It’s not long since the Metaverse hype has died down and been replaced by AI. While most people are more than ready to forget that chapter, PUBG Creator Brendan Greene still dreams of making his own Metaverse called Artemis. Greene believes the other Metaverses that have come out aren’t the true Metaverse. In an interview with IGN, Greene said that Metaverse was a 3D internet where you could create your own worlds that operated on the same protocol, such as HTTP. “So a world is a page, and that’s what I’m trying to do with Artemis,” Greene said.
Besides Artemis, Brendan Greene is working on two other projects. Although they will become their own games, these two projects are stepping stones to create Greene’s dream Metaverse. The first game is called Prologue, and the company released a short teaser trailer five years ago. The video lasts 30 seconds and features a simple cutscene in the wilderness with the sound of dogs barking and rain falling from the sky.
A limited group of players is currently testing Prologue, and it’s planned to be launched in 2025. Unlike Artemis‘ sprawling Metaverse, this upcoming project is a basic survival game where you need to reach an objective while trying to survive in the wild. Besides having the usual weather and hunger mechanics, its main gimmick is its terrain generation tech. It seems Greene wants to test this feature on a smaller scale via Prologue before implementing it in Artemis.
Greene’s terrain generation tech, called Melba, uses machine learning trained on NASA data. He claimed that this technology could create brand-new maps with realistic geological features. These unique maps would then be decorated with textures and assets made by real artists.
After Prologue is done, Greene’s unnamed second project aims to generate a world of 500 million square kilometers. He also wants to add numerous characters to this machine-generated world. This step seems necessary since Greene aims for Artemis to be able to fit millions of players in one space.
Greene also claimed that Artemis would not feature NFTs. He said that the rumor came from a misunderstanding from an interview with Hit Points in 2022. Although his passion project will require a lot of money, Greene doesn’t seem to consider using NFTs to fund it. While Prologue had enough funding, he said that he would need people to buy this first project so the company could continue working on Artemis.