Originally published on my Patreon
When I last chatted with Gizem Mishi Akin a few months ago, she had just launched her new SL-only brand, KiwiCo, and it sure seemed like her days as a cross-platform metaverse entrepreneur were over.
But then she went ahead and created her own mini-metaverse platform:
Behold Simthing (watch the teaser trailer here), a casual life sim soon playable on the messaging app Telegram, and later, on Discord here, where the server is now home to Simthing's official user/developer community.
Gizem developed it with a team of Electronic Arts veterans who recently created the PC-based virtual world Hometopia. Simthing, by contrast, is designed for mobile-based, bite-sized life fun with pets, home customization, and avatar fashion challenges, where you submit a themed look (going on a date, prom night, etc.) which is then rated by other players.
While the first version of Simthing is very much in bare bones, early (but playable) Alpha stage -- "we don’t want to stay in development for a whole year, we want to build with the community and let them experience every feature we are thinking through", as Gizem puts it -- the first stage focuses on raising your pet:
"First things first, you name your pet, mine is called 2barks," she explains. "You level up through building a bond with your pet... play with your pet, you feed your pet, you take your pet on walks. There are a few different ways you can do these activities. As you level up, you unlock game currency, Aura Points, with the Aura points you can get your pet premium pet food, or fun toys." (Doing so also unlocks new spaces for your pet to play and hangout in, while also earning you accessories for your pet.)
So Simthing is very different from, say, Second Life, where you're exploring a whole virtual world. "This is the opposite of what Second Life is supposed to be," as Gizem puts it. "I think it's going to be a complementary experience."
There's another key way it's complementary with SL:
The game is partnering with numerous Second Life community brands to bring their content into Simthing. These brands then get to make additional profit from a secondary market, while Simthing players get to enjoy a huge well of existing, already proven, high quality content. ("What if instead of creating thousands of assets," she says, explaining her strategy, "we use existing UGC items optimized for the game?") Ten SL brands are already signed, she tells me, with many more to follow.
While Gizem shared many other planned/upcoming features of Simthing with me, she says the game will ultimately evolve in collaboration with its players: "We are attempting a 'Build in public' strategy, which means our community will have an active role in which features get added and when, " as she puts it.
But to address two potential hot button issues upfront: No, the game will not incorporate AI-generated 3D content, she confirms with me, and won't include anything crypto/web3/NFT-related. (Saying simply, "Our studio wants to build a game that people want to play.")
I'm excited to see what becomes of Simthing, especially as it's launching just before the much-ballyhooed inZOI, but is vastly more conducive to casual play anywhere: While inZOI requires a powerful gaming PC, Simthing is integrated with mobile, and integrated with Discord (on the player community level to start) and Telegram, two already popular messaging platforms. And because Gizem is deeply connected with the Second Life creator community -- moreso than Linden Lab itself -- she is best positioned to grow Simthing from a mini life sim into, well, something even more massive and ambitious.
And while Simthing is quite different from Second Life, she has been building it partly as a kind of experiment:
"What I’m interested to learn is if Second Life was easy to play, what would that be like?" as Gizem Mishi Akin puts it to me. "I really want to see what kind of magic would happen.
"I guess we'll see."
Play Simthing when available here on Telegram.
Join the player community on Discord here. A Discord version of Simthing is also planned for later on, after the Telegram deployment gains traction.
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