This year’s PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted included a new trailer for EVE Frontier, CCP Games’ upcoming survival-focused spin-off for the long-running EVE Online. The new space sim promises an oppressive atmosphere, more granular combat and punishing survival elements, all built on a blockchain-based framework that, in reality, as difficult as it may sound, seems to add to the experience – don’t do it. call it a “blockchain game,” its developers insist.
Blockchain is involved, of course, but that has more to do with the fact that it is distributed and not centralized.
Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO
With all the hype around AI, it’s easy to forget that just two years ago, NFTs and crypto were an unstoppable, overheated leviathan threatening to remake the game with new forms of microtransactions and promises an interoperable Fortnite-ification of all games. These buzzwords have firmly landed on the “what’s not” list since just outside the metaverse, but EVE Online studio CCP Games is still working on a blockchain-based game (notably, there is no has no NFT in sight). After seeing what the EVE Frontier team is working on and hearing the developers’ vision for the game, I was convinced that this sister game really justifies the use of this technology.
The most compelling argument I’ve heard from CCP, and something that sets EVE Frontier apart from all the half-baked MMO projects I saw at the height of crypto-mania, is that blockchain is meant to serve the game that Frontier is trying to be, not the other way around.
“When we created EVE Online, we decided to build it on a database. Our choice of database was hotly contested, at least in this community of people making MMO-style games,” Hilmar said Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP. “And we never really positioned the game ‘Eve Online: The First Database Game!’ And we’re not looking to do that with EVE Frontier either. It’s not really a blockchain game any more than EVE is a database game.
“We’re just being very explicit about it because it’s a hot topic and we don’t want to hide it. Blockchain is involved, of course, but it’s more about the fact that it’s distributed and not centralized. “
The bottom line is that CCP uses blockchain to make EVE Frontier client-side moddable without compromising the core integrity of the MMO. “Using blockchain technology also allows us to open up this universe to a layer where other actors will be able to modify and co-create this universe with us,” said Cheryl Ang, chief blockchain engineer at CCP. The main point of contact for this modability will be the “Smart Assemblies”, valuable space stations that will serve as a sort of survival game base, but with added complexity.
“It’s a bit like modding a traditional game,” explained Scott McCabe, product manager of EVE Frontier. “You can play the original game as it came. You can then start getting truly independent third-party mods. And finally, you can actually make your own, if you set up all the development environments and really get into the nitty-gritty of the subject.”
McCabe was quick to point out that you don’t need to be an experienced coder to enjoy EVE Frontier or its mods. Just as a vanguard of modders will lead a community of thousands or even millions of people on Nexus or ModDB, McCabe and Ang hope to see the sharing and exchange of mods and coding expertise within Frontier’s community .
Some players have programmed a Smart Assembly to automatically host king of the hills style PvP tournaments, handing out rewards to the winners. Others have turned Intelligent Covens into vendors and even simple NPC quest givers.
McCabe and Ang explained that blockchain underpins what the CCP calls “digital physics”: immutable rules in EVE Frontier that will limit what modders can create, ensuring that they can transform the game, but never “break” it. McCabe explained to me that you won’t be able to cheat with smart builds, for example—no infinite ammo and fuel, or increasing your speed and damage beyond impossible.
What CCP is offering with Eve Frontier—client-side modding of a live multiplayer game without compromising the core integrity of the experience—is unlike anything I’ve seen in a game before. don’t know to what extent it would have been possible to build it using technology with less controversy, notoriety and investor interest than blockchain, but McCabe implied that part of the motivation was to use blockchain decentralization to finally entrust the governance of EVE Frontier entirely to its players in place of the PCC, and even ensure the continuity of the game in the event of the dissolution of the PCC.
One move that impressed me on this front is CCP’s plan to make the Carbon Engine, which powers both EVE Online and EVE Frontier, open source. I find this to be more evidence that EVE Frontier is a true game design experiment rather than a late passenger on the crypto hype train, although in-game transactions—including purchase of new ships – will be done with a set of crypto wallets. in character creation rather than EVE Online’s in-game currency ISK.
Some of what’s already been done in EVE Frontier playtesting harkens back to EVE Online’s long and legendary history of emergent shenanigans. Some players have programmed a Smart Assembly to automatically host king of the hills style PvP tournaments, handing out rewards to the winners. Others have turned Smart Assemblies into vendors and even simple NPC quest givers for other players. Since players must build and maintain their own warp gates in the sparsely populated Frontier, CCP has observed players using warp gate control against enemy factions.
Scary space
EVE Frontier’s combat and exploration are similar to EVE Online at first glance. You control a single ship from a zoomed-in perspective, above you – at least as far as you can be “above” in space – as opposed to Elite Dangerous’ first-person cockpit or view back to third person in something like Starfield.
“The action is a little faster, there are more decisions to be made in the heat of the moment with imperfect information, which will lead to emergent gameplay,” McCabe said of EVE Frontier’s moment-to-moment combat. The new game will introduce line of sight and cover, meaning stealth, surprise, and positioning will be essential in a way they never were in the original EVE.
“You may not know what’s behind the next rock, you may not know who’s waiting for you, or maybe how many reinforcements they have when you set your trap,” McCabe explained , and this tension will only be increased by the message of EVE Frontier. more limited resources compared to EVE Online, where losing a ship can already be a devastating financial proposition—McCabe suggested that these complications resulted in an experience that “bordered on survival horror”.
McCabe also hopes that it will make EVE Frontier feel like a bigger, more dangerous universe, reminding me of the way the start of a Civilization game can feel so vast, menacing, and full of infinite potential, compared to to a fully explored and map-set Civ late game, represented by EVE Online. “You can’t fly perpetually without running out of energy. You’ll have to stop and do something. This makes the universe seem considerably larger than free, infinite travel.”
EVE Frontier looks like a fascinating and unique space sim that really uses crypto-derived technology that I had essentially written off. At the very least, CCP’s extensive experience running a digital economy that long predated crypto deserves some benefit of the doubt, as does its commitment to the project long after the gold rush ended. If you are interested in EVE Frontier, you can head to the game’s official website to purchase a Founder’s Pack and participate in ongoing playtesting.
