Wagner James Au / New World Notes

At long last, Dual Universe has officially launched on Steam for PCs. While on the surface it may seem mainly like a sci-fi MMO of the Eve Online/Star Citizen variety, the breadth of its creative possibilities and scale does make it a contender for arguably becoming the Metaverse. Originally crowdfunded and developed by Novaquark ("Building the metaverse, one voxel at  a time"), it was very much conceived with that goal in mind.

Here's my long conversation with founder J.C. Baille back in 2019, who painted his vision for Dual Universe becoming the Metaverse.

And here's my 2018 chat with Will Burns, Vice-Chair for IEEE's Virtual Worlds Standard Group, who made a case this way:

“I'm not saying [Dual Universe is] the Metaverse. But I will say they and projects similar have the best chance of actually evolving into it… It all arises not because you arbitrarily placed them there. But because you created a system that fosters it all naturally. That's what I see in things like Dual Universe or No Man's Sky. Not that they are a Metaverse, but that they begin with the right premise to build on that soundly to create a virtual universe that fosters all those things naturally and not arbitrarily. Those I see as most likely to evolve into the Metaverse. Solid foundation and bigger picture thinking.”

As for getting started, Novaquark CEO Nouredine Abboud has this advice for fans of metaverse platforms:

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