Sims pioneer Will Wright makes the blockchain game VoxVerse, but is down on NFTs

Hall of fame game designer Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims) is making a blockchain video game for the masses, not for NFT customers, he tells Axios.

Why it’s important: Wright is the biggest name in the controversial blockchain gaming sector, where there is an abundance of investment and player skepticism.

What they say: “I’m much more interested in attracting a million free-to-play players than, you know, 10,000 rich whales, even if we could use the rich whales,” Wright tells Axios, using common industry terminology for people who spend a disproportionate amount of money on a game or NFTs that can only be related to it.

Details: Wright’s project is called VoxVerse. It is a virtual world set on a massive cube, where players will be able to own land, create attractions, collect resources and socialize (release date TBD).

• He envisions a game that will attract three groups of people: a small number of wealthy virtual landowners who pay for plots of land with crypto; a middle group of creative players who will be tapped by the landowners to make things (and share any sales revenue from what they earn), and a bunch of free to play people who want to hang out and play in the world.
• In a faint echo of The Sims, the game will include systems for fame and trust, as well as basic character needs like energy or hunger.
• The most Wright-esque touch might be the “shape grammar,” which he calls “kind of an evolutionary system” for object creation that allows users to repeatedly click and transform a starting object (car, coffee cup, etc.) to adjust it, making it to its own, even “patenting” it via the blockchain for revenue-generating reuse.

Between the lines: Design for VoxVerse happens at Gallium Games, a blockchain-focused startup founded by Wright and Carmen Sandiego co-creator Lauren Elliott, who first shipped a game with Wright in 1984.

• Actual production of the game takes place on Unity.
• And the project is being orchestrated by crypto gaming boosters Gala Games, which has spent over $25 million to fund the effort.
• Gala wants Wright’s game to help popularize the Vox characters, which are digital collectibles, or NFTs. The newest Vox offered by Gala, based on Trolls characters from Dreamworks, sold last week for 0.888 ETH (about $1,300) and will guarantee early drops on land in the VoxVerse.

“I don’t really wants to be in the business of selling NFTs,” Wright said, stressing that his interest is in the blockchain’s ability to allow secure transactions between players.

• In a conversation with Axios, Elliot kindly admitted that some aspects of the VoxVerse project are technically NFTs, but noted that Wright is very focused on game design.

• Wright compares blockchain to plumbing or other underlying technology. “I don’t care how you do it,” he said. “I want secure transactions for content creators.”
• He recalled the ingenuity of early Sims players whose custom creations he estimates accounted for 30% of the franchise’s value, but were not allowed to monetize to any significant degree. “The creators who made the content participated in maybe 1 or 2% of the financial return,” he said.
• Connecting part of VoxVerse’s economic model to the NFT-buying whales is a way, Wright says, “to distribute that value downward” to players who are incentivized to “create experiences for millions of players.” These crypto whales don’t even necessarily play games, he acknowledged, but can help. “These people exist, whether we like it or not.”

The big picture: Crypto gaming is looking for a sustained hit, with reports of low player populations and the collapse of former darling Axie Infinity drawing criticism from traditional players that blockchain and NFTs are an unnecessary nuisance to gaming.

• But boosters say it’s simply early days and the money continues to come in. More than $1 billion — about 40% of all gaming deals — was invested in blockchain gaming in Q3, according to deal tracker Drake Star.

Bottom line: Wright stresses that VoxVerse can’t just be about blockchain. It must be fun to play.

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