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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Why does this need a blockchain, as opposed to snippets of scripting sitting on the server that the game itself runs on?

It reminds me of a 3D version of Screeps, an indie browser survival MMO where you write Javascript for each unit to control their movements, mining, attacks, etc. That doesn't need blockchain.

I can see how smart contracts would be useful in a decentralized trust model, but if the EVE company is running the game centrally anyway, what benefit does it give?

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> In the long-term, CCP wants EVE Frontier to be decentralised and (close to) eternal. A game that—by virtue of all being written to a magical series of distributed ledgers—could easily be spun up again if a meteor happens to hit its servers. "We want to have a clear path to a decentralised system," says Pétursson, where "we, CCP, just have the same access to the system as anyone really building on the system." Where players are effectively co-developers, in other words.

That's total nonsense though unless they're open sourcing the game server code itself, creative assets, the player logins and save game states, etc. Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of worthless NFT-equivalents once the game itself shuts down, or you end up having a bunch of third-party reverse-engineered & emulated servers like the ones that already exist for Everquest, WoW, and City of Villains.

Indeed, this is the problem with crypto games, there's no intrinsic value to the currency (and crypto as a whole).

The question is whether they'll get third parties to develop for their blockchain to the degree that it becomes self-sustaining (seems unlikely).

But it's not like other in-game currency hold their value after the game folds either. Just don't dump your 401k into crypto ISK.

Presumably this means the game state is susceptible to a 51% attack. Without anyone having financial incentives to participate in the backend hosting, I assume the server count is merely sufficient to handle the load.

no idea how it’s done in the game, but you can have validation methods other than proof of work. e.g. When blockchain is used as a distributed ledger for international trade, a consortium decides who can have a validating server.

According to the article, the game developers plan on removing exclusive access to the underlying blockchain that is governing the rules of the game. This means other game clients can be created, and activity with the in-game blockchain can be unlocked in ways never intended for by the game developers.

It's certainly unique and ambitious. It's more than the standard web3 playbook of slapping a blockchain on traditional applications. It's an opportunity to extend/mod an MMO in a way that can maintain a functional economy. I wish them luck.

Sounds like a way for high-frequency trading bots to manipulate the financial market from outside the game and automate the hell out of everything, while a few hapless real humans pay money into the system to enjoy the pretty graphics...

That's literally what eve already is.

Heh, fair enough.

So working as they intend then

I am not sure how EVE and high-frequency anything would work. Think of large fleet fights. ;)

In my experience, blockchain is introduced not to attract users, but to attract funding or stick price.

I crowdfunded an android tabletop device a while back (Taptop aka Blokparty) and when they pivoted to Blockchain I knew it was over and it was time to start trying to root it to get it on vanilla android.

Because they want to allow for transactions between players but don't want to become a bank.

...they just want to be an exchange?

CCP's entire business model is on being the financial system behind the game, where real money is converted into virtual currencies to spend on spaceship ammo. But that worked fine in EVE even without a blockchain?

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