During MTV’s VMAs this weekend, rappers Eminem and Snoop Dogg performed alongside a backdrop of metaverse iconography: There were alien creatures with glowing red eyes, a foreign planet with floating landscapes and a club perched on a swamp. Even the rappers themselves appeared as virtual avatars, taking the form of cartoon apes on a hazy mission devised around their song.
Unbeknownst to many viewers, these images allude to stories that Yuga Labs—the company behind the wildly successful NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)—is using to build its own metaverse ecosystem. Dubbed Otherside, this world will attempt to blend the gameplay of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), like World of Warcraft, with the decentralized structure and economic foundation of Web3.
Although BAYC and Yuga co-founders Wylie Aronow (aka Gordon Goner) and Greg Solano (aka Gargamel), described Otherside as “the most ambitious gaming project in history,” the underlying strategy is actually quite simple, and even applicable to traditional brands looking to build metaverse spaces. Its focus revolves around porting over the symbols, themes and potential storylines of its brand—in essence, its unique identity—to a new setting where fans can engage with these tools directly. The process is somewhat like inviting your community to participate in an open film set, where both the script and the direction are a collaborative effort.
“What's most important to us is storytelling,” Solano said. “Otherside is a place where we want to really develop a compelling story to hook people in and introduce them to our world. To me, that’s the most powerful marketing that you can do.”