Will Wright, best known for creating The Sims, is developing a blockchain game that will use cryptocurrency and NFTs. VoxVerse, which has received $25 million in funding so far, appears to be a metaverse game that allows players to buy in-game land and items on the blockchain, although Wright seems eager to avoid solely attracting the NFT community.
In an interview with Axios, Wright says he doesn't want to be "in the business of selling NFTs", and instead wants to market VoxVerse to a wider audience. However, there are still features in VoxVerse that fit the description of an NFT, with the whole project being made in collaboration with Gala Games - a company that wants to bring more attention to its own NFT collection.
Wright hopes that VoxVerse - an online game set on a huge cube - will appeal to three different groups of players. The first will be the ones funding the whole operation, the blockchain enthusiasts. Wright appears to envision a kind of trickle-down economics stemming from this group, with their dealings keeping the game's economy going for other players, investing in plots of land in the form of NFTs. Described as "virtual landlords", they will rent out their crypto-bought land to the next group, the creatives.
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Because of how the blockchain works, any money the creatives generate from their work will be shared with their "landlord". Wright likens them to the players who create fan content for The Sims, and is pleased this is now officially monetized.
The final group of players will be the ones actually using the creations that others make for them. This is the group Wright seems most excited by, saying that he is "much more interested in attracting a million free-to-play players than 10,000 rich whales."
It's unclear how VoxVerse will set itself apart from other crypto-based metaverse endeavours, such as Decentraland - which isn't doing too well right now. There is currently no release date for VoxVerse.