During its recent ‘Apes Come Home’ event, Yuga Labs offered a closer look at progress made on its ‘gamified, interoperable metaverse’ Otherside. Specifically, the event offered holders of Yuga Labs NFTs the opportunity to join up with other community members in a shared browser-based game.
Predictably, different holders had different reactions to this event, with X user ‘ThePilot.x’ claiming that “every single part of the Apes Come Home experience was SO much better than I was expecting” and further highlighting that both of his children also enjoyed the experience.
Less impressed was Rug Radio creator ‘Orangie’ who shared a video with Decrypt to describe his experience.
The video opens by revealing that the in-game proximity text and voice chat were not functioning, and apes were directed to Discord if they wanted to chat. He then discusses how he thought the graphics were impressive and then spends time with the primary game mechanic, taking selfies.
Despite the positive moments, Orangie eventually concludes that at times they were bored and struggled to find enough things to do in this metaverse experience.
Despite the issues, Apes Come Home selfies quickly spread across NFT X, offering an opportunity for folks to share that they were participating in this gated experience.
Whomever at @OthersideMeta came up with a selfie camera for Apes Come Home deserves a raise. Genius level idea.
— nix.eth (@nix_eth) March 1, 2024
The Otherside pivot
Otherside made sure to set expectations before this event began, noting that it made sure “all 10,000 Apes are playable” and these apes “can go wherever” and take selfies.
It was important to set these expectations because Otherside recently announced its transition to focus on user-generated content rather than trying to make a competitive game.
🔂 The Context: The Otherside of Yuga CEO swap
Yuga Labs’ quest to create an MMO completely devoid of competition
Latest from @BennettTomlin
Subscribe and read: https://t.co/p0c76U9HA6 pic.twitter.com/l1bsYwTmsu
— Protos (@Protos) February 23, 2024
Read more: Bored Apes puts the ‘shit’ in shitcoin
Eric Reid, the general manager of Otherside, took to X to share that it expected some difficulties, noting that “building Otherside has been challenging, and you’ll see some of those challenges in Apes Come Home.”
Yuga Labs chief exec Greg Solano also took to X to note that he was appreciative of fans “bearing with the long silence while we re-tooled our platform from the ground up.”
This experience hasn’t immediately translated to increased prices for Otherdeeds, the NFTs associated with Otherside. Data from Opensea suggests that the floor price has fallen from approximately 0.365 ether to 0.25 ether since the event.
