The following text is a conversation between Lydia Lei and the Cubetopia team. Its a paraphrase of the conversation.
Lydia: Today we have Cubetopia metaverse. Welcome, thank you for joining us. Please introduce yourself.
Joseph: I’m Joseph, I’m the main developer for cubetopia. We are trying to build a decentralized metaverse on IC. Like mine craft. You guys will earn an NFT that will be an island. They will be unique , and you can place your NFTsto display. That’s the first phase.
Lydia: Can you give us more information about the team.
Joseph: There are 4 of us. I’m Joseph and I have degree in computer science. I’m worked in games before. And I’ve been interested in crypto since 2016. We have Andres a Motoko boot camp graduate. Robert advices the project as a whole. He’s worked for coin telegraph. And the head of fuse network. So it’s just the four of us.
Lydia: 4 team members is good.
Joseph: also we have NAF who is a community ambassador.
Lydia: what is the community ambassador ?
Joseph:sure we can invite NAF to speak.
Lydia: Sure he was the one to speak with your team.
Joseph:he’s helping us with the community. Japanese community, and engage people.
Lydia: why did you choose Dfinity to develop your project? Why choose IC?
Joseph: great question and answer is straight forward. There’s 2 main benefits which is the front end to act as server and host the game. We don’t need centralized place to host game. Secondly we can store the data for the island in chain which can’t be done elsewhere. The goal is to build something truly decentralized. Every other game has a lot of centralized aspects.
Lydia: NFTs stored on ICP. Maybe you need to pay more cycles and does it’s a little expensive?
Joseph:it’s actually quite cheap. The NFT itself won’t just be an image. Depending on size of island it will be as manageable in chain. I’d like to pass this on to Andrea’s but I don’t think it will be too expensive. Generally it’s very cheap compared to using amazing for storing data.
Lydia: that’s very important for metaverse projects because if you store a lot of data on chain, it’s costly. So I’m very curious about this part. So you also talked that people can buy their own land. Sand box you can have your own NFT , land, events, so what’s your future plans, or advanced functions of those kind of things?
Joseph: yea so what I have described is the beginning phase. But main direction after the land experience is to go towards a play to earn game. Island will product resources and this will create the ability to go and play quest and fight monsters.
Lydia: So it’s more like a game.
Joseph: yes this is the second version, take it to a play to earn game.
Lydia:how is your roadmap?
Joseph: we are in phase 0. We are trying to make a playable demo. Everyone will be able to play the game. This will be phase one. Then we complete the island experience. Then single player and multiplayer experiences. We will release full road map soon.
Lydia:that’s very interesting. Why build metaverse project?
Joseph: well I think the world is headed this way. This is how you earn a digital asset. It will be a cool thing to make their own space.
The other reason is because we are doing something that hasn’t been done. Truly decentralized, others may not be truly metaverse experiences because it’s not fully decentralized.
Lydia: why is the cube based game?
Joseph: the reason is because I always enjoyed Minecraft, been playing it for years. It’s the inspiration. You can be voxel based which is cube. Better than pre made rooms and make pre made things. But if you have an island made of blocks. You can make a castle or spaceship. That’s my thinking behind.
Lydia: The demo has 3 colors, green, blue, grey, does it mean something? The video has different colors.
Joseph:It’s different kind of islands, we will have desert island, cherry blossom and different variations. Play to earn side will be quite unique and special.
Lydia: Your twitter was made this month. How long you’ve been working?
Joseph: it’s been about 3 months. We are testing the demo and fixing bugs. Then the demo will be released.
Lydia:There are many other chains like ethereum and solana, why IC?
Joseph:I heard about IC, when the game was made public. Not much research but then I look closer, and it offers so much more than others. They say solana will be the chain for gaming but I think IC will be the one. It was a natural decision.
Lydia:I think good decision because Dfinity will give games more help.
Joseph: Andres is here, he is a ic Motoko developer:
Andres: Basically we realized that IC offers so much like Canisters. Just the possibilities of making each island its own canister and check on the ic rock page. In the future the interoperability with the web will be amazing. We get get that info into our canisters and onto blockchain.
Lydia: so one island will be a canister?
Andres:yes. we are still discussing but yes every one will be an island and hoping it will work great. We applied for funding.
Joseph: of each island is a canister, they can really own that island.
Andres:Exactly, of chain is continued to build, we can give ppl ability to mod it and control their island. Icp is great.
Lydia: How is your funding going now?
Joseph: well it’s self funded by me but we are trying to get an Dfinity grant. We want this game for everyone to play. Right now we only looking at the Dfinity grant.
Lydia: yes, they will support great projects.If the quality is good. Your pictures are looks good to me.
Joseph: we will give you access Lydia. Some are already testing it but you will get a chance.
Lydia: how can ppl try to test it?
Joseph: we hand picked some ppl to test this week then gather feedback. If you want to be a tester, I’d go be active in community or in game testing experience.
Lydia: how is your community growing?
Joseph: we have been quiet but we are slowly building the product. The product will be able to sell itself.
Andres: if you look now. You can tell it’s active and real humans.
Joseph: yes we are happy about the community.
Lydia: yeah your community is really helpful and very family oriented. I have question for Andres. What’s the most difficult for you to develop? They told me that a little bit difficult to you don’t know Motoko. What’s most difficult for you?
Andres: Great question, the coding isn’t very difficult. There’s not a lot of language because it’s so new. So it’s difficult because not a lot of troubleshooting offers. Since it’s a new language, you have a lot of freedom to code something.
Joseph: yes it’s a lack of, well Dfinity is doing a good job to provide resources. Motoko is very powerful and will be worth pushing through and building with IC.
Lydia: yea Motoko is easier for ppl to start coding but still a small community. If you face questions and don’t know how to fix it may be an issue that the foundation is trying to fix.
Andres: there was a Motoko boot camp, big success.
Lydia: yes that’s great. How about data storage?
Joseph: we are working hard on data storage of islands and how the islands look and how formed.
Andres: each file has a 2 megabyte file per block. So big files we need to separate. There’s a lot of innovating on these side of things. The island is just not an image. The NFT is a key to an access control of your island canister.
Lydia: what about the safety of API, how to protect each information?
Andres: well icp runs on candid, it runs well because built well by dfinity.
Lydia: thank you for that information. I don’t have more questions but maybe the community does. Any one have questions?
Joseph: I guess you were very thorough and asked everyone what they wondered.
Lydia: well let’s ask about your NFT ,when will you launch it? Many people are upset about new projects launching and being bad, so what are your plans?
Joseph: yeah we are trying to be as open and transparent as possible. We will be fully doxxed and want the communities trust. We want to offer demo before we launch so people know we have the product.
Lydia:yes we will have another chat when it’s out. Since it’s at an early stage. We will talk about more when it launches. What do you think about metaverse future?
Joseph: my 2 cents on metaverse is that big companies like Facebook, it’s something not to take lightly. Web3 is coming. Web2 is something people are tired of. What we have seen is this cycle of crypto is people using it. Defi is been a revelation. More play to earn games and projects like this. Cubetopia will onboard new ppl and if will be very important. To bring people in.
Lydia: I totally agree with you. I think ppl right now join the blockchain to earn money and then there are developers that want to create something amazing. More revolutionary products will be released. I agree with you Joseph. Where is the team based?
Joseph: I’m from the UK AND ROBERT.
Andres: I’m the only one not from the UK.
Joseph:There are a few companies based on uk, or have offices like coinbase and chain link. Uk development does have a lot of finance and fintech. London and UK. Maybe we see that move over.
Lydia: We don’t have many events. Or parties.
Joseph: yes I’m still waiting for Dfinity summit. It would be amazing.
Lydia: yes there are many events in Dubai. Oh we have a guest here.
Attendee: every island will have its own resources, so will it be a survival thing or will there be trading resources, what’s the gameplay?
Joseph:it will be a creative experience rot create what you want. It’ll be a case of expressing your creativity. We are looking at ways to make it more engaging. How can we make it fun to gather resources. Minecraft gathering like game play. Gameplay wise we are still
Working it out but making it fun as possible.
More creativity type of thing.
Attendee: one more question, interaction between players , will players come and join your island and see what you do?
Joseph: we will have text and voice chat integration. Maybe you are asking if there will be PVp fighting but we think it will be something to explore. Maybe a bit too brutal. Maybe lighthearted brawling.
Attendee: are the islands the collectibles or specific items as well?
Joseph: In the first phase, the island will be the NFTs. We want to reward players in game and are planning more but don’t want to reveal it all.
Andres:The sky is the limit with ICP. It’s not a problem to make a game asset and show in your wallet as NFT. And will have done by release.
Joseph: definitely will have in game items as nfts. We are thinking very hard about.
Attendee: thank you those are my questions.
Joseph: thank you.
Lydia: Any more messages?
Andres: thank you to all of you. We feel very welcomed here and happy to be developing on this chain.
Joseph:Lydia said icp is like family. We have certainly felt that way. We have all felt the power of IC. And we are all waiting to see what’s built on it. We want to see it succeed. Thank you for listening.
Lydia: thank you for sharing especially since it’s at an early stage. I would like to follow up.
Joseph: yes definitely when we have the demo out. More questions will pop up.
Lydia: thank you everyone. For being here.
