Why Core is Spending $100 Million to Make a "Multiverse" (Not a Metaverse)

Manticore,  the startup behind Core, a kind of Fortnite-meets-ROBLOX UGC platform, just announced $100 million in venture funding from Fortnite publisher Epic and other investors. That's not a surprise in itself, especially since ROBLOX's recent IPO made that UGC platform more valuable than top traditional game companies like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software. What's more surprising to me is that the announcement describes Core not as a metaverse nor as a "a digital playground and community" (the company's original description for itself)... but instead, as a "creator multiverse".

Why the term change?

"We have been talking about the multiverse for a long time but didn’t use that word until the last year or so," Manticore CEO Frederic Descamps tells me through a spokesperson. "We see Core as a multitude of universes, connected or not, depending on what the users decide. Players and creators are ultimately the ones who will determine how all these worlds and universes are connected."

It's why, Descamps adds, they're not calling Core a metaverse:

"To me, the metaverse is more controlled, a walled garden and pre-scripted," he says. "In the metaverse, you have this all-encompassing world where everything has to reside. Our multiverse could be comprised of several metaverses or universes."

His definition of a metaverse is more in line with Dual Universe's version (especially the walled garden part), as opposed to the IEEE version based on Snowcrash, i.e. " a future Internet of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe". Then again, at a certain point the distinctions at play become more about semantics and branding. After all, Core competitors ROBLOX, Rec Room, VRChat, and IMVU have all branded themselves as building a 'metaverse", and who wants to compete in that crowded space? (And, I suppose, since a startup of the same name shuttered in 2012, the term "multiverse" is kinda sorta available?)

More Core coverage from NWN below:

• Epic Invests In Core To Expand Unreal's Metaverse Potential -- And Increase Its Competitive Advantage Against Apple (September 2020)
• Core Directly Paying Cash To Select Users Who Create Popular Games -- And Letting Them Keep Their Games' Underlying IP Rights! (July 2020)
• Core Launches Attack On Roblox's 25/75 Revenue Split For Creators (December 2020)

Comments

[Sean R. Lynch]

It pains me to see them trying to pretend that a bunch of fragmented worlds is somehow more functional or harder to build than a unified world. They seems to think "metaverse" just means MMORPG, which means either they don't have the first clue what they're talking about or they're engaging in willful ignorance for the purpose of deceptive marketing.

Anyone can build a fragmented set of single-server virtual worlds. Even Roblox managed it despite having a CEO who micromanages the hell out of everyone and has driven leader after leader out of the company, and despite having made some pretty questionable technology choices. Seems to me Roblox's success has attracted a bunch of fly-by-nights anxious to ride on their coattails.

I suspect at least one company will end up being successful, just because Roblox is going to run into a lot of trouble escaping their image as being for kids. But personally I'm not interested in seeing a bunch of mini-Fortnites if it brings along Fortnite's crappy culture. In fact, any "multiverse" aimed at "serious gamers" is probably going to suffer from a similar problem unless they make some significant effort to keep the toxic people out. Perhaps instead of just having games that developers throw up there, they could build in some decent community management features and let people build a community around each game?