PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds creator wants to build a ‘metaverse’ but says it could take 15 years and can’t yet explain what it will look like

Brendan Greene, the modder-turned-millionaire who designed the Battle Royale game PUBG: Battlegroundswants to make his studio’s next game a “metaverse”, even if he says he is wary of the use of this term. The project is called “Artemis” (at least for now) and you won’t see it anytime soon. Indeed, the studio is still working on the technology behind it all and plans to release two more games before it. This means it will be 10 to 15 years before it actually comes out.

Greene describes Artemis as an Internet-like platform where users create and share things, but doesn’t specify precisely what that is. He doesn’t know how his user-driven “multiverse of worlds” will be moderated, or how it will prevent copyright infringement, or what makes this idea different from, say, Roblox. He is nevertheless “full of confidence”.

“(Yes), it’s a great vision,” he said IGN in a recent interview“but I have a good team of industry professionals and they don’t think it’s that crazy.

“I hesitate to talk about it, because it’s a dirty word, but I want to build a metaverse because I think no one else is doing it. I think everyone is building IP bubbles that could talk to each other at some point in the future, maybe if we’re lucky, but it’s not the metaverse You see, the metaverse is a 3D Internet You should be able to create your own worlds and make them all work. on the same protocol, like HTTP is. page, and that’s what I’m trying to do with Artemis.

What Artemis will actually look like and what players (users?) will actually do in it is not discussed in concrete terms, except to say that it might be a bit like Star TrekThe Holodeck or survival mode of Minecraft. He also says his studio, PlayerUnknown Productions, could build it with the world-generation technology they’re creating for their next survival game. Prologue: Flashbackwhich so far seems to be an aesthetically realistic orienteer with hunger, thirst and all the usual survival game staples. Artemis itself, however, is years away from release, according to Greene. And even when it comes out, it may take time to gain traction.

“The Internet was empty in its early days, and it was just a way to share data, and I look at it the same way. It’s probably going to be empty for the first few years, but then you’ll start to see the possibility of what you can do with this kind of world generator, it’s like a multiverse of worlds.

Greene expands on her thoughts in the interview, but the bottom line is this: Artemis is still a lot of big, murky ideas. My knee-jerk reaction to millionaires chasing the metaverse is rabid, frothy skepticism. The two inspirations mentioned (the Holodeck and Minecraft) have a gulf between them in technical terms. And the player-driven creativity described by Greene already exists in other games such as Roblox, which just fights to protect his audience of children from danger.

In the meantime, Fortnite has given players tools to make their own creations with Unreal Editor For Fortnite and other studios are making similar games as a platform, such as Everywherenext one make your own mini-game by Build A Rocket Boy, itself described in somewhat grandiose terms for what appears to be essentially dreams for the PlayStation with more multiplayer options. It may be exactly these types of games that Greene considers “IP bubbles”, but it’s unclear what exactly will set PlayerUnknown’s Metagrounds apart from these.

Artemis is also – let’s face it – unlikely to be as revolutionary as the Internet, which Greene repeatedly compares it to. I’m wary of calling the Metaverse the Holy Grail of the tech world, mainly because many big names in gaming and tech seem to hear the words “Holy Grail” and think, “cool thing we can definitely make if we put enough money into it. it!” Which isn’t quite the original meaning of the phrase. But calling the Metaverse a “Holy Grail” also implies that it’s a universally desirable thing in the first place. And I don’t I’m not sure that’s true. A lot of people just want to play a video game.

Greene talks more about all the possibilities for Artemis in the interview, so it’s worth reading if you want to understand her reasoning and get an idea of ​​some of the other questions that arise from her thoughts. When asked how such a world of worlds would be moderated, he replies, “We’re going to have to figure that out” and acknowledges that it is “important to get it right.” When asked if Artemis would use NFTs, he said no, despite a previous report pretending that this would be the case.

For now, Artemis remains a nonexistent dream whose value has not been proven. Either way, it could be fun. It could even attract hundreds of thousands of Plunkbat players. But will he get the millions Greene dreams of? Will it be a second 3D Internet? I’m not so sure.