The Many Worlds of the Multiverse
At this year's Game Developer's Conference, News Manager Keith Cross had the opportunity to talk with the people behind Multiverse, the MMO platform which is free for use by developers, and with the developers behind a few of the many games being made with Multiverse. So Join us now as we peer through the fabric of space and time to view the many worlds of the Multiverse.
On the last day of the GDC I had the chance to stop by the Multiverse booth. When I wrote in our GDC blog about the various trials of getting to the Stargate Worlds interview, I mentioned there were other occasions where I was delayed getting to an appointment, and that on two occasions it was because I had a hard time finding the booth. Once it was because the booth was cleverly cloaked, and the other time it was all me. Well, the Multiverse booth was the one I couldn’t find because I’m a bit slow. I walked past the place three times, and finally noticed Multiverse in big green letters, looming over the booth in a very obvious fashion.
If you haven’t heard of Multiverse, it’s a platform for creating MMOs and virtual worlds with a unique business model. Multiverse is described as being “genre and setting agnostic.” Meaning that Multiverse is available to anyone for free, for any developer to make whatever game they please, restricted only by their skill and creativity. When and if your game starts making money, the folks at Multiverse are then entitled to a 10 percent cut of the game’s profits, making it a great resource for independent developers, and helping to mitigate the financial risks involved with the development of a massively multiplayer online game.
Times Square and Little Robots
To show off what their product is capable of they had several developers who were building games using Multiverse on hand, as well as a mock up of Times Square to demonstrate their products capabilities. Times Square looked great, complete with flashy animated advertisements and all. Multiverse comes complete with a built in web browser, giving the ability to access any website from directly in the game. This is actually what they did to pull off the ads in Times Square. All of the ads were either flash animations or videos from YouTube. I guess what I’m trying to say is that their Times Square demo looked really good, and showed that Multiverse is capable of high quality graphics in a virtual space.
Another demo they had running was a little robot game, where you play a robot on one of two teams, fighting over territory on islands floating in space. The game had an overall cutesy look, and wasn’t very big. It was put together in a short amount of time in the weeks before the show by a PR company who wanted to demonstrate what a small team can do with Multiverse in a very short period of time. Small teams seem to be the standard with Multiverse. The most common response I received when I asked, “how big is your development team?” was “there are four of us, more or less.” Despite the small teams and low funding, there were still some people doing some interesting things.
Infernal Worlds
I’d say the best looking game they had on display was Infernal Worlds, an MMO that pits the forces of Heaven and Hell against each other and the Void. Players can either play as part of the Heaven faction or the Hell faction, sometimes they fight against each other, but they can both team up to fight the Void. The game has some interesting visuals, and a cohesive artistic style, meaning that creatures and terrains in the game look like they belong with the other objects in that universe.
Lunar Quest
There was one game on display which particularly caught my interest. Lunar Quest is an educational game being developed at the University of Central Florida which places players on a moon base and has them play mini games which teach physics concepts. For example, to teach the concept of vectors they tasked the player with moving a robot across a series of conveyor belts which each belt running at varying speeds. They said the game was targeted toward students in senior high school or early university, but after seeing some of the in-game activities I thought the concepts were too simple to be of use to higher level students. Then I realized that’s the point of Lunar Quest, to make math and physics concepts easily digestible. Physics is among the most intimidating branches of science, but it’s not the hardest, and Lunar Quest helps tear down that intimidation barrier. I know from experience that if you have a good understanding of the concept, then the math becomes much simpler.
My only complaint is that the game doesn’t have a projectile motion / PvP lesson. Allowing players to competitively fire cannons at their friends on the moon would probably be a hit with some students.
Wasn't the Firefly MMO supposed to be using this Multiverse engine as well? It's not listed on their website so maybe that project is already dead.
Link to their website:
Multiverse
Has the Times Square Video as well as the GDC presentation.
These guys have the FIREFLY MMORPG apparently in development...
If this is good and easy Multiverse could be the answer for budding mmo devs. Yeah Firefly was suppose to be made with Multiverse but I don't know now. Its not on the Multiverse website and when I googled it I got articles from 2006 when they first talked about the game. I hope they're still making it but I'm not sure now.
Michael Moorcock, the great author (creator of Elric of Melniboné, and many other fantastic characters), invented the term Multiverse back in the 60s and has been using it extensively in virtually all his books since. I wonder why these guys fail to mention that at least.
Rackhir the Red Archer, oh yea!
It would be nice to see a Multiverse MMO based on Moorcock's work. Here's hoping that products like the Multiverse software will eventually bring down costs enough so that any small production house can produce an MMO. Nice article, glad to see MMORPG.com focusing on the software/development side of MMOs.
I would assume it is because they made the engine for the firefly mmorpg initially. And in firefly they call the universe, the multiverse(whether or not joss whedon pulled it from moorcock is unbeknownst to me.).
The 'Verse ;) -- The site still has the Firefly MMORPG Forum up
http://update.multiverse.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=16&theme=multiverse&sid=6e7bc981ff6751fc58d45ed7f87d8dd7
Yes, but if you scan the threads you can see posts are begging for offical word for develoment and/or Josh Whedon to pipe in with his support.
I wonder why the try and keep this stuff so much under wraps?
Even Dave Hargrave creditied MM on that! You are right on!
I've tested this out a little, and anyone wanting to make an MMO would be better off starting from scratch and keeping all the profits.
Multiverse has been out how many years, and nothing to show for it. A bunch of little "demos" and so many "in development" games which have languished or disappeared. No big name companies on their list, and a Firefly mmo which has disappeared off the radar fairly quickly after it's inital "exciting" announcement. I just don't see this "game development platform", or its creators, being around for too much longer.
Yeah I called Multiverse a 'Vaporware Toolset' a long time ago, which is why I was really unhappy they have the Firefly MMORPG... but then I heard they got over $35 mil in funding or something so there was a glimmer of hope... but still nothing to show for it.
Thanks for the writeup.
I'm with Metaversatility, we're the company in the article that created the robot demo world. As a correction, we are a virtual world development company, not a PR company. We build virtual worlds and 3d spaces for clients of all sorts.
We did build a demo world to show off what can be done on the platform in a short amount of time, simply because we have some bigger developments in progress for clients that are under NDA and could not be shown.
Multiverse is by no means vaporware, it is a great platform for development of MMOs that handles that underlying scalability and foundation that is so easy to do wrong. Without a question it empowers teams to create great things on a much smaller budget, which means that virtual worlds and MMOs are no longer only in the hands of a select few companies.
Corey Bridges gave a talk at SxSWi on how the MMO landscape is changing, which gives a great overview of the industry and where it is headed: http://2008.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2008/03/11/rise_of_the_indies
A woman from Dell attended and added her thoughts: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/03/10/49287.aspx
Lastly, there are some big worlds, games, etc being launched in July and August of this year on the Multiverse platform. This is just the beginning.
Short of NDA violation, what can you tell us that we can expect? A burning question that is of interest here is where is the Firefly MMO in progress? Is there a proposed year launch or is it now in limbo because the IP property is in question of profitability? What type and number of games can we expect in the first year of launch? NDA enforced, how many initial games?
I'm one of the old MV fanboys, not to the point of being a fanatic mind you, but unfortunately I can't even answer those questions.
And congrats to the those MV teams at the GDC!
I wonder why the try
I can't speak for others, but as for myself. Well, three main reasons really:
- No one else has put out a Mech based MMORPG, and apparently there won't be one for some time. I thought Gundam Online would be the king, but it is no longer in service. Kaput'ski.
- The MMO market is still young and has plenty of room to work with. We're in the days of silent films.
- Live long passion to be in part of a Sci-Fi RPG environment.
Hi. Maybe you can point me in the right direction - I came across Multiverse some time back - and I believe they had a Free MMO-dev-toolkit for freelancers to tinker with. Does that still exist? Is it still free (apart from % cut from profits (if any))?
Thanks.
Yes, the platform (server & client) and tools are still available (and will be) for free.
The charges only occur when revenue is being generated (currently at 10%).
They get paid, when you get paid.
Thanks for the info. Appreciated. :)
Has anyone tinkered with the tools? Are they user-friendly? WYSIWYG? Simple scripting? Or hard C++ coding knowledge required?
For a freelancer / lone-wolf designer, is this platform worth the "time" and effort investment?
Thanks.