EVE Online CCP Games has announced that they are working on a new triple-A game set in the EVE universe, and I'm sorry to say it's a blockchain game.
“Since its founding, CCP Games has been committed to creating virtual worlds that are more meaningful than real life,” CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson said on the site projectawakening.io. “Now, thanks to advances in blockchain, we can create a new universe deeply imbued with our expertise in player organization and autonomy, allowing players to interact in new ways.”
The announcement is really about funding for the project, not the game itself: CCP Games received $40 million in development funding from Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm founded by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. However, CCP Games stated that the project will "use blockchain smart contract technology, focusing on persistence, composability and truly open third-party development to create new relationships between virtual worlds and players."
To be honest, I don't quite understand what this means, and unfortunately Ad Andreessen Horowitz no more informative.
“This new AAA game will combine CCP Games' 25 years of game development experience with the latest blockchain technologies to open up new horizons of player autonomy and autonomy, and will be created in the EVE universe,” the release said.
“Together, we share the belief that player ownership and control within an open platform can be a key source of fun that enhances great gameplay and engaging game design.”
One interesting note here: Andreessen Horowitz stated that CCP Games has "already made great progress in product development, and we have been very impressed with the playtests conducted so far." In other words, this is not just empty promises and throwing away other people's money.
However, I have questions. Despite announcements like this one, blockchain game development seems stagnant, perhaps because so few developers are actually interested in it. The annual developer survey at GDC found that only 12% of respondents were in favor of using blockchain technology in games, while 56% were against it. Worse, I've never seen anyone explain what a blockchain-based game will do for players that conventional technology can't. And there is a real backlash against blockchain and NFTs in video games, although I'm starting to think our claim that they have been pushed out of mainstream gaming may have been a little premature.
Reaction to Petursson's tweet from crypto enthusiasts and blockchain developers is predictably positive, but in other circles it is somewhat more mixed:
Speaking for myself, I don't see the point in throwing around nonsense to advertise a game that basically doesn't exist other than a funding announcement. But this is always the case with blockchain game announcements: We hear about money, but not about games. Of course, there's no guarantee this project will ever see the light of day, as CCP Games seems to have a hard time creating anything that isn't EVE Online.
Petursson has previously expressed some enthusiasm for the "untapped potential" of blockchain technology, but also admitted that there is "a lot of work" to be done before it is ready for use in games like EVE Online.
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