Project Elysium — A Metaverse Concept
Ready Player One Concept Art
Chapter 1. Introduction
This Document
Greetings! As a visionary and anxious futurist, the metaverse excites me! I am writing this project as a way to discuss what I want to see in my ideal virtual world. While it seems rather simple, this doc is going to get quite deep into the nooks and crannies of a metaverse, what it is and my idea for a perfect world.
Ever since my teenhood. Constantly on my dialup internet playing Gaia Online, have always envisioned and adored the idea of a second world, a digital life unrestricted from reality’s laws and physics. The internet has evolved so much to the point it’s become a necessity for information, social and living. Still, I have this chant continuously looping over a decade “Are we there yet?!” ever since I found the glory of the metaverse many moons ago.
I am shocked it still hasn’t happened. At least, I am shocked it still hasn’t been done properly. Most “virtual worlds” are a bit too gamey, they don’t feel interactive or emergent whatsoever. I don’t feel like I am there. How do we as developers overcome the challenges of creating a multiverse?
That is why I am here with this sermon and document available to anyone, anywhere to create it for me. I hope this inspires the future developer being freely available. I call it a rulebook, a “bible” of the metaverse perhaps. I don’t need a cut, an experience of living in the ideal virtual world is enough for me!
What is a Metaverse?
Some meme template, idk
A metaverse is basically a user-driven mimic of the real world all in a digital space. The term was popularised by science fiction author Neal Stephenson in his classic novel, “Snow Crash”. How he described the metaverse is pretty simple.
Look at it like the current day internet, a web of different pages and URLs. Now what if every single website was its own walkable little town or piece of land? For example, YouTube would be a cluster of theatres. Amazon would be a shopping mall. Facebook would be a nice cozy neighbourhood.
What is the purpose?
As someone would question, “What is the point of a metaverse or virtual world? Can’t you just go to your local shopping centre?”
A local shopping centre is restricted by the physical world. There’s only so much room you can use in a shopping centre, only so much land you can use. A virtual shopping centre can be the size of a city, country or even an entire planet! It can look however you want, a jungle or historical city perhaps.
There is much more to it! Who do you come as? Anyone! That is what we call an “avatar”. No one walks around as a blank stick figure nor themselves 1:1. If you want to then the more power to you! However, the beauty of a virtual world is expressing yourself however you like unbound by physical restriction.
Let me say this. Being digital, a metaverse isn’t restricted by science. You can be a fire-breathing dragon for all anyone cares. Fly, teleport and swim for hours on end without risking anything! Linden Labs took advantage of the space with Second Life and let us fly everywhere. I’ll get to more of the nitty gritty of SL a little further in!
Overall, a metaverse as opposed to the real world is only limited by the imagination of the land owner and users. This could particularly be the website administrator or developer. Most importantly, a metaverse is a collaborative space. Anyone and everyone should have a say in developing a world. Users especially! Unless they are there to grief people, moderation has an important part there that we’ll get to later.
Chapter 2. Values of the metaverse
Destiny 2 Concept art
In this chapter I discuss the important features of a successful virtual world. There are 6 values I personally feel are necessary for a virtual world to be successful.
It needs to be immersive and entertaining. Consistent in its form. Accessible to everyone, ethically monetised and moderated. Making it feel rewarding in the process so we keep coming back.
Yes, all the bolded words above are the qualities, values that I feel need to be features of a virtual world. Below I’m going to go through each thoroughly and pinpoint what they mean in a metaverse.
Immersive
Obviously if we are included in a virtual world it has to feel like we are actually there, right? The sights, sounds, interactivity and communication are all important to get that sense of presence.
That is why virtual reality plays a big part here. Lots of games and experiences do a fantastic job on presence and interactivity. Best examples I can give include Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks and Blade & Sorcery. Not just in a visual/aural sense are these absolutely fantastic, they also include fantastic locomotion and interactivity which bring them to gold standard. In these experiences you have to manually reload, pick things up and some mods (such as Natural Locomotion by Myou software) even allow you to move like you would in real life.
In my opinion, it isn’t only about being an audio-visual experience. Haptics, locomotion and world interaction play a massive part in making it a “real” experience. A lot of developers like to forget what makes things “immersive”. Narrative and story for example, can ruin immersion with fake senses of urgency without player impact. That is for another day however.
Communication is also necessary in virtual worlds. Spatial audio, proximity chat and clever ways to communicate visually for accessibility reasons (getting to that soon) have been done and are fantastic. Fortnite and VRchat are good examples of doing this right.
Entertaining
In a virtual world, it all falls apart if there is nothing happening. What needs to happen? It’s a little difficult to explain but one thing that is necessary to be entertained is having a goal. If we have no goal what do we do? Most video games (especially role-playing) use systems such as quests and progression. While great, they have taken advantage of the player using urgency and force.
A lot of games have a mandatory questline they like to call the “Main Quest”. In these, you are forced to do activities and follow a story you may or may not be interested in. While good for priming the player to the systems of the game to prepare for the “meat” (read “Endgame”) is more a hindrance in a virtual world meant for player leisure.
So how do developers entertain players without boring them if we use goals? I love the “EXP” and currency systems where the more you play the content you want to play, the more you can be rewarded. A perfect example of this is Destiny 2. After it became free-to-play, planets and loot were unlocked doing what you feel is exciting personally. Not what the developers want you to be excited about.
Anyway, I’ll delve more into goals in another section below. Besides that, entertainment comes with variety. Players need to feel engaged without feeling “samey”. Variety can come in anything. The world, the activity and things to do. Variety isn’t all kittens and rainbows however, which brings me to the next section of this chapter;
Consistent
In virtual worlds like VRchat and Second Life, I think they took the term “variety” a bit too literally. In these worlds you can be anyone and can do anything. Especially at the cost of (you guessed it) consistency.
Everything in these worlds are so random and not the funny kind. I once walked into a walking 2D gif, a tiny Knuckles and a cutesy anime girl in a completely different shader. It was disgusting. I think in order to create, there needs to be some sort of curation. Of course curation is a double-edged sword, it is at the cost of being and creating whatever.
Curation can be done a couple of ways. Verification of the user or moderation of what comes up. Sadly this also means less-talented people will miss out. For this, I may propose an in-world creator. Where your tools are samey but unique enough for variety. I like how Media Molecule’s Dreams did this. In this tool, you have textures that are consistently developed. Namely “flecks”. This however, requires a lot of creativity for the developers of the world.
A screenshot of what most things look like in Dreams
Accessible
Accessibility is a very important aspect for gaming in my opinion, as someone with a disability myself I feel there isn’t enough accomodation for people.
I don’t mean just disability accommodation, but many other things such as Quality of Life, emotional and difficulty accessibility. A couple good examples I can give are The Last of Us Part II and Celeste. While interactive stories at their core, these games have loads of customisation options for difficulty, disability accommodation and skippable scenarios.
I feel a metaverse should be inclusive for all abilities and people in general. A lot of people like to propose a metaverse should be exclusively VR which in all honesty isn’t the way to go for accessibility purposes. Many people have motion sickness, hearing and visual disabilities that taint enjoyment of VR. Kind of why the only VR game to be incredibly popular is Beat Saber. It’s a generally accessible game at the cost of immersion and wow-factor. It is dead-simple and only became the “killer-app” due to accessibility in the VR space.
VRchat is a good example of a metaverse for allowing both desktop and VR. However it is a terrible example of accessibility primarily due to the lack of text chat. That is why I like to say VR shouldn’t be the primary version of a metaverse application. It can be the best experience but the ability to play on any screen and device is pretty much necessary for accessibility purposes. Which makes me think of Roblox. It’s playable on anything! Too bad it’s almost exclusively a children’s game.
Ethical
Ethics in gaming monetisation and moderation are crucial for playerbases and customer satisfaction. A lot of businesses don’t get this. They want the biggest profit at the cost of QOL and ethics. What is ethical?
One thing I can call completely unacceptable in digital spaces, especially in the mobile gaming sector is the use of intrusive advertising. If you are forced to watch 30 second ads every time you walk a metre in the virtual world, isn’t that equivalent to torture? A bit of a touchy subject but in real life, you can look away from ads. If you are forced to watch advertising videos in the metaverse wouldn’t that feel like I’m part of an authoritarian state run by corporations? Yes, I’m thinking of the famous novel 1984 by George Orwell.
Advertising is quite ok in my opinion, I remember billboards with real-life ads in Burnout Paradise by Criterion Games. There was even a Barack Obama campaign on one of the boards from the 2008 US Election. However, was there loud audio? Are you forced to look at it? No and that is non-intrusive. That is fine. What about ads you can watch for rewards? That’s ok too as long as it doesn’t create an advantage.
Then you have moderation, recently Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have been removing subjective videos and posts they feel is “wrong”. Some removals are justified (I’m talking encouraging terrorism, hate speech and cyberbullying) but some opinions while radical, are being censored to oblivion. This is rare but honestly, a metaverse shouldn’t tolerate restricting freedom of speech.
Rewarding
Remember when I mentioned “Goals”? Without goals there is no drive to participate. That is human nature, everything you do in the virtual world should have a purpose. No, I do not mean “urgency” as explained in the Entertaining value description.
One thing that really excited me while on Gaia Online was the economy. In Gaia, every little thing you do rewards you “gold” (or platinum in current day). This could be surfing the site, writing a message on the forum, shaking trees in towns, playing a level in a minigame etc. This allows you to do anything in the world and be rewarded for merely participating.
Of course, there are challenges to overcome in terms of over-rewarding. That is why on Gaia you get rewarded more for the more work you do. A big breakthrough in psychology has found “positive reinforcement” a much better way to engage people instead of “negative reinforcement”.
Positive Reinforcement is basically rewarding people for taking part in activity or doing good things. The opposite is Negative Reinforcement, punishing people for not taking part. I find Gaia does the former so well in encouraging participation while not punishing players because they didn’t do a certain activity in time. Hence why people hate Battle Passes in games like Fortnite. While a lot of games restrict players for not participating in a linear storyline (the main quest) such as most Grand Theft Auto games.
Chapter 3. Inspiration and Past Attempts
In this chapter I’m going to go through a few case-studies regarding past attempts of virtual worlds and metaverses. I am going from earliest to latest examples and how successful they have been.
2000s — The First Wave
The interface of Gaia Online back in 2004, the most renowned avatar-based message board at the time
i. Neopets and Gaia Online
In the early days of the web, most of our communication and interface was through text and image. It was… nostalgic to say the least. What did 90s kids play online before Fortnite was a thing, Neopets and Gaia Online!
First I’ll touch on the site I had the most experience with, Gaia! Go Gaia started in 2003 by a team in San Francisco. While I joined in 2008 at the peak of its popularity, the history of Gaia is meaty. It was predominantly a role-playing community and formed more into a text-based metaverse after a few years alongside flash games and worlds such as “Towns”.
The core of Gaia’s popularity came from the deep and creative anime chibi-style avatars. They weren’t just one-piece “skins” like most communities nowadays, you could have an unlimited amount of customisation options, and stack accessories. The iconic style and depth of Gaia’s avatars have not been recreated since. As a shell of its former self today, it pains me no avatar fashion currently is as fluent and deep as Gaia’s. I’m still an active member there for that reason.
Neopets is a similar text-based community, preceding Gaia in 1999. It was more so a pet community but had a more global playerbase while Gaia’s was predominantly American. Neopets wasn’t very appealing to me. It was cute but very demanding to take care of the many pets available. In Gaia at least you can leave for a week and not have everyone hate you.
These communities had fantastic progression and positive reinforcement. You always had a goal to save up for new fancy items and pets. Monetisation was a little intrusive in both sites, but nowhere near dreadful mobile games these days. It is sad we don’t have anything like Neopets and Gaia today although both are up and running.
Finally, does anyone remember Zwinky, Whirled and IMVU? They were… terrible.
Second Life’s innovative world by Linden Labs
ii. Second Life
Second Life was the first true attempt at a metaverse to gain the public eye. It was rife with innovation and a great framework for future virtual worlds.
I would more call Second Life a “weekend simulator”. It’s a way to spend a night after work without having to actually go outside as well as expressing yourself in ways the real world won’t allow.
I honestly found this world boring. Unlike previous examples, all currency is made through real world purchases and you have nothing to do besides going to nightclubs and talking to people. Nowadays the world is the red light district of virtual worlds. All people use it for is sex currently. Sex is like a goal. A drive and probably the only one in SL. It is what happens when people don’t have other drives.
I really appreciate what Linden Labs founder Phillip Rosedale has achieved and it is incredibly inspiring, especially in SL’s heyday of 2003. I could even go as far as saying Linden inspired the “Cryptocurrency” of today, with Linden Dollars having a real life value.
Today, it seems Second Life isn’t particularly supported by their original owners which is pretty sad. Its successor “Sansar” was a failure to the point it just became a VR live venue simulator, which really was all Second Life was good for really. There is also High Fidelity, a venture by Rosedale himself which was outright terrible and is now just “spatial audio chat”. Let’s face it, a “weekend simulator” doesn’t have much of a place in the market.
Who knew weddings could exist in World of Warcraft?
iii. The MMORPG
While the very first MMORPG released in 1991, (Neverwinter Nights) this genre of gaming didn’t become what it was until 2005 with the release of World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. I feel MMORPGs are great examples of virtual worlds that sadly aren’t without caveats.
Levelling for example, is an extraneous and exhausting task. Endgame being the meat of an MMORPG doesn’t begin for a good 100 hours at least. In the iconic episode of animated sitcom South Park, “Make Love, not Warcraft” a quote stuck with me. When Stan says that the “game is all over”, Eric makes a remark about “now finally being able to play the game”.
It goes to show how tedious the workload of getting to the goodies is. Even then, the only rewarding parts of endgame are raids and dungeon instances. While dungeons are good for bonding and teamwork, it significantly trivialises the rest of the explorative and social content to a pulp. On that note, this wasn’t the case with earlier MMOs such as Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest. Both being shutdown.
Star Wars Galaxies was a real gem in the MMORPG genre. Not only was levelling completely unneeded, it was probably the most player-driven game in existence. Take Second Life for example and make it Star Wars themed, add a few enemies here and there. IMO if I were to pick a traditional multiplayer video game that was closest to the metaverse Star Wars Galaxies is it. Unfortunately, it never stood the test of time and died out…
2010s — Gaming as a Service
Grand Theft Auto Online by Rockstar Games is an interesting case-study
i. Grand Theft Auto Online
In 2013 with the release of Grand Theft Auto V, the term “Gaming as a service” was still in its infancy. I remember at E3 that year, lots of different “persistent online worlds” were shown. Destiny and The Crew being highlights. Then Rockstar Games flexed their innovative muscles and released GTA Online, the multiplayer component of GTA V in October.
Thanks to this component, the game is currently the second highest selling game of all time. While being a game, GTAO is still a masterful virtual world in its own right. Few things irk me about this game but at the same time it delivered a scale of player freedom and content rarely seen before.
Unpopular opinion, I never really liked the heists and instanced content outside of land racing. I felt it took me away from its beautifully detailed open world. I wanted to live in the open streets of Los Santos which lately (and thankfully) there’s much more to do in the streets than before.
I know a lot of people really don’t like the griefing and trolling that happens with those floating bikes and all. I for one embrace it and like the risk/reward “don’t trust anyone” atmosphere. The open world is a battleground, while not for everyone. However I find the chaos and entropy of GTAO’s players enticing and where the world shines. While not an ideal metaverse, there is a sense of thrill-seeking here that is portrayed oh so perfectly.
Epic Games’ Fortnite. A premature metaverse in the making
ii. Fortnite and Roblox
Fortnite and Roblox are basically the Neopets and Gaia for millennials. Not a bad thing of course. They are quite well made and in Fortnite’s case, well monetised. Roblox has creators make their own monetisation methods which can come across exploitive most of the time.
I find the closest “alive” game to a metaverse is Roblox in particular. Sadly, I have no interest in it as the art style looks awful and kiddish as well as the exploitive monetisation. However it brings me back to the term Consistency. It may look shabby but it is quite consistent in artstyle and creation tools, which I applaud Roblox Corporation for making. If it wasn’t so off-putting for the adult population it may very well be THE metaverse. Unless the term “Adult fan of Roblox” is a thing just like in the Lego fandom. My point still stands.
Fortnite is a different story, it ticks a lot of boxes for a metaverse. It is very “gamey” but being put in the world instantly with hundreds of options to play around with, it is certainly an intriguing subject. It takes a lot of notes from Second Life, Battle Royale and traditional multiplayer games. There is a mode called “Party Royale” which is pretty much a live music and entertainment venue. Contemporary American rapper Travis Scott had a very iconic performance there.
Fortnite has lots of potential, it is a little bogged down by being a primarily battle royale shooter in my opinion. There are so many modes it entails and hopefully in Chapter 3, they combine the modes in equal importance and battle royale should be a part of an otherwise big family of fun modes to play around in. I’m not gonna call Fortnite a Metaverse just yet, but it is close!
Valve’s Half-Life Alyx is the most revolutionary VR experience ever made
iii. Virtual Reality
In my humble opinion, the rise of virtual reality is integral to the metaverse but not a necessity. As you can clearly see, why is the absolute #1 batch of VR experiences simple arcade games that can clearly be done on a Wii? Beat Saber and Superhot VR are currently the bestselling VR experiences with highest critical acclaim. It seems absurd to me but there’s a reason that I have explained previously.
Accessibility. Due to their absolute simplicity, there is hardly any motion sickness and can be played by anyone. Virtual Reality struggles significantly with accessibility. One example I can give is VRchat. There is no text chat so hearing-impaired players are completely cancelled out from playing unless they learn a complex community-run sign language. Text chat in general is near impossible to implement for exclusively-VR worlds in general. While immersion is great with fantastic technology, virtual reality can’t be the sole way to play for this reason.
A way this can be fixed is sadly extremely complex and expensive. American entrepreneur Elon Musk took initiative in a new project named Neuralink, a Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) that allows you to control devices with your mind. As it sounds, it’s a long way off and a bit of a scary thought. However, so was the internet in the mid 1900s.
2020s — A New World
“The First 5000 Days”, an NFT by British artist Beeple. Selling for $69.4 million US dollars
i. The Blockchain
The Blockchain isn’t particularly a metaverse in itself, but a mechanic that will change the landscape of virtuality forever. There are two main things I’m going to break down in this section, Cryptocurrency and Non-fungible Tokens (NFT).
Both cryptocurrency and NFTs have had a history pre-2020. It was only until recently though, that the blockchain is maturing and becoming a big part of the world. Cryptocurrency in particular kinda already works like Second Life’s Linden Dollars, which may have been an inspiration for Bitcoin. Not sure if BTC’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto was particularly inspired however.
I find cryptocurrency a great way to connect real life value to a virtual world. It has been done and pretty successfully! I like to give a shout out to Decentraland and upcoming innovative mobile gaming venture Artie for using Blockchain to stand out from the crowd of virtual worlds.
Now let’s talk about Non-fungible tokens, an amazing breakthrough in giving value to digital assets. Lots of people are quite skeptical and confused on what exactly NFTs entail. Basically it’s a form of digital asset, whether art, audio or an item in a virtual world that is its own cryptocurrency on the blockchain. Still confused? I don’t blame you, NFTs are a complex medium to wrap your head around.
On the topic of NFT I like to call them a digital equivalent to a trading card, there are even NBA trading cards in NFT form! Everything in real life has value, NFTs are a way to give value to anything digital. In terms of virtual worlds, I feel NFTs are the future of creating value for an asset. Hence why Decentraland exists. No, you aren’t gonna buy a Lamborghini for an NFT like Beeple probably just did.
Video meeting application Zoom is a perfect example of being in the right place, at the right time
ii. COVID-19
As soon as 2020 started, the entire world was stricken by a pandemic killing millions. I find it fascinating how much it impacted the way we communicated and lived for a whole year.
I especially was intrigued by the fact musicians were filming concerts from their bedrooms, sporting events in empty stadiums among fake crowd noises. Places like Europe and the United Kingdom were locked in their homes for months. In the terms of the metaverse, Google Trends found interest in the term was at 100% throughout 2021.
Coronavirus led a completely new way of living with technology. Zoom, a video conferencing application would not have thrived without it. Released at a time like no other it exploded and became the premier video conferencing software for everyone. It made Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft rethink their approach to video chat.
Sadly, coronavirus came at a time without any meaningful metaverses in development but the massive interest in the field by brands and consumers alike are key. Maybe next pandemic, as hopeful as we are to not have another like this.
Chapter 4. Project Elysium
The last and penultimate part of this essay, the concept itself! The last 3 chapters led to this meaty part, it includes all the values I have mentioned and takes inspiration from most case-studies in the previous chapter.
Concept art of a section in Night City from CDProjekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077
The Vision
Firstly I’m going to go through some etymology. Elysium is a world in Greek mythology. A realm where heroes and influential people live after death in the real world.
I find the name a good one for this metaverse. If you are awesome enough to read through this entire document or experience this world yourself, you are truly worthy of Elysium! This is merely a text document after all. I vastly prefer these compared to video essays.
Project Elysium does not only take the best of the best like in ancient Greece, it aims to be the most diverse, inclusive and rewarding metaverse in history. Obviously that isn’t Elysium but let’s just say I called it that as a way of congratulating you for coming this far in a long text document. Well done! You truly are a hero!
My vision for Project Elysium is simple. I want a world unlike ours. Free of limits for self-expression. A beautiful, unique social experience with a charm that keeps you coming for more. A pivot in diversity and inclusivity. No matter who you are, you have a place in Elysium! Most of all, creation and player input are the centre of this metaverse.
None of this is about a developer having a vision that restricts and punishes you for who you are (From Software, take notes!). There’s no “competitive integrity” that discriminates against different abilities for the sake of eSports. The only vision and restriction is really how Elysium is going to look, of course the artstyle should be varied too.
Now let’s break down what exactly Project Elysium is! There’s a plethora of systems and ideas that make this concept. Below is just that!
The World
Grand Theft Auto V still has the best map to this day, hands down
i. Geography
Map-
How big will Elysium’s map be? Colossal. For example, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. In this game the entire map is procedurally generated by an artificial intelligence. Of course it was quite rudimentary but Daggerfall’s map is 209,331 square kilometres big (around the size of Great Britain) including 15,000 towns and 750,000 living NPCs. It currently holds the record of being the biggest video game map ever outside of flight sims.
The game was released in 1998 and let’s face it, a lot has happened since then. I feel Elysium’s map should be around the size of Daggerfall. All procedurally generated landscapes. There is still a very important feature of this world and that is, well… player contribution!
Architecture-
All that should be generated by AI in Elysium is the landscape, foliage and oceans. Everything else is up to players and creators. I’m thinking of a robust building system with plenty of prefabs. Prefabs can be created by players themselves too! With some basic shapes and materials thrown in there to boot.
Traversal-
Being a virtual world, there shouldn’t be packed public transport. There are hundreds of “teleport stations” throughout the map. No, you are not going to teleport anywhere. That way exploration is rewarded.
Not all teleport stations are unlocked at the beginning of Elysium’s dawn. The players must work together to traverse the world to find them. The more that is found server-wide, the more stations appear for everyone.
Of course there will be cars, horses, planes, jetpacks, whatever you can think of to traverse faster. Made by the players!
ii. Culture
Events-
While almost entirely player-driven, there can be some icebreakers thrown about. Server-wide events with developer-created activities akin to MMORPGs, maybe celebrating real world holidays (Christmas and the Olympics come to mind).
There needs to be some sort of encouragement to engage others in player-run events too! People could go on wars or something in PvP areas or famous musicians can run an in-world concert for thousands.
Activities-
Without engaging and meaningful activities, the world will fade into obscurity just like Second Life. Players can make their own activities in their rented parts of the world. An in-game creation and visual scripting system akin to Roblox and Dreams which I’ll get to in detail further down.
Activities can be player vs. player, vs. environment or solitary. The sky’s the limit for how much can be done. All seamlessly integrated into the open world.
Seasons-
Doesn’t have to be just Summer, Winter, Spring or Autumn. Seasons can change the world drastically in other ways. Some parts in the open world will look different and feel different. Out of players’ hands they can change the landscape. Maybe one season all grass will be purple for example.
Natural “disasters” can happen, thankfully not disastrous but made to be fun. Rifts throughout an area teleport you to another part of the map. You can fly using tornadoes!
iii. Progression
Rewards-
Everything you do in Elysium grants you a certain currency. Which is a cryptocurrency in fact! This currency allows you to buy anything, vehicles, clothes, land, property, you name it! Every purchasable asset is a non-fungible token. Both the currency and NFTs I’ll go into much more detail later.
For now, what exactly do you do to earn? Conversation, all activities and participation in them. The more you do the more you earn. There are obviously limits in how much you can earn daily to combat spam and make things more “valuable” to work towards.
Levelling and unlockables-
What levelling and unlockables? There is hardly any reason to level in Elysium. I could say being a good sport, contributing to the world in a positive way allows you to be a higher level and unlock some minor rewards for showing off. Obviously you unlock assets by buying them.
Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky is a pivot in procedural generation, despite its rocky launch
The Technology
i. Generation
World generation-
I explained it pretty thoroughly in the last section. Basically all the foliage, geography and landscaping, oceans and skies are procedurally generated via artificial intelligence and machine learning.
In the beginning of Elysium, there will be some handmade structures by the developers as an “Icebreaker” for future development by players. Of course, how unappealing would it be if you joined a virtual world with nothing but grass and trees? It’ll also be a great way to demonstrate the potential of the creative engine.
Creative Engine-
With this engine players can create from developer-made prefabs, shapes or their own prefabs! Everything from vehicles, clothing, hair, avatars in general to buildings, activities and events. All done via visual scripting and a powerful 3d sculpting and development system.
Preferably made through whatever device supports Elysium. Not only a powerful PC should get dibs on creating content. Alas, there must be some sort of moderation to combat people making flying genitalia and disturbing things like gore and hate speech. I will explain below!
ii. Moderation
Content Curation-
The harsh reality of life is, not everyone can be trusted. Especially in a virtual world with anonymity. There’s a good way to circumvent these problems with trust.
I propose Elysium should have some sort of verification system. People who are verified creators will have their activities and content in the open world for everyone to see. People who aren’t verified can still create, but as an invite-only non-public creation. Friends can see it in the world, and people who trust each other.
Invite-only property and activities can be put anywhere, even where there is already land used. Friends of invite-only property creators see that instead of the public land if they opt in.
Enforcement-
There should be 5 tiers of players in the virtual world.
- The developers and company representatives, those who developed Project Elysium.
- The Administrators, a handful of moderators promoted for good work and handle account bans and suspensions for bad behaviour.
- The Moderators, those who enforce satisfactory behaviour and content. They handle reports and send them to administrators. Only verified players can apply for moderation
- The Verified, creators who can have their content appear to anyone. Verification is through a form given to and approved by administrators.
- The Player, those who indulge in the world and content. Can create for invite-only purposes.
To this day I have not witnessed a game as beautiful as Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII
The Sensations
i. Visual
Art Style-
Of course as I go into the whole “consistency” argument, the style needs to be recognisable anywhere yet diverse.
I find the best example to give here is Riot Games’ competitive shooter Valorant. It is semi-cartoony yet realistic enough to have a good range of styles within. It is simple, crisp and semi-realistic with cartoony influences. Not to mention the gorgeous particle effects, which will be incredibly difficult for the average player to recreate.
Graphics-
Visual fidelity is important. It should look smooth and beautiful alongside an artstyle instantly recognisable. However, you shouldn’t need an expensive gaming computer to run it properly.
I am going to point towards Valorant again, it can run on anything with fantastic optimisation to boot. The system requirements are very small and accessible. What is also great is the fact that Valorant looks great even on the lowest settings. It is very innovative optimisation-wise and the nice looking art style definitely helped!
ii. Audio
Communication-
Communication should be via proximity chat. In real life you can’t hear what people are saying from the other end of the street. Proximity chat should be a very small range, like real life. The louder you speak, the further it would go too!
Unlike VRchat and other VR worlds, text chat is also crucial for accessibility and quality-of-life reasons. As Elysium isn’t just virtual reality, it needs to be a thing as well as realistic.
I’m proposing proximity text chat, where you would only see “speech bubbles” if you are in range of the speaker. Text chat will be a slightly higher range than voice proximity.
Music-
Besides some atmospheric cues, I don’t think an Original Soundtrack will suit. Instead, players can add their own music made via the creative engine. Elysium is a creative space. Obviously there will be some icebreakers (there is that word again) and demo audio available royalty-free.
Settings-
Most games and virtual worlds have dead-simple audio settings. All Sound effects are under one master volume setting. This shouldn’t be the case for a virtual world focused on inclusivity.
I am proposing in the audio volume settings:
- Master
- Environmental Music
- Player voice
- Player sounds
- Ambience
- World sound effects
There is also an entire personal scripting system to tailor the world’s effects, visuals and sound to individual players’ needs. This will be further explained in another section below. This will be especially important for many people that may suffer from phobias, sensory issues and anxiety triggers.
In-game advertising is a controversial subject, Burnout Paradise by Criterion Games was sensible in its non-intrusive advertising. Obama himself appeared too!
The Monetisation
i. Profit method
Cryptocurrency and NFT-
The entire economy and most monetisation will be using Cryptocurrency and Non-fungible Tokens via Blockchain technology. I am thinking the currency will be more sustainable energy-based such as Tezos and Ethereum 2.0. Specifically due to skepticism of energy usage.
Every single asset including the land, avatar items and anything buyable will be an NFT. Creators can sell these assets themselves via a companion marketplace or in-world market stalls with some sort of real life value being NFTs. Of course, there will be costs associated with selling these like every NFT Marketplace e.g Gas fees and Commission.
Commission-
Every NFT sold through Elysium’s marketplace and world will give a cut to the developers of this project. Not to mention sales of the currency itself. Being a cryptocurrency, fiat currency is necessary to run the servers.
Resale royalty will be a thing too, just like most NFT marketplaces. This means that the original creator gets a cut from every resale.
ii. Ethical Advertising
Billboards and in-world video displays-
The issue with advertising is making it non-intrusive yet profitable. No brand is gonna come forward for ad space if no one is gonna view it. The way this will be done is explainable yet pretty innovative in my humble opinion.
Throughout Elysium are billboards that can be both videos or images, there will be a couple banners around in places like teleport stations. Creators can add these to their property and get paid for it if an advertiser wants to approach the land.
Here is where it gets interesting! No audio will play until the player is viewing the ad via crosshair and in close proximity to the ad. That way it is non-intrusive and if the player were to activate the audio and view the ad…
Engagement rewards-
… The player will be rewarded for engaging! I’m thinking of another cryptocurrency ala Brave Browser’s Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) that can be turned in for the main currency.
Nothing advantageous gameplay-wise but something that allows positive reinforcement without forcing it on and intruding players. With advertising, wellbeing and enjoyment will be at risk so such a thing is a slippery slope for Public Relations if done wrong.
Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II is a masterful example in accessibility
The Accessibility
i. Disability accommodation
Hearing-
Elysium isn’t just virtual reality, so it is a lot easier to accommodate the hearing impaired unlike VR-only applications.
In terms of communication there should be a voluntary marker beside the username of the player that indicates whether they have audio and/or microphone muted. This will help and encourage other players in the space to know when using text chat is a good idea.
There may also be speech-to-text automatically generated and a visual radar for twitch-based activities like shooting and sports. Fortnite does the former extremely well as sound is mandatorily muted/mono if using a visual radar.
Visual-
Colourblind options are an obvious addition. Most competitive games have this available and are usually very well-implemented.
Fully blind players may make use of haptic feedback and voluntary audio cues that can allow them to know if they are colliding. Text-to-speech is a good way of conveying text chat and usernames to the visually impaired so it is certainly a good idea.
Physical-
I am very happy that Microsoft took initiative with their Adaptive controller for the physically-impaired. Elysium may have full support of this controller as it is a fantastic option for people.
Full controller, keyboard and motion controller configuration is a must for this I feel. As well as possibly making double-press and hold options for all inputs! The more options the merrier!
ii. Psychological
Personal content blocking-
If you have a phobia such as arachnophobia for example, you may be triggered by players with spider avatars or enemies placed in the world. There’s an innovative way to block such a thing for player comfort.
I propose a content blocker that automatically blocks assets, audio and effects using a tagging system. This means all assets by the creators and developers must have at least 3 tags describing the items they make and effects. All default assets by the developers of Elysium are tagged appropriately.
There will be an option for players to add their own tags to items if the trigger is missing such a thing. When blocked, the asset/avatar will be a blank slate depending on what you block. You may block a spider’s crawl for example and make it not move. You can make sounds such as fireworks completely silent. As long as the asset is tagged as “fireworks”, you can block whatever you want. Either of these will be blocked:
- Sound
- Animation
- Texture
- Shape
Chapter 5. Closing notes
Can’t wait to party with y’all just like in GTA Online’s nightclubs!
Phew, that was a mouthful. Probably the longest thing I have ever written. I hope you enjoyed this essay as much as I did writing it.
Project Elysium is all about connections, immersion and most of all inclusivity and fun! Mind you, this shouldn’t be taken as fact. It’s a mostly subjective opinion, sometimes controversial. Sorry if I burst your bubble by recommending in-game advertising!
I’ll say this again, real heroes and influencers are the visionaries including you, the reader! Thank you for reading and it was a pleasure to teach the world my ideals and vision of a perfect metaverse!
This document was a passion project made by the very thoughts of an aspiring entrepreneur, artist and writer. I believe the metaverse is the next big thing and the values I’ve discussed in this very document mean so much to me!
See you in the metaverse!
About Me
A drawing I made of Valorplate “Mesa” from Counterplay Games’ Godfall, as featured on their Twitter
I am an aspiring artist, redditor and virtuality addict. I do lots of digital artwork on iPad with Apple Pencil using Pixaki and Procreate apps.
I like to take technology and Internet of Things to my advantage via art and NFTs.
