Last spring I went to meet with the folks at Multiverse and see what they were up to. Corey Bridges, one of the founders and the executive producer, spent a few hours showing me their technology, introducing me to the team, and explaining Multiverse’s approach in general. Although I had been an early skeptic of Multiverse, the visit to their HQ convinced me there’s a good chance I had been wrong about them. We elected, in the end, not to use Multiverse for Earth Eternal, really through no fault of theirs. Multiverse just wasn’t quite far enough along at that time to tempt us into switching our strategy.

Multiverse recently announced that it had concluded a deal with Fox to turn the Firefly property into an MMO on the Multiverse platform. This is pretty big news for them, so I asked Corey if he’d give the Forge an interview, and he graciously agreed. We didn’t have enough time to get into some of the subjects quite as much as I had hoped (particularly the question of alleviating the heavy burden that is content creaiton), but here it is, lightly edited to remove some irrelevant inter-question banter.

Me: So Corey, assume that some of the Forge’s readers are not familiar with Multiverse. What is it that Multiverse provides in a nutshell?

Corey: Multiverse is building a network of MMOs and other virtual worlds. To enable this, we offer a technology platform–client, server, tools, et cetera–for no upfront cost. So as a developer, you download our platform, install the server, and build your world. And you never pay us a dime until you start to charge consumers or run ads in-world. Then we do revenue-sharing.
Corey: We structured our business in this way because our goal is to enable independent developers to get into the virtual world industry and start innovating. We figure that when we make it economically feasible to experiment, people will. And that’s how the state of the art will really accelerate. Which is good for developers and especially for consumers.

Me: I know you’re in beta right now. Any estimate for end of beta?

Corey: Well, having been in software development all my career, I can honestly say that beta never ends. ;) But really, we’ll have version 1.0 of the platform out sometime next year.

Me: Ok, so what you guys offer is a technological leg up for developers who can’t afford to (or would rather not) develop or cobble together their own client/server/tools package, which leaves the content arena. I don’t have to tell you that content is expensive to develop, and I understand you’ve got a marketplace for people to sell/give assets to other Multiverse developers.
Me: How is that marketplace coming along?

Corey: The marketplace isn’t developed yet, but we have a very clear picture of what it will be. As you rightly point out, content costs for virtual worlds can be huge. Because our overall goal is to enable indies to be able to enter the MMO market, we need to solve as many of the big problems as possible. One is the tech complexity/cost. Another is distribution, which I’m sure we’ll touch on later. And another is content. We figured that the best way to lessen the cost of content to developers is to increase the supply. Specifically, we intend to enable 3D modelers to sell their services (and indeed, their pre-created content, if they wish) to indie dev teams.
Corey: So that would require a marketplace. Obviously, there are a number of 3D asset marketplaces already in existence–TurboSquid, for example. The problem for an indie developer, though, in buying something from TurboSquid, is that they search for, say, “fantasy house”, and they get back a couple hundred responses. But then they find that nope, this one is the wrong polygon-count; nope, that one is built with the wrong tool. But in the Multiverse Developer Marketplace, all the assets will already work with the Multiverse platform. We’re also going to seed this market with sets of free assets. So you could use the Multiverse fantasy-set of assets; or the contemporary set, or sci-fi, et cetera. Obviously, generic assets like that won’t let you really differentiate your game graphically, but
Corey: those free assets will then become the defacto standards, upon which other people can build. So the free assets come out, and then other people can create, and even sell, more animations for those skeletons, more textures, different clothing sets, et cetera. But these new additions would build on the common set that everyone could use. So that’s one way that we intend to make it feasible for the indie to create virtual worlds without having huge content budgets.
Corey: Oh, also, the Developer Marketplace will contain more than just 3D assets. You’ll also see snippets of AI code, audio files, UI packs, third-party tools, Python scripts, et cetera. It’ll be a whole ecosystem of people using their skills to sell goods and services to other developers on the Multiverse platform. Similar to the web at large.

Me: Alright, so onto your latest announcement: Firefly
Me: You guys must be VERY excited about having landed a property with such a die-hard audience. Are you personally a Firefly fan?

Corey: Yup. We’re all Browncoats here. I actually missed the first episode of Firefly on TV, so I didn’t watch the others. (I’m kinda weird–I can’t stand watching episodes out of order.) I was going to watch it in order when they started reruns, but so much for that plan. It was only later, when a pal lent me the DVDs that I finally watched the show. Turns out I’d've watched the show out of order anyway, if I’d watched it on TV. So I’m one of those Johnny-come-lately Browncoats–came to it through the DVDs. Anyway, everyone else here is a huge fan. We shut the whole company down to go see the movie last year on opening day. And then most of us saw it again that weekend. And we still talk about it. I’d say that not two days go by without someone making a reference to the show.

Me: I read a recent interview you gave Wired, in which you explained that the MMO will naturally have to deviate away from the stars of the show [necessitating a fair amount of creative ingenuity].
Me: And we already know that it’s not Multiverse, but an independent team, that will be developing the property for you.
Me: How much creative control will Multiverse exercise over the project?

Corey: Our goal is not to be a pain in the ass. Ideally, we’ll find the right team, who’s got a great vision–one that is not just worthy of the show, but also is different from the standard MMO fare–and just let them go to town.

Me: So you don’t actually have a team yet? I assumed that with a projected 2008 release date you had already lined one up.
Me: *cough CCP cough*

Corey: lol. Right–we don’t have a team right now. Lots of folks have contacted us, and we certainly know a few folks in the biz, :) but the deal hasn’t been struck. What are you doing for the next couple years? Do you like horses and spaceships? :)

Me: Hah. I do like horses and spaceships, but sadly, a Browncoatin’ I cannot go.

Corey: This is the point when I should swear in Chinese.
Me: I would swear in fake Chinese at this point, but I read that Rosie O’Donnell has gotten herself into trouble for faking Chinese recently.
Me: so I won’t.

Corey: I was at a Browncoat convention over the weekend. (A fascinating story on its own–check out Daniel Terdiman’s blog about it from Saturday.) Anyway, I attended a “How to Swear in Chinese” session. Very useful.
Corey: Here’s the story about the show: http://news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6142354.html It’s stunningly cool.
Corey: Oh, and I wanted to say one thing–we’ll have at least a beta in 2008. The full release could be later.

Me: That makes a lot more sense to me.
Me: So, with Multiverse basically producing the game, isn’t it going to be competing with its own customers on the Multiverse platform?

Corey: It does mean that there’s going to be one more cool game on our network, but the benefits of that far outweigh any negatives. Now would probably be a good time to mention another unique aspect to Multiverse. The Multiverse Client, which you install on your computer to play a game, actually lets you play ANY game that’s been built on our platform.
Corey: This, obviously is very different from today’s MMO market, where you have a separate installed program for each and every MMO you play. Each one has its own huge patch to download, its own credit card registration, its own issues with updating your drivers, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. But with the Multiverse Client, you’re just one click away from any game that’s built on our tech. So from the consumer point of view, that’s like having access to a whole network of MMOs and other virtual worlds. So there’s much less friction for consumers who want to try out new genres or gameplay.
Corey: Now for developers, flip that around. If I build on Multiverse, and then I launch my game into this network, suddenly all those consumers playing all those games, are just one click away from MY game. It’s like launching into a built-in market–a captive audience. So it’s a virtuous cycle: the more consumers come on the network, the more attractive it’ll be to developers; the more developers build worlds on the network, the more consumers will come. So once that flywheel starts spinning, it’ll spin up to critical mass pretty quickly. And that’s our ultimate goal–building that network.
Corey: Anyway, by bringing a very popular property like Firefly to the network, it brings a greater audience for our other developers. In fact, they’ve already reported this–since the Firefly news broke, we’ve gotten a ton of traffic to the Multiverse.net site, and our developers have reported to us that their sites’ traffic has spiked as well.

Me: How does an individual developer not get lost in the morass if there are hundreds of games on the network?

Corey: A critical part of what we’re doing is to bring the right game to the right player. That’s absolutely, hands-down critical. Otherwise, only the top couple dozen games will ever be seen. There are many ways to do this. When a consumer launches the client, they go to the network login screen. That’s the first and most important place where we can bring the right worlds to the right folks. As you log in, for example, you could see a message saying “Oh, you play games X, Y, and Z. People who play those games also play game A.” There will also be taxonomies (categorized lists, a la Yahoo) of the worlds on our network, as well as search engines. We’ll also have at least one virtual world that functions as a hub–The Nexus we’ll call it–for finding other worlds. You can meet your friends there,
Corey: and talk to an NPC who asks you what sort of experience you’d like. It will eventually point you through a portal. Jump your avatar through the portal, and you’ll go to that particular game. Part of the “long tail” notion is not just the democratization of creation, but also the democratization of distribution. I launched Netflix, so on a professional level, I have worked through this sort of issue before.
Corey: BTW, I mean “launched” in the specific job-task sense. Not that I’m the founder. All hail Reed Hastings.

Me: Will Multiverse be doing marketing for Multiverse rather than individual games?

Corey: Yes, and our marketing will actually be similar, in a couple ways, to Netflix’s. It’ll be our job to let consumers (and please don’t think I have any affection for that term–it’s just that with non-game virtual worls on our network, I can’t just say “players”) know that we’re the way for them to get to the cool virtual worlds. Obviously, our challenge will be greater than that, but I don’t want to let all our Marketing cats out of the bag, just yet. ;)

Me: A question regarding the long-tail and Multiverse…
Me: I understand how the long-tail applies to something like a DVD or a book. There’s no service associated with those, but MMOs as the (true) cliche goes are a service and a product.
Me: When you’re an author depending on long-tail to make your book lucrative, you can afford to just let Amazon sell your book for you slowly over time, because it takes none of your attention or time to let them do so.
Me: That’s not the case with MMOs though. MMOs require fairly regular attention. I can’t say that’s the case with all virtual worlds, as I can certainly picture exceptions, but MMOs, which make up the vast majority of the virtual world market, aren’t just products that can sit on a virtual shelf and wait to be ’sold.’
Me: What’s Multiverse’s take on that problem? It’s a problem with or without Multiverse, but I’m wondering if there’s a particular advantage to Multiverse in this regard.

Corey: The long-tail phenomenon simply says that the aggregate of the numbers of consumers of numerous niche-products can be greater than the number of consumers in a few mainstream products. The long tail doesn’t require that those smaller products languish unnoticed. Don’t confuse the notion of the back catalogue with the long tail. The web at large is of course an example of the long tail. For example, there are many news-based web sites that qualify as long-tail, that receive lots of daily visitors–just not as much as, say the New York Times. Similarly, there will be many virtual worlds on the Multiverse Network that qualify as long-tail–perhaps they have only 50,000, 25,000 or 5,000 consumers. But there’s no reason why those games won’t be played regularly.
Corey: Take a Tale in the Desert. It’s a definite candidate for long-tail status–if only there were more examples of its ilk. With Multiverse, there will be.

Me: ATitD has about 2000 customers as I understand it.

Corey: Right.

Me: He’s not exactly raking in the bucks, though I’m sure his costs are low. Can someone like him with a small userbase like that still prosper w/ the revenue share on Multiverse?

Corey: Yep. Not only does the network effect benefit the smaller worlds–because there’s such a larger pool of consumers to draw from–but the revenue share is structured to make it worth the developer’s while to be able to build the game at least 2 years more quickly, and for far less money. In the case of ATITD, I think it took them 6 or 7 years (I might be wrong) and about a million bucks. We’ve got dozens of teams building worlds for small audiences (say, under 25,000 consumers) with budgets of zero dollars up to a half-million. Even with the revenue-sharing, they’ll recoup their investments before too long. And the fact that they would otherwise have had NO chance to build these worlds, is compelling to them. It’s worth the revenue share to be able to make the world they’re dreaming of.

Corey: And, of course, we’ve got teams making worlds with far larger audience goals, and with much larger budgets.

Me: Let’s talk about that briefly. You guys have announced that 7000 entities have signed up for Multiverse so far and that you have about 100 “pre-approved” developers in your beta. Am I getting that right?

Corey: Yep.

Me: How many of those 100, for instance, will get as far as release, do you think?

Corey: All 100. They’re champs. :)
Corey: Kidding.
Corey: I don’t know how many will make it all the way to release. Every one has shown remarkable vision and dedication thus far, but each team has its own unique set of challenges and strengths. But even being conservative, let’s say that only 10% of all 7000 teams end up making worlds, that’s still 700 worlds. And even if only 10% of them are good, that’s still 70 worlds. That’s pretty dinky–only 1% of our entire customers actually build good stuff?–and it’s still an impressive number. 70 new worlds, many of them radically different from what’s out in the market now, that’s what keeps me going at midnight, and on the weekends. I can’t wait to see what they build, now that their creativity has been unleashed.

Me: How much individual attention do the teams get (or need) from Multiverse?

Corey: The teams who are making great progress get the most attention. We are very clear with folks who download the technology that the standard arrangement is to not get much contact with us, but our engineers, and many very excellent volunteers, patrol our discussion forums, answering questions. Multiverse is really lucky: we’ve got a great community that has grown up around our technology–people willing to help one another, and write articles in our wiki, to supplement our official documentation. Also, the Multiverse team is great, in that they absolutely know how important it is to work with folks in the forums.

Me: Hey, thanks for doing this Corey.
Corey: Totally my pleasure. It was my first IMterview!