30
Apr
2023

♫How Long, How Long Will I Ride To The Otherside♫

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TL;DR:

  • Yuga Labs conducted a playtest of their Otherside Second Trip metaverse game with thousands of players, emphasizing the importance of a dense and active metaverse experience.

  • Feedback from the playtest was mixed, highlighting the need for ongoing testing and development to create an engaging and diverse gameplay experience.

  • Yuga Labs aims to involve NFT holders in the development process, fostering a co-development experience with the Bored Ape Yacht Club community.

  • They recently hired Mike Seavers, a game industry veteran, as the new Chief Technology Officer to support their gaming ambitions.

  • The vision for Otherside is to create an online world where official content coexists with user-generated content, fostering a creative economy within the metaverse.

  • Yuga Labs plans to make Otherside more accessible by involving NFT holders in bringing in more users and creating fun experiences that go beyond the perception of interacting with NFTs.

See you at the Otherside

Yuga Labs, the creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, conducted a playtest of their Otherside Second Trip, a metaverse game aiming to create a dense and immersive experience for players. The playtest featured a lobby filled with thousands of players, engaging in activities and conversations.

Yuga Labs’ Otherside Second Trip playtest was far from being empty and devoid of human life, unlike some other metaverse game worlds. The lobby was filled with thousands of players who were all running, leaping, flying, and talking at the same time, creating a sensory overload that was nonetheless impressive. Even though everyone had a similar robotic tribal design and the lobby was simply adorned, the playtest packed in around 7,200 unique players.

Yuga Labs’ Chief Creative Officer Michael Figge said that maintaining and scaling the density of the Otherside metaverse as they continue testing and building towards a live product is key. To achieve this, Yuga Labs is exploring ways to build in public and maintain and scale the density of the metaverse to attract more users. The recent hiring of game industry leader Mike Seavers as their new Chief Technology Officer is also expected to help Yuga Labs achieve its goals.

How big can it get?

Yuga Labs is faced with the challenge of scaling Otherside from a massive NFT land drop and $1.25 billion worth of trading volume to a fully-realized online world with Bored Ape-inspired storytelling, social gameplay challenges, and NFT avatars wandering around. Unlike traditional AAA games, Yuga Labs is building in public and involving NFT holders in the work-in-progress.

The tech seems more established than the content at this stage. The Otherside Second Trip playtest transported players into a jungle-like setting where they had to collect magic blobs and feed them to giant laser-spewing toads. Players were split into four teams led by Web3 personalities, and the winning team would receive an exclusive wearable NFT. While the gameplay was a big social spectacle, it eventually became monotonous, and players expressed dissatisfaction in the chat feed.

Yuga Labs’ Chief Creative Officer, Michael Figge, emphasized the importance of creating a dense and active metaverse to provide an engaging experience for users. The playtest received mixed feedback, with some players finding the experience monotonous after a while. Yuga Labs views the playtest as part of an iterative process and plans to conduct more frequent tests in the future.

Yuga Labs is focused on building in public and involving NFT holders in the development process of Otherside. They aim to create a robust online world filled with Bored Ape-themed storytelling, social gameplay challenges, and NFT avatars.

By allowing users to participate in the development process, Yuga Labs aims to create a co-development experience with the Bored Ape Yacht Club community. They are exploring ways to maintain density and scale up the user base as they continue testing and building towards a live product.

Great new hire

Yuga Labs recently hired Mike Seavers, a game industry veteran with experience at Riot Games and Epic Games, as their new Chief Technology Officer. This hiring decision showcases Yuga Labs’ commitment to expanding their gaming ambitions and developing Otherside into a successful metaverse game. They aim to open up the world to other builders by the end of the year, enabling user-generated content and fostering a creative economy within the Otherside metaverse.

 

The ultimate vision for Otherside is to create an online world where Yuga Labs’ official content coexists with the creations of thousands of players and digital landowners. The goal is to foster a sense of community and shared experiences within the metaverse.

Yuga Labs aims to create an online world where the official content of Otherside can coexist with the creations of potentially tens of thousands of players and digital landowners. The company believes that Web3 provides a way for external creators to use Yuga’s building blocks while growing value within the original game ecosystem. The goal is to motivate a creative economy that spawns compelling experiences. Yuga’s mindset towards Otherside is comparable to Star Wars and the Expanded Universe of content, providing a construct for thinking about what’s considered “canon” and what can be deemed alternate universe takes.

As Yuga Labs is currently focused on its NFT holders, the people who have invested in the startup’s Web3 vision, they aim to give them the ability to bring along friends or even loan out their access credentials to bring in more users. The company believes that their real sticky behaviors will come from plus-one tickets for Second Trip given to Otherdeed landowners and with their recent standalone Dookey Dash web game, where players can use the Delegate Cash service to enable another wallet to play the game without holding the access pass NFT.

Yuga Labs sees Web3 as a way to empower external creators and provide them with the tools and infrastructure to build compelling experiences within the Otherside metaverse. They aim to balance official content with user-generated content, similar to how Star Wars expanded its universe through additional storytelling.

 

While Yuga Labs currently focuses on NFT holders and investors, they are also considering ways to make Otherside more accessible to a mass audience. They aim to involve NFT holders in bringing in more users, whether through plus-one tickets or allowing NFT holders to loan out their access credentials. Yuga Labs wants to create fun and immersive experiences that go beyond the perception of interacting with NFTs, expanding the image of what a digital collectible can be.

 
 

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