EVE Online meets the blockchain?
If you’re looking for an ambitious blockchain game, Artplant has got you covered.
Best known for its work on Bigpoint’s 2014 browser MMOG Battlestar Galactica Online, the Norwegian developer has spun up its previous experience and has been working on its blockchain-based space MMOG Parsec Frontiers for the past eight months.
Parsec Frontiers promises to be a classic 4X space-based MMOG... on the blockchain
During that time, it’s been designing, prototyping, and hiring, as well as dealing with all the legal stuff that comes with blockchain development, including setting up a Swiss-based Foundation.
And now it’s getting stuck into the detailed game design that will happen before its crowd sale token generation event due in April.
In the meantime, however, we can get some idea of the scope of game from the initial white paper.
It’s a big universe
Taking the classic 4X gameplay – eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate – Parsec Frontiers is a space-based experience that initially will be focused around finding the best planets to settle and build on. Next comes mining and transporting resources so players can start crafting and trading. The final step in the game’s evolution will be combat.
Due to the complexity of the game, Artplant plans to roll out these features in a modular fashion, prior to game’s formal release, starting with the ability to buy and trade spaceships in May 2018.
That’s planned to happen at the end of 2018 with the release of the travel and settlement modules. The resource extraction module isn’t due until February 2019, with crafting coming in May and combat in December.
That’s obviously a long way off, and there’s plenty of opportunity for the schedule to slip, especially in terms of it being an ambitious project being developed by a (currently at least) small studio.
Dual tokens
As for the blockchain element of Parsec Frontiers, that will start with the sale of the PARSEC ERC-20 token in April.
Parsec Frontiers will use dual tokens to get the accessibility of the Ethereum network while handling tens of millions of daily transactions, quickly and without fees
Interestingly, Artplant says it’s taking a dual token structure approach so while the PARSEC token will operate on the Ethereum blockchain in terms of trading, each token will have to be converted via a smart contract into a customized token – called Parsec Credits – which lives on the game’s own blockchain.
This decision has been taken so Parsec Frontiers can scale to handle tens of millions of daily transactions, quickly and without incurring fees, something that isn’t possible on the Ethereum main net. Using a customized blockchain also means older transactions can be archived, so the game’s ledger is optimized.
As for the in-game token that will be used for the ownership and trading of everything from spaceships and parts to basic resources such as iron ore.
The basic design of the economy also relies on 3% of all transactions using Parsec Credits being burnt to a smart contract to ensure the money supply in the economy is always contracting.
So, while there’s plenty still to discover about Parsec Frontiers and plenty of challenges still to be overcome before we have a first playable experience, at this stage the least we can say is that it’s a game we’re looking forward to.