SOMETHING'S BREWING: Yuga Labs CEO Garga Says His “Gaming/Metaverse Focus Is Strictly On OS And Driving Utility To Kodas RN.”

The first iteration of an always-on, persistent Otherside is launching sometime next month, and Yuga Labs CEO Garga confirmed that his “gaming/metaverse focus is strictly on OS and driving utility to Kodas rn.”

Gaming was the talk of the Discord yesterday as Voyagers asked Garga about the team’s past decision to sell the Kodamara project to Faraway Gaming and whether they would ever consider buying it back.

“We've never considered that, no,” Garga replied. “We put a huge amount of love into the Kodamaras which I think you can tell just looking at them with how insanely detailed and rich they are, but we're not equipped to run LoTM and Otherside at the same time. My gaming/metaverse focus is strictly on OS and driving utility to Kodas rn.”

After Garga’s post, Apes and Voyagers began asking whether Kodas will have different utility than Apes on Otherside.

While Garga didn’t directly answer that question yesterday, he has previously confirmed that Kodas are the main characters of Otherside and that they’ll have their own token-gated experiences in the metaverse.

“Kodas are the main characters of Otherside, and the Nexus is their ancestral home and the main 'city' or world for Otherside, where portals to all kinds of different experiences will show up,” he said back in January. “ In the same way that the BAYC Clubhouse is token-gated to Apes, there are places in Nexus gated to Kodas.”

As we wait to find out more about what's in store for Kodas specifically on Otherside, we do know that the metaverse will bring plenty of utility to ApeCoin and ApeChain. Garga confirmed last week that Otherside will be powered by $Ape from day one. “Yes, day 1 integration,” he said.

At this time, we don’t know exactly what this $Ape utility will look like in practice, but Garga has said ApeCoin, on ApeChain, will be used in the always-on social hub “with achievements, trading, tipping, and transacting.”

 

As the Bored Ape Gazette previously reported, next month’s Phase 1 launch of Otherside will center around the Meebits world of Meettroplis, the Koda home world of Nexus, and the BAYC home of The Swamp. Players will be able to check out activations and games like Bubbles hangout sessions, poker, snap pics with the KodaCamera, CryptoVonDoom’s literal mini-game Bathroom Blitz, and more!

“We're focused on two releases this year: June release for persistent world with all the things I've been talking about (main islands online, transacting on ApeChain, fun social features like Bubbles, Poker, etc, and ODK games like Bathroom Blitz) and a Winter release focused on Otherdeeds with a fast follow for resources starting to be emitted,” Garga said.

 

The Bored Ape Gazette will continue to follow all things Otherside and will let you know when Garga and the team share more about Koda utility and upcoming activations. Stay tuned for updates!