Interview: Multiverse Unveils 2D Interfaces for 3D Worlds

Many in the industry look at 3D virtual worlds as the future, though potentially only for the long-term, explains Multiverse Co-Founder and Executive Producer Corey Bridges. For now, 2D seems to be taking over the mainstream. "With Multiverse, you can choose both," said Bridges. "What we’re going to show is a  Flash-based virtual world that’s a 2D world where you walk around as in any Flash game. Behind that is the full strength and flexibility of the Multiverse server engine. That can be put to use to power those Flash games. There’s nobody else out there who has the depth of extensibility on the server side of the Flash-based world."

Multiverse will be demoing a 2D cartoony version of Times Square. Some might remember the 3D version that Multiverse has been showing off, but if you haven't seen it, it'll be running on the next screen over.

"When you walk around in the 2D space or 3D space, that’s represented in the other environment," said Bridges. "It’s the same exact world, but you can look at it in 2D or 3D. You can build one world using Multiverse and not have to choose."

Multiverse has always worked towards building a client agnostic platform, looking towards Windows, Mac, 3D, mobile, and console applications.

"This is the first step down that path," said Bridged. "A Flash client can live on mobile devices, and that’s an interesting use case. You could build a rich, deep 3D world and then you as a developer want to make it available as a mobile device. You won’t get all the nuance, but you may want to offer some amount of gameplay and fairly rich interaction to someone who can only access it over a mobile device or check something quickly."

Bridges couldn't announce any partners developing with the technology right now, but he says Multiverse is working with "a number of big companies" and hopes to announce several after the conference.  As it is, he says the company's work on the platform made the  actual world development that much easier.

"It was deceptively quick. Really, it was all four years of building the platfom to support the different clients. If a customer wants us to, we could actually run a text MUD.  Converting the art assets took about a week. Realistically if we wanted to do it quicker, it would have been about 3 days. We’ve got a couple of different Times Square versions that we’re running internally. We’ve got one that’s very cartoony and one that’s very realistic. You can adjust the front end very quickly."

Multiverse is exhibiting at Virtual Worlds 2008, Booth 52