It’s evening, and bugs are crawling around me. I wander into the middle of a large, virtual swamp to the sound of thumping bass in the distance. There’s nothing else nearby – a few trees, a couple of other players. It’s mostly just me and the sound emanating from a large wooden structure that’s spread out with light.
When I finally arrive, it looms over me: the official clubhouse of the Bored Monkey Yacht Club. I make the door to go in. Except I know I can’t access it. Even though the lights are on in the house, the doors don’t actually open. There is nothing to do.
These were my first forays into the virtual world themed after the infamous cartoon monkeys that have come to symbolize everything about the NFT craze. Although the NFT hype has died down, YogaLabs, the company behind BEC and some other NFT collections, is a new digital pusher with another early 2020s buzzword, a metaverse among others.
Others have been a long time coming: The company announced its intention to build others after raising $450 million in funding in 2022, at which time a BEC cofounder said that the company hoped to build “interconnected,” “gamified,” and “centralized” virtual worlds. Yoga Labs has been mostly quiet about the project since then, eventually launching an alpha earlier this year. Today, at the company’s Apex event in Las Vegas, Yoga Labs announced that Edge will officially launch on November 12.
“It’s basically one of the most ambitious projects ever in space.”
“This is fundamentally one of the most ambitious projects ever in the space, and it’s finally starting to take shape,” said Michael Figge, chief product officer at YogaLabs. Verge.
The short version of the pitch is that others have something like Roblox or something Fortnitebut with crypto: you can use NFT as an avatar to explore virtual worlds created by Yoga Labs and other players. You can log in with a crypto wallet, but you don’t need an NFT to participate or just hang out. You can only join from a browser using more traditional methods like your email.
“We think there should be a very low barrier to entry for someone to try it out to others, because once they try it, it’s a really great way to expose them to what it’s like to own digital assets,” Figge says.
Everywhere you look there is a bunch of crypto stuff. NFT avatar, NFT plot of land, blockchain based currency. Yoga hopes to build a creator ecosystem around all of this, giving builders a more compelling deal than competing meteors because these digital assets exist outside of its world and could be moved elsewhere in the future. You can also ignore most of these and just run around the others, if you want, without diving too deep into the crypto of it all.
In addition to the area I explored, the Swamp, there will be a large virtual hub world known as the Nexus. Some community-made experiences will also be available to play. These include a shooter game called Bathroom blitz (“Action so explosive, you’ll be clenching your cheeks the whole time,” according to a description on the Edge website, among others) and a zombie game called A Zombie Game. Others spread. In worlds, you can also create “bubbles,” which are essentially another side version of a social audio room, like a clubhouse room or XSpace.
“We really think there’s a really big potential for people who want to share their experiences with others,” Figge says. “Going after entrants into the field of user-generated experience, such as Roblox and Minecraftis a huge opportunity for us, because I think a lot of people might be frustrated with this current way of supporting creators and the economic model behind it.
Yoga Labs and Amazon are partnering on a “Boximus” avatar
Game avatars with others are 3D representations of NFTs that players own. “Any NFT collection can offer its own collection of avatars for review and use with others,” says Figge. Avatars will also be created using a new system that Yoga Labs is calling Voyager. Initially there will be two avatar contributions. A digital artist Daniel Arsham has a 300-piece collection. The other is a co-branded “tokenized asset” called Boxims in partnership with Amazon that Figge says is “basically made of, like, a bunch of Amazon boxes.” Amazon Avatar will be available directly on Amazon’s website, Figge says.
These avatars will cost money. “Think of these travellers as ‘skin’ from the traditional gaming world,” says Figge. “We’re not disclosing pricing details yet, but what we can say is that they aim to be reasonable and affordable.” And because they’re blockchain-based assets, you’ll be able to resell what you own, which you can’t in other Metaverse-like games, according to Figge.
I had to run around the swamp before writing this article. It looks like this world is a giant, 3D social chat room. There was no gameplay other than exploring the space and chatting with fellow visitors via voice or text. And while I don’t want to judge a pre-launch virtual world too harshly before it’s publicly launched, it reminded me more of the hollow experiences I’ve had around Meta’s Horizon worlds or Metaverse fashion shows that are instantly entertaining and engaging. Fortnite.
In the swamp, there wasn’t much to see or do other than hang around the outside of the clubhouse (which I couldn’t go inside) or explore the swamp to see things like an outhouse (closed) and a platform by the train track (which has a sign that says “out of order”). Surprisingly, as I was moving away from the platform, a train started to roll by, but my character ran too slowly to catch it. I found a portal that sent me flying in the direction of the moving train, but I missed landing on it and splashed back into the water.
Even if we assume that such nitpicky issues are fixed and swamps or nexus or other experiences are filled with players, 3D environments that are primarily for socialization are usually too niche or pretty boring. Successes like Vrchat are the exception, not the rule. And makes like things a part of it Fortnite And Roblox is so popular that you have friends to play while hanging out with them. At launch, and with such a focus on crypto, I’m not sure others will have the same pull.
Maybe others will develop into something more interesting. FortniteRoblox, and more Minecraft All snowed in big hits. But I’m suspicious of what I’m seeing right now, and maybe you won’t see me the other way.
