Yuga Labs Otherside Opens ‘First Trips’ in Bored Ape Metaverse

Otherside, the much-expected metaverse gaming platform from the creators of the BoredApe Yacht Club, is open for business.

On Saturday, the YugaLabs-developed game invited 4,300 players—so-called “Voyagers”—for a first-look tech demo and tour of the immersive, ape avatar-navigated online platform. All Otherside players will be required to embark on or view one of these “First Trips” to be able to participate in the game, which has still not yet fully debuted.

All 4,300 players who took part in yesterday’s digital excursion to the “Biogenic Swamp'” that constitutes the center of Otherside were owners of “Otherdeeds,” deeds to plots of digital land within the platform. In a litepaper released shortly after yesterday’s First Trip, Otherside’s developers announced that only Otherdeed owners and “selected third-party developers” will be permitted to participate in the game during its first phase.

On Friday, Gordon Goner, one of YugaLabs’ co-founders, said in a Tweet that Otherside is in direct competition with Web2 “giants,” but expressed optimism that “the future will bend toward the open, interoperable metaverse.