Dual Universe is a massive online game that’s one world — and the players create it

Dual Universe is ambitious. It’s a massively multiplayer role-playing game that promises a single shared universe, one where potentially millions of people can gather to engineer ships, create organizations, develop miniature economies, and build virtual lives. After raising over $660,000 on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter last year, it’s now entered a prealpha stage, and 2,500 of its backers can explore a preliminary version of the world.

The main difference between Dual Universe and other MMOs is that it’s a “single-shard” world. It runs on one server, so everyone is participating in the same virtual space at the same time. It’s a permanent world, and developer Novaquark said that it will be just one solar system. Then, as time goes on, the game studio plans on adding more and more to the universe.