In summary
- Legendary game developer CCP Games this week revealed Eve Frontier, a space survival game with Blockchain integration.
- Eve Frontier is a video game developed by CCP Games, known for the online space simulation Eve Online.
- The game will use crypto tokens and blockchain technology to impact and reshape the gaming experience.
Legendary game developer CCP Games this week lifted the veil on Eve Frontier, a space survival game set in the Eve Online universe that features blockchain integration.
Initially known as Project Awakening, Eve Frontier appears to have many similarities to the massive game Eve Online, but with a greater focus on survival, and the ability to utilize crypto tokens and blockchain code to impact and reshape the game in new ways.
Details are still a bit scarce, but with such a prestigious development studio behind it, hopes are high that Eve Frontier will be one of the first truly triple-A blockchain games. If the sound of that has piqued your interest, here’s everything you need to know about the game.
What is Eve Frontier?
Eve Frontier is a video game being developed by Icelandic company CCP Games, the studio behind the deep and long-running online space simulation, Eve Online.
It’s being billed as a space survival simulation, where you awaken from stasis as the last vestige of humanity and are dropped into a world where swarms of drones roam the landscape, and the remaining survivors fight over limited resources. That could mean players will need to collaborate and even craft resources in the world to survive.
“At first, the world is like a massive beast to be tamed. It’s angry, it’s primal, it’s evil, and it’s there to get you,” Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, founder and CEO of CCP Games, told Decrypt in March 2024. “The world of[Eve Frontier]literally wants to kill you.”
So far, there’s no gameplay shown, and we have very limited information about what you’ll actually be doing in the world. But it’s very likely that at some point, or perhaps throughout the game, you’ll be able to pilot a spaceship.
CCP Games raised $40 million in 2023 in a round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz to boost its blockchain gaming ambitions. Pétursson has been actively involved in the crypto world for years, even speaking to Decrypt about the future of blockchain gaming in 2020.
Is it the same as Eve Online?
If you’ve heard of Eve before, it’s probably because of Eve Online, the giant space MMO that’s been running for over 20 years to date.
It’s notoriously one of the more difficult games to get into, with layers of complexity from both the game itself and the extremely passionate community that still inhabits the world. There’s a ton of stuff to get involved in, from politics to space wars to capitalism and even accounting if you so choose.
Eve Frontier concept art. Image: CCP Games
However, Eve Frontier is not the same game as Eve Online. It is a completely different game that will not be tied in any way to the main MMO, except for sharing a franchise name and probably the story of the universe in which it is set.
There has been speculation that Frontier is designed to be the game that eventually replaces Eve Online, but until we get a better look at the game, there’s no way to know if that will happen.
How is Cryptocurrency involved?
CCP has stressed in interviews it has conducted about Eve Frontier that this is a game that features blockchain technology, but it is not being promoted as a “blockchain game.” Hopefully, this means that CCP is creating a game in the first place, and not simply a vehicle to sell tokens.
However, there will be some crypto tokens created for use in Eve Frontier. The Eve Token will be a utility token that can be exchanged as an external means of value, and CCP has already said that it will not restrict transactions outside of the game itself.
However, the truly interesting technology comes from the community creation options. Eve Frontier will use blockchain technology to give community members the opportunity to develop new experiences and features within the game, which could include their own crypto tokens if they so choose.
The goal seems to be that CCP will create a set of tools that will allow the community to continue developing the game for years to come, with the original developers largely staying out of the loop. This could mean the game changes significantly over time based on community creations.
CCP is calling its blockchain technology approach “Smart Assemblies,” describing them as features that players can create through smart contracts, which contain the code that powers decentralized applications, or other integrations within Eve Frontier.
Eve Frontier concept art. Image: CCP Games
“Players can build infrastructure such as storage facilities, trading posts, defenses, and more. Think of it as an improvement on base building,” they explain on the official page. “By giving each structure a programmable layer, EVE Frontier allows for greater player modification and expression over each ‘base element.’ Building and deploying infrastructure in Frontier does not require programming.”
“For example, a Smart Storage Unit (SSU) is a structure anchored in space, which acts as intelligent storage, holding and dispensing whatever form of inventory players choose to load into it (coins, items, etc.),” he continues. “With Smart Assemblies, this structure can be programmed to function as a marketplace, a quest giver, a bounty hunting system, an arcade machine, etc.”
What is Eve Frontier based on?
All of this technology is being developed on Ethereum, which makes sense for a game of this size given the abundance of scaling networks and the fact that many prominent tokens are built on it.
In-game tokens will be issued using the ERC-20 token standard, with the game itself being developed on Redstone, an Ethereum layer-2 network that is built on Optimism technology and designed specifically for autonomous game worlds.
As for the actual creation of the game, this is all taking place on CCP’s Carbon engine, which it plans to eventually open source. There’s also MUD, an on-chain engine from Lattice that was built in parallel with Redstone.
When will Eve Frontier be released?
Currently, there is no release date or launch window for Eve Frontier. However, a new playtest will begin on September 27, and you can sign up on the official website to potentially gain access.
Eve Frontier concept art. Image: CCP Games
The game’s reveal trailer also mentioned that “founder access” is coming soon to PC and Mac, but there’s no word yet on what that means or how to get it.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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