Ready Player One creator debuts ‘Open,’ a metaverse battle royale experience

11.03.2024 - 18:15 / techcrunch.com / Royale

Earlier this year, Readyverse Studios – co-founded by blockchain tech company Futureverse and Ernest Cline, the mind behind the sci-fi franchise Ready Player One – announced “The Readyverse,” an interactive platform for metaverse games and experiences. Readyverse Studios partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) to help bring the popular novel to the metaverse across web3. WBD distributed the 2018 film adaptation directed by Stephen Spielberg.

Today, the studio introduced its first project set to launch soon in The Readyverse.

“Open” is a third-person battle royale experience in which players compete against each other in game-show-styled, multi-round collaborative modes using various gaming techniques, such as shooting, tactical positioning, and driving. Readyverse Studios founders debuted Open in a trailer today during the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival.

Of course, the new experience features a Ready Player One biome where players can explore environments, get skins inspired by the novel, and compete against each other. In addition, Open has other biomes with recognizable characters from iconic IP. In the trailer, viewers see Ready Player One protagonist Wade Watts (a.k.a. Parzival) walking past nostalgic products like a DeLorean car and a vintage television and video game console.

For those who aren’t familiar with Cline’s work, Ready Player One is set in 2045, when the planet is on the verge of collapse. As a mental escape, the majority of the human population uses a virtual reality simulation called the OASIS. When the creator of the simulation dies, a message gets sent out to users that the first person to discover a digital Easter Egg gets ownership of the OASIS. Watts, a teenage orphan and avid player, enters the contest where he goes up against evil corporate employees who work for a greedy CEO who wants to control and monetize the OASIS with intrusive online advertising.

Readyverse Studios says Open is the “first AAA quality metaverse experience interoperable with AAA IP that leverages web3 technology,” and it’s named after the principles that The Readyverse leverages, such as “asset interoperability, digital ownership, decentralization, and security.” A good portion of that technology is thanks to Futureverse, a platform of 11 companies like gaming studios and blockchain startups.

Open was also developed with Walker Labs, a video game and next-gen web tech developer that released an open-world multiplayer shooter and adventure game called Walker World in 2022.

Open is currently being developed for PC. Interested players can sign up for early access starting today.

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