Zima Red ep 135: Susan Cummings - Petaverse: Immortal virtual pets
Primer: You are out shopping. Turning your head, you see your virtual pet cat following after you. This is the universe that Susan Cummings is trying to create with Petaverse. Join her as she discusses about augmented reality, game development, and her project in this episode of the Zima Red podcast.
Background
She and her husband has been in the video game industry for 25 years
Was involved in Grand Theft Auto early on
Founded 2K Games
Got into augmented reality (AR) a few years ago
Founded Petaverse
Thoughts On AR
Her Interest In AR
Was encouraged by the Welsh government to bid for grants in AR
Formed a consortium with a few other companies to bid for it
Worked with Aardman on Wallace and Gromit
“AR actually encourages you to look up and have this magical additive experience. So that's why I've always been so captivated by it. It enhances the world.”
- Susan Cummings
AR Adoption
Depends on how quickly the tech can catch up and be lightweight and affordable enough
They are building Petaverse to tap into the AR glasses trend
AR Glasses
Was impressed by the HoloLens 2
There’s a company called Varjo that produces glasses where their AR works almost like VR. It captures the info and superimposes it on top the recorded information to produce a beautiful, blended experience
Rumour that Apple’s AR glasses are going to cost $3k
Most Popular Medium That People Would Use To Experience AR
Problem with phones is that there is not a common standard
In video game development, consoles give devs a fixed platform to develop their games
PC development is a pain because you do not know what device each person has and have to figure out the minimum requirements
Android phones do not have LiDAR while iPhones have, making it difficult to create a great experience for everybody
When Will AR Become Ubiquitous
Terry Schussler of Deutsche Telekom is on their advisory board
He’s bullish on AR
The metaverse is a bunch of hype right now. It takes time to build it
Petaverse
Introduction
A gamified experience
It’s not a specific game
Their focus is on interoperability and smaller iterative experiences
First few experiences they are launching:
Meme-o-Tron — creating memes of your pets in funny moments
A VR experience to chill with your pet
A Twitch integration to bring your pet into a Twitch stream
Breeding
Opening up their tech stack for people to build things
Have a concept called cloning — the pet could be on Ethereum, but you can have the permission to use it on Solana, Polygon, etc.
Their Upcoming Mint
Each day, they are releasing 150 spots
Collaborating with communities
Have not announced the date, price, or the collection size
Weeks away from the mint
First drop will be cat-focused
Hoping that there will be a launch (e.g. drop, app, announcement, breeding) each month to keep people excited
Opening Up Their Infrastructure To Builders
Have to document and make it clear to everyone else how to do that
Have ideas to do game jams and little contests to get people building content
There are other projects that are creating tools on Unity to make it simple to make games. Will be collaborating with them
Their White Paper
Would encourage everyone to read their white paper
She did a voice recording of their white paper
They have a rich backstory to the Petaverse network that they have not started telling yet
The Decision To Make An Ecosystem
Their previous project was overly complex about storytelling
Wanted to make something simpler like pets
Thought about how their pets could be brought into other games
“Pets are kind of easy to Trojan-horse into a game.”
- Susan Cummings
Pets are additive. They do not replace the avatar in other games, but just follow the avatar around
Changed blockchains a few times. Started out on Flow before finalizing on Ethereum
Have people on their team with experience building platforms
Getting People To Stay Engaged
Have to focus on fun
The core mechanics has to be great
Miyamoto talks a lot about this in Nintendo:
Builds 3 prototypes of a game, each with different approaches
Throws 2 of the prototypes away
The big problem is Web3 teams lacking game dev talent
The good thing is that there are lots of game devs who raised money to do Web3 things
Different Categories Of Fun
Games are for everyone
Web3 games need to start with casual mechanics (e.g. Candy Crush, Bejeweled, Farmville, etc.)
Once these games are proven to be fun, people started to accept it, and larger games got made
It’s a mistake to either focus on the masses or on the niche, hardcore gamer
Best Medium To Experience Games
Thinks that it is console games
Mobile games are a hard sell as everything’s free for the most part
Have spoken about the dangers of the free NFT model being ubiquitous as nothing is free
PC gaming has gotten more popular than it used to be
VR gaming has not taken off
AR will eventually become the platform that is ideal for playing games
Will Phones Be Replaced By Wearable Glasses?
Think that there will be a period where there’s both phones and wearable glasses
During that period, there will be tethered AR buses that uses the processing power of the phone
Once cost comes down, glasses would probably replace phones
2 years ago, the head of R&D for Mojo Vision told her that if users close their eyes, they can see AR on their eyelids
Her 10-Year Grand Vision
Her partner would like it to be a hyperstructure
Going to set up a DAO, a Petaverse Foundation, to fund people who wants to build on Petaverse
Biggest Risk Of Using NFTs As A Game Dev
Biggest risk is the perception of NFTs
Have been shy of launching a token. Saw lots of tokens tank last year and not being able to recover from it
Thoughts On AI
AI for art and chat are fascinating
Looking at how they can integrate it into the project
ChatGPT will have a big place within game development. Think that it will replace people
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