What is ‘Eve Frontier’? CCP’s Space Survival Game on Ethereum

Popular game developer CCP Games this week lifted the lid on Eve Frontier, a space survival game set in the Eve Online universe that features blockchain integration.

Originally called Project Awakening, Eve Frontier appears to have many similarities to the massive Eve online game, but with a more survival focus — and the ability to use crypto tokens and blockchain code to shape and reshape the game. .

Details are still a little thin on the ground, but with such a well-known development studio behind it, expectations are high that Eve Frontier could be one of the first truly triple-A blockchain games. If that sound piqued your interest, this is all you need to know about the game.

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What is Eve Frontier?

Eve Frontier is an upcoming video game developed by Icelandic developer CCP Games, the studio behind the deeply hardcore and long-running online space sim.

Touted as a space survival simulation, you wake up as the last remnant of humanity from stasis and drop into a world where drones swarm the environment – and the remaining survivors fight for limited resources. What this means for players is that they need to cooperate and even create resources in the world to survive.

“In the first place, the world is tamed like a big beast. It's angry, it's original, it's evil — and it's out to get you,” said Hilma Vegar Petersen, founder and CEO of CCP Games. They spoke Decrypt In March 2024. “The world of [Eve Frontier] He really wants to kill you.

No gameplay has been shown yet and we have very limited information on what you are doing in the world. But it's a safe bet that you'll be able to pilot a spaceship at some point, or maybe for the entire game.

CCP games In 2023, he collected 40 million dollars In a round led by VC giant Andreessen Horowitz, the blockchain play to fuel its ambitions. Pétursson has been active in the crypto world for years talk with Decrypt In the year The Future of Blockchain Game in 2020.

Is it the same as Eve Online?

If you've heard of Eve before, it's probably because of Eve Online, a gargantuan space MMO that's been going for over 20 years at this point.

It is known to be one of the most difficult games to get into, with the complexity of the game itself and still the world's toughest society. There's plenty to delve into, from politics to space warfare, capitalism, and, if you're so inclined, accounting.

However, Eve Frontier is not the same game as Eve Online. It's a completely different game that doesn't relate to the original MMO in any way, other than sharing the franchise's name and perhaps the story of the universe it's set in.

There's been some speculation that Frontier will eventually be the game that replaces Eve Online, but there's no way to know if that will happen until we get a good look at the game.

How is crypto involved?

In interviews surrounding Eve Frontier, CCP has been keen to emphasize that this is a game. Features Blockchain technology, however, is not billed as a “blockchain game”. That means CCP is first and foremost making the game, and not simply an item selling you tokens.

There will be some crypto tokens created for use in Eve Frontier. The Eve Token will be a utility token that can be exchanged for external value, with CCP already saying it will not restrict transactions outside the game.

However, the truly exciting technology comes from the community's creative options. Eve Frontier uses blockchain technology to give you the opportunity to develop new experiences and features in the game, which can include your own crypto tokens if you wish.

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, while the original devs remain largely hands-off. This means that the game will change significantly over time based on the community's innovations.

CCP is calling its blockchain technology approach “smart assemblies,” describing features that players can create with smart contracts—the code that runs decentralized applications or other integrations in Eve Frontier.

“Players can build infrastructure such as storage facilities, trading posts, defenses, and more. Think of it as an enhanced base building,” an official FAQ explains. It allows for flexibility and player expression.Building infrastructure and deployment across borders does not require programming.

“For example, a Smart Storage Unit (SSU) is a space-anchored structure that acts as smart storage, holding and distributing whatever inventory players choose to load (currencies, goods, etc.),” ​​he continues. “With smart assemblies, this structure can be coded to serve as a marketplace, a quest giver, a bounty hunter system, an arcade machine, etc.”

What is Eve Frontier built on?

All this technology takes place on Ethereum, which makes sense for this scale game, given the number of skating networks and the fact that many popular crypto tokens are built on top of it.

The crypto tokens in the game are issued in ERC-20 token level, the game itself is being developed on the Ethereum layer-2 network, built on Redstone, Optimism technology and specially designed for autonomous game worlds.

When it comes to actual game creation, all of that takes place on CCP's Carbon Engine, which it plans to eventually open source. There is an on-chain engine MUD from Lattice developed in parallel with Redstone.

When is Eve Frontier coming out?

There is currently no release date or window for Eve Frontier. However, the game's new Playtest will launch on September 27, and you can sign up on the official website to gain access.

The game's reveal trailer says “Founder's 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.