Orbitat

Orbitat, commonly referred to as Orb, is an online metaverse game developed by Orbitat Inc. and released in 2044. It lets players buy, develop, and trade virtual land corresponding to real-world locations on Earth.

Players pay a monthly subscription to maintain their in-game assets, the value of which is affected by real-world developments such as housing bubbles and natural disasters. Due to scarcity, many players form collectives known as co-orbs or corbs to share ownership of small parcels of land, apartments, and rooms.

With an average annual revenue of ¥28.7 billion since 2046 and a current active monthly player count of 425 million, Orbitat is considered one of Singapore’s most significant contributions to the tech world.

HistoryPermalink

The concept of Orbitat can be traced back to M2H, an experimental mod for Re:Visit. The game was set in a spacefaring colony ship where characters built replicas of their homes while in cryogenic sleep as a way to keep them connected to Earth, with some players banding together to build neighbourhoods based on real-life locations where they lived. The M2H mod allowed players to buy and sell their homes, or house-swap for mutually agreed-upon periods of time. ^[1]

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M2H was launched during the summer of 2032 by Felicia Kwee, Felix Kwee, and Asa Morales. The mod was considered a breakout success, with over 540,000 unique downloads in the first three months.

The first version of Orbitat was based on the original M2H mod, Felicia Kwee’s senior thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and her personal research. In 2035, Kwee returned to Singapore and began working at the Government Technology Agency (GovTech). Shortly after, Kwee transferred to the Virtual Singapore team, where she became a senior experience designer. In 2041, Kwee left civil service and founded Orbitat Inc., with several key Virtual Singapore team members leaving to follow her. Kwee served as CCO, with her brother Felix as CEO and Morales as COO.

After winning the approval and backing of the Singapore government, Orbitat Inc. officially launched Orbitat in January 2044. By the end of its first year, Orbitat boasted 310 million monthly active players, with a current active monthly player count of 425 million. ^[2] In March 2048, Kwee left Orbitat Inc. for undisclosed personal reasons, with the role of CCO remaining unfilled.

On October 3rd 2049, Orbitat Inc. lost over ¥3.6 billion in market value, which was tied to the attack on the DotDesign Museum. ^[3] The unveiling of the museum was intended to officially open the island of Pulau Bahru and trigger the release of corresponding terrestrial land on Orbitat, valued at over ¥5.3 billion in virtual real estate. Orbitat Inc. has distanced itself from Kwee following her “distasteful and disappointing” online actions in response to the attack. ^[4]

Cultural impactPermalink

Morales has described Orbitat’s success as “an inevitable end point” after learning from the failures of similar predecessors such as Earth2 and Meterra. ^[5] Surveys show that over 82% of people with stable internet connections have an Orbitat account, with over 620 million people having invested in the virtual counterpart to their physical home.

ControversyPermalink

As corbs have become a ubiquitous part of everyday life, residents in lower-income neighbourhoods sometimes choose to invest in corbs rather than their physical homes. This phenomenon represents “a severe disconnection between what people want and what they have to live with, which in many ways is simply another manifestation of end-game capitalism and aspirational influencer brain.” ^[6] Beyond issues of economics, aspirational wealth, and classism, some also believe that the hyperreality engineered by Orbitat has developed into “a pathology of antisocial behaviour that affects our relationship with physical space.”

See alsoPermalink

• Orbitat Inc.

ReferencesPermalink