"Agora World’s mission is to democratize metaverse creation. Buzzwords aside, we aim to make online social experiences more immersive and easier to create"
If you have 10 minutes, we recommend reading the full version of this article; otherwise check out the summary below:
Agora World’s mission is to democratize metaverse creation. Buzzwords aside, we aim to make online social experiences more immersive and easier to create, while empowering creators to forge their own path. Our ethos of 6 core principles drives the decisions we make in pursuit of that goal.
Our Progress So Far
In our first year, we’ve built a self-updating and self-distributed application for Windows and Mac. Users can host their own events by selecting a 3D world template. From there, users can customize the world with images and videos via a no code slot system, making custom metaverse event hosting as easy as making a Facebook profile. Others can then join the event using a custom event code (similar to a URL), navigating the world with customizable avatars and 3D voice chat. We support up to 50 people socializing like this in a single event instance, and if more people join we automatically generate additional instances (up to 20,000 simultaneous attendees). Our internal World SDK enables quick upload of any Unity-compatible scene as a world template.
For a more detailed overview of what we have accomplished in our first year, please take a look at this link.
What We Are Building
We act as an extremely agile company with 1-week modified-scrum sprints, so although we’re constantly adjusting our plans for greatest efficiency, these are the major areas we’re pursuing:
World SDK
Metaverse Interoperability
Browser Access
3D Interactable Objects
Plugins
Creator Economy
XR and Improved Social Immersion and Tools
Education
More
Open source format for metaverse worlds, allowing anyone to upload Unity scenes as world templates
Allow groups of people to reliably move together from a location in our app to a location in another metaverse app, and the inverse (social metaverse hyperlinks)
Ability to access Agora World app in-browser, downloadable app still accessible for higher end experience (model proven by Slack, Discord, & Zoom)
No code system for 3D interactable objects in worlds, deeper library of interactable components for World SDK (such as portals and “grabbable” objects)
System to support any code written by any developer, making the metaverse infinitely moddable with professional programming tools and languages
Avenue for world and plugin creators to distribute and monetize their creations, and for event hosts to easily build the metaverse they need
VR and AR support (when the time is right), higher quality and more expressive avatars, and other social immersion improvements
Share our knowledge as we are building, clear documentation and resources for creators, self-hosted education events on the platform, partner with education orgs to improve metaverse learning, possibly run our own courses
We’re investigating areas such as decentralized social networking (ex. Mastodon) and blockchain (DAOs, NFTs, decentralized governance), but we want to make sure our involvement in these areas is based on user benefit, not hype.
Why We’re Building It: Our Ethos
- Democratization: creating and experiencing the metaverse should be easy and accessible to all
- Individual Privacy: data tied to individuals is their right, not a fruit to sell for corporate profit
- Organizational Transparency: our org should communicate clearly and openly to ensure alignment with users and humanity
- Open Community: creators should be able to make what they think is right without gatekeeping
- Enriching Experiences: we want to bring excitement and vitality to our online experiences, creating memories that last a lifetime
- Social Connection: we want to improve online social bond forming and deepening, and improve the connectedness of the global community
If you’d like a detailed breakdown of our Ethos and Community guidelines, please read at this link.
Help Needed
- Fullstack/Backend Developer
- Unity Developer
- Community Manager
- Investors
- Anyone passionate about our mission
In addition to these internal positions we are seeking to fill, we are always looking to collaborate with external creators and visionaries that are just as passionate about our mission as we are.
Contact
info [at] agoravr.world to get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!
