Topia is another web-based virtual world-meets-Zoom platform to put on your radar, very much in a similar space as Andy Baio's Skittish. The startup just got $5 million in funding from the VC firm of Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, and just unveiled a marketplace for world creators:
World owners can now earn commissions whenever visitors to their worlds spend money in Topia, including subscriptions and marketplace purchases. Topia’s new creator marketplace allows artists and experienced designers to create scenes or entire customizable worlds and offer them for sale, making it easy for anyone to develop tailored experiences. The marketplace is launching with a collection of scenes designed by notable artists, including former Riot Games and Magic Leap Art Director Daren Bader, Void Bastards Creator Ben Lee, and Ubisoft Senior Environment Designer Karen Stanley.
Click here to try it out yourself by jumping into Topia's general welcome area. I just did, randomly bumped into an active group chat where another guy showed up on camera eating cereal, and promptly fled. However I did have time to appreciate the whimsically hand-drawn default graphics, a nice way to draw in non-gamers. You can also import graphically richer 3D worlds:
More background from the latest announcement, though I'd take this with some slivers of sodium:
Since launching in May of 2020, Topia has grown to see over 1,000 user-hosted events every month. The free-to-use platform has attracted a diverse range of users from families, students, and schools, to music and arts festivals and Fortune 500 companies. Large companies and confluencers have taken advantage of the platform’s adaptability to build out branded Topia worlds for their employees and fans to foster creativity and collaboration.
Topia actually still seems fairly small in terms of regular users -- to judge by its web traffic, it is seeing some steady growth, with 200,000 visits last April, up from 20,000 in November 2020.
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