In a few months, Twinity, a virtual world based on virtual cities, will open in beta. Metaversed got an initial brief, and tour of the alpha system last week. The overall impression was encouraging. Some of the differences in how the system will work over other worlds may make or break the fledgling world created by German company Metaversum, who are keeping many of the final details under close wraps. One things for sure though: Of the many new worlds in pre or closed beta currently, this is one of the most exciting.
The feature that instantly sets Twinity apart from the crowd of hopeful new worlds in this space is its city model. All of the spaces that users can inhabit are created by the company. You can rent an apartment in a building, but not create your own building. On a case by case basis, you may be able to buy a whole structure, but this has not been finalized yet.
As you can see from the image above, navigation follows a real word theme. That's the "lobby", a map of the real world which users can zoom in on by continent, then drill down to individual buildings, spaces and apartments.
A more open economy?
Twinity's business model follows a fairly predictable formula: Premium accounts, currency commissions and item sales (property/objects). Where it gets interesting, is in their plans to farm out much of the user to user transactions to a third, as yet undisclosed party. The system will provide a double escrow utility for users to trade objects and property and services with real money. Primary markets, such as initial property sales will be made using a synthetic currency similar to the Linden Dollar or Entropian PED. Metaversum say they want to allow a more realistic cash flow, letting users trade with each other outside of the system as well as in it. The primary economy (synthetic currency) will come online during the initial beta, in 3 months or so, the secondary economy will follow that.
User created content
Although you can't build property in Twinity, you will be able to create and import objects, and in the future, script them. Metaversum are already in talks with several major content creation companies as well as using in-house teams to kick start the creative process. Users will be able to create objects using any of the major 3D tools that export to Collada format. This includes 3DMax, Maya, Blender and Sketchup. Animations are also part of the creative toolkit in a virtual world, and sometime during beta users will be able to create their own.
Above you can see me talking to one of the support staff in a fairly bare apartment. I'm not keen on the speech bubble way of speaking, but I'm prepared to admit that that could be due just to the way I'm used to doing it. I couldn't work out how to see a chat history, but you'd presume it would exist.
In a crowded space
Metaversum are doing something. In a space with a lot of buzz, but very little substance it's encouraging to see a company invite us in to kick the tires and mooch around the alpha build. I like the idea of the real money economy. I like the idea of the cities, and of owning an apartment, or other space in a building. Where I start to get a bit glassy eyed is the question of why they need a synthetic currency at all, and I wonder if they have the financial and creative fuel to bust out of "interesting alpha" to "kick ass beta" to "profitable company". With Kaneva going from strength to strength these past few months, and appearing to be their nearest competition, perhaps along with Vastpark, they have their work cut out for them. They're also just one of many hopeful companies about to launch in the social virtual worlds space which whilst small, is still highly competitive.
Having said that. I was impressed with what I saw,and encouraged by what I'd heard. I think at this point they're moving in the right direction and are certainly a company worth watching. I hope great things come of Twinity, because on a personal level, I liked it.
