsewhere: lots of good cross-platform European board games on boardgamearena.

[3d]

Do they have a marketplace where I can create 3d content and earn real $$$?

[Fionalein]

Methinks the term "metaverse" gets used inflationary these days...

[sirhc desantis]

Looks fun but no - not dropping 21 euros on it just to try

[Bavid Dailey]

As iggy said, windows only. Fooie. If its a thin client, as the story says, it should not be that difficult make versions for other OSes.

[Alicia]

Yeah... this is basically like EVE Online, but without restrictions for the most part.

[Ehrman]

Huh . . . the market terminals displayed look very similar to those I remember in Entropia Universe.

I have to say, after seeing how well Fortnite ran on an iPad and how much construction was possible in their open world mode, investing in an expensive Windows-based gaming PC and external GPU just to support these heavy old graphics engines, seems like such a waste of money these days.

As much as I resent the closed ecosystem that created it, the combination of Apple silicone + Metal + Unity have in 2020 far surpassed the quality, value and performance of these old, heavy Windows-based games.

[Wagner James Au]

> Do they have a marketplace where I can create 3d content and earn real $$$?

Create 3D content to sell for Dual Universe currency, yeah. They want to keep it very much an internal system closed off from the real world. (Though no doubt people will soon do RL money deals for various goods and services on the side.)