CCP, the company behind Eve Online, the most successful, space-based MMO in the history of gaming, announced their intentions to expand to the blockchain with a new offering set in the Eve universe.
CCP Games announced that they secured $40 million in funding to develop a new game title that uses blockchain technology and is set in the Eve universe. Production on the new title, dubbed Project Awakening, is separate from Eve Online. And even though Project Awakening will be set in the Eve universe, there is no guarantee that it will have any direct connection. Or even necessarily be anything like Eve Online. Eve Online features an ever changing landscape of ownership control and asset destruction, neither of which would work so well if you tried to make all the game objects into NFTs that exist outside of the game.
However, many ships in Eve Online do have real world value to the players. So attaching value to in-game items and buying and selling on third party marketplaces are not a completely new concept to their playerbase.
Web2 Developers Adopting Blockchain
This is notable announcement from a well-known game developer. Eve Online has been around for 20 years now (hard to believe!) and the name is known to many gamers, even if they never played. The increased adoption of blockchain technology by large gaming companies brings more perceived legitimacy to the web3 gaming space.
But they will have some competition. A number of other space-based web3 games are already well under development. This includes Influence, Star Atlas, Echoes of Empire, and Farsite, just to name a few. Most of these games are already in alpha or beta testing, or even preparing for an official release!
Will CCP be able to put something together that features engaging gameplay and that doesn’t piss off their current fanbase? We’ll have to see. Eve Online does have legions of dedicated fans. But are those players willing to venture into a new game that includes the dreaded NFTs? Will Project Awakening work to include a wallet-free onboarding system? And will they onboard with an existing infrastructure such as Immutable X, or will they try to go at it alone?
Unfortunately, there isn’t much information about the game yet. They couldn’t even give us an interesting banner image! So any assumptions we make now are just guesses. Hopefully CCP will start leaking some details about this new game. In the meantime, you can sign up for email updates at https://www.projectawakening.io/
What are CCP Games and Eve Online?
Founded in 1917, CCP Games are an Icelandic company famous for developing and releasing Eve Online. Eve Online is a free to play, persistent, space-based MMO that allows players to control and self-govern sections of the galaxy. Players harvest, transfer, and trade resources, build ships, and fight with other players.
Featuring pirates, political manipulations, alliances, betrayals, and all sorts of other drama, Eve Online is a microcosm of world government in a way. Even after 20 years, CCP still works on expanding and adding to Eve Online.
In addition, CCP is working to build several games set in the same Universe as Eve Online. These include Project M5, a 4x strategy game, CCP London an FPS, and the recently announced Project Awakening, a blockchain-enabled game.
To learn more about CCP and Project Awakening, visit their website, follow them on Twitter.
