Meeting the genius of the metaverse
“Let’s talk Internet Computer” podcast, we interviewed one of the best metaverse architects on the space.
Faraz Mobin, metaverse architect and game developer, he currently works for the Dubai police. Although he was born in Delhi, since childhood he has lived in the United Arab Emirates.
His passion for building and developing imaginary parallel worlds comes from his adolescence. As a lover of action and racing video games, the first thing he wanted to recreate and bring to life in his early years as a developer was a gun and a car.
In the interview he recalls, as if it were yesterday, his pleasant moments back in 1995 playing the first-person shooter video game “Doom”.
In those years in the 90s, a passion began to awaken in him, a flame that has been fanned every day. He not only wanted to have fun playing video games like any other kid, but he began to wonder and wanted to know more about gaming, he wanted to discover what was behind it, how they made the avatar have life and movement, or how they made the water flow through a river almost perfectly, or the wind blow and reflect on the characters’ clothes?
He began to see that world from a window of parallel perspective instead of from the TV like the rest of the players. At that time there was no “Google” as we know it now and there was almost no information about how to develop video games. All the information you had to look for in manuals with hundreds of pages where it was difficult to find specific terms or instructions when doubts arose. That was not an impediment for Faraz that over the years he evolved as a developer and perfected his technique until today he has his own style very marked and differentiated from the rest.
Faraz does not like to be considered an artist, he believes that his skills are more similar to those of an engineer or an architect. He says that he has to have physical and mathematical notions of knowledge of the human body, animals and nature, knowing how to capture in detail the movement of his characters or the different scenarios is not an easy task and is not only to create a parallel universe, but also to make sense of it and give it life.
Although in the projects he is developing as D-City through the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), he has a team of designers in charge, usually, he prefers to work alone. In such a thorough and complex work, it is difficult to translate the same results in two different developers. They can copy or follow a pattern but for everything to flow, be coordinated and work perfectly is up to one and although Faraz does not like to admit it :), any work be it a painting, a sculpture, a piece of music or a metaverse made by an artist is unique, authentic, original and impossible to replicate; that is what makes the art world great and in my opinion of course a 3D architect is also an artist.
Faraz Mobin explains on his website the different projects he has worked on or is ongoing. Below Bored Club for instance, developed on the Ethereum network and founded by Mike Raphone, stands out for being a social club where you need to be a member to access, and on a regular basis live comedy events, classes and other shows are held. You can buy NFT’s through the OpenSea marketplace:
It also stands out for having its space and developing metaverses through the 3D art gallery platform Monaverse, founded by Justin Melillo and Matthew Hoerl in June last year with all kinds of collections and metaverses where Faraz Mobin collaborates and has its space as Andromeda Arena or Me Sky Lounge.
Undoubtedly the most ambitious project and the one that catches my attention is D-City, a metaverse on the Internet Computer blockchain with 2500 initial plots for sale in Entrepot, the largest NFT’s marketplace in Internet Computer, founded by Toniq Labs and its founders Bob Bodily and Ailen Lam.
The idea is that in a matter of days or weeks they will launch the definitive roadmap where we will be able to see how the metaverse will be distributed and developed. At the moment they have already named the coffee shops (D-Caffeinated), Mexican restaurants (Los Motoko brothers), the D-City bank (The Mint), Sushi restaurants (City Roll), pharmacies (Dr.Motoko), gas stations (FOMO Fuel), pizza franchises (Pizza 522), burger franchises(Moon Burger), luxury suburb(Deverly Hills) and even the D-City motto (Community-owned, Community-driven) Bam.
Highlighting a recent series of deals, D-City NFT has acquired ICVibesters under the umbrella of CityLabs LLC. ICVibesters are 5000 avatars developed on the Internet Computer website that will populate the city of D-City. They have also partnered with ICPLink and distributed the Internet Computer meme cryptocurrency $GHOST, among its owners.
They are currently in the process of distributing the plots in 4 sectors of the city and according to Mobin, they believe it will be ready by the end of the year so we expect a 2023 full of surprises in D-City.
It is also worth mentioning that they have even released their own soundtrack which is currently available on Spotify. Thanks to musician and composer Willy Eklof.
If you want to participate in the project and see more information I recommend you take a look at the different platforms where they are active:
Here you can watch the D-City launch video and even interact in the demo inside the metaverse:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/Ls4_YbUYFO4
Demo D-City running on the Internet Computer: https://lmlgr-pqaaa-aaaad-qcbeq-cai.raw.ic0.app/
In the following link you can listen to the full interview on the podcast Let’s talk ICP https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/lets-talk-internet-computer/id1643564996?l=
Javier Arroyo Ferrer
ICP Evangelist/Marketing Contractor at Dfinity/creator Let´s talk ICP podcast