This segment of the Universe Chart is hot and getting hotter! There's now a plethora of new VWs in development being built on-chain. New additions since the last update include Radio Caca, The Apollo Project, GiveTree, Metakawn and Music Verse.

From a strategic perspective, these companies really need to focus hard on their unique user experience - how they differentiate themselves from other virtual worlds. Typically these companies are launching with a land sales approach in order to raise initial funding but in order to survive in this ever competitive market it's what they do after this launch period that will dictate if they have an ongoing business model.

Allowing users to create User Generated Content is a no-brainer here because this stimulates the virtual goods economy and encourages longer session lengths. Having an agile avatar creation and customisation system is also really important.

However, overall, the single most important critical success factor relates to positioning and theming. The market does not need another Sandbox or Decentraland, it needs virtual worlds tailored to specific genres or verticals. Creating these types of 'vertical worlds' means the in-world user experience can be exclusively built towards the user profile. Vertical worlds could be themed towards specific times in history (a Roman Empire VW for example), sports (a fishing themed VW), hobbies and activities. In other words, be specific not generic.

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