Lucas Mucida is studying for a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence in Brazil. He was also lecturing but had to give it up to spend his free time on Upland, the monopoly-based metaverse, as the game proved more addictive – and financially rewarding - than working as a professor. Mucida had previously studied computer science and was aware of cryptocurrencies, even going as far as to mine Ethereum on his computer. He was also interested in NFTs during 2020 and began looking at some Play to Earn games at the same time. “I was playing games where you can build endless and without a defined end so Upland appealed to me. And so I joined Upland in April 2021 and began buying property in Brooklyn. But it took time as it’s not that simple – you really need to talk with other players and so I joined Discord to find out more.” Investing in Upland was not expensive, and Mucida started with $10 but he wished he had put in more as it got a 50% bonus on his first property purchase. He began to play regularly and even won the accolade of Player of the Year 2022. “It’s not based on money, investments or trades but it was based on helping people. When I first came on the site there were no videos in Portuguese, so I started making them to help explain the game. “Also Rio is coming soon so I wanted to be able to start talking about the city and how it might look in Upland.” In addition to creating many videos in Portuguese, Mucida is now also very active in Discord answering questions whenever he has time. “Back in 2021 there were only English-language videos and so I wanted to help – to teach – other Brazilians how to play.” Soon, with the help of Mucida’s teaching, the Brazilian community started to grow and become more active – and created a Little Brazil in Queens and is also expanding into Porto, Portugal. For Mucida, his Little Brazil is in Queens. He and his community bought up much of the properties and created a virtual community. It’s hard to tell how many properties were bought but Mucida reckons there are at least 100 players active in Discord. The community is a thing. While the friendship may have started online, there have now been a number of real-life meetups in Sao Paulo and Rio. “It’s great to meet these new friends in person. We have met in bars and it’s been amazing to meet people in real life. In fact, I hope to organise more of these in the future.” “We chat a lot on Discord helping new players but we also talk about our lives. It’s different from other games such as playstations where its competitive. Here people are helping each other – and making money. “I even know people who have left their full time jobs and are playing the game for 8 hours a day and are making money.” Making money does take time. Players look to make deals, buy good property, and go on treasure hunts; sometimes there can be as many as 100 treasure hunts in a day. It does cost money to play, but then you can earn more Spark in return so that makes it financially worthwhile. Spark token is the currency needed to construct anything in the Upland Metaverse The partnership with FIFA is very exciting for football-mad Mucida and his Brazilian friends. He is already planning activities and giveaways to coincide with the games. He hopes to have factories up and running soon so they can make their own NFT out of Brazilian flags. There are other plans for the Brazilian Uplanders to set up watch parties for their home team games and other big matches during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 ™. Some events are planned for Sao Paulo, and another at Rio de Janeiro Copacabana Beach. At these events, there are plans to erect huge TV screens to view the relevant matches. Upland is also having events at big technology festivals. Last week was the Campus Party Festival which attracted more than 1000 technology ‘geeks’. There is another event planned during Comic Con and a startup festival in Brazil. At these events, Uplanders will be offered the opportunity to purchase or win legits – which are digital NFT collectibles unique to Upland. In Upland, Mucida and his pals are also decorating their houses with Brazilian flags and other team-specific outdoor decors in preparation for the FIFA World Cup ™. He spends some hours every day playing on Upland, talking to his fellow Brazilians, or making videos to update the community in Portuguese. In addition, World of Football (WOF) is the first external game to launch in Upland. The game is based on a league, and different communities are building organic football fields in their neighborhoods to establish their own league. This game is not based on AI so it is player versus player. It’s the first time independent developers have used Upland APIs to launch a game within the metaverse and will be the first of many. Photo by on Fauzan Saari Unsplash

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