Yesterday, I wrote about my chat with CCP's top brass about its upcoming survival MMO EVE Frontier—a new game in the EVE universe that uses blockchain tech to (so goes the CCP pitch) take the player-led philosophy of EVE Online and make it weirder, wilder, and woolier, even letting players become effectively co-developers of the game alongside CCP. I went in as sceptical as I am of literally anything with the whiff of Web3 about it, but hearing the devs' pitch left me at least open to the possibility they were doing something interesting with the technology.
Which, ah, sets me apart from the bulk of EVE Online's already-existing community, seems like. EVE players have been suspicious of Frontier—known until yesterday by its codename Project Awakening—for a good long while now, and it doesn't seem like yesterday's unveiling has assuaged them any. If anything, it's driven them to new depths of despair.
"I am saying this because I love EVE. Because I have been playing it almost every day of my life for 5 years now. Don't do this," writes an EVE subreddit user named Wolfwolf68 in a thread titled "Dear CCP: Don't."
- Blockchain-based space survival MMO EVE Frontier has a free trial running, with CCP hoping you'll take a chance on its 20,000 star systems, more tactical combat, and 'dark sci-fi Pinocchio story'
- EVE Online studio CCP Games hires former Iceland Central Bank economist for its crypto game, because nothing says 'fun' like 'removing currency controls and fostering emergent value systems'
"There is still time. You can still roll it back and pretend it never happened. Please. None of us want this crypto slop, this desperate cash grab, this attempt at 'creating something great,' this game where buzzwords seem more important than gameplay."
Which, as an empath, I can tell you betrays a certain lack of enthusiasm for CCP's upcoming adventures in blockchain. Wolfwolf68 is far from alone. Their thread has attracted nearly a thousand upvotes and hundreds of comments, almost all of which share their negative sentiment. The current front page of the subreddit is awash in threads by players mocking Frontier or begging CCP not to proceed with it.
One player says they used to struggle with addiction to the game, but CCP's decisions have made it "real easy" not to go back. "Not only are you releasing shit updates as per usual, now crypto bullshit is coming too."
I have the solution to Eve:Frontiers from r/Eve
Another post is titled "I have the solution to EVE: Frontiers [sic]" and suggests plugging the ethernet ports on the game's servers directly into the mains (this would, in case you were wondering, probably not be enormously healthy for the servers). Another questions if EVE's player advocacy group—the Council of Stellar Management—had any forewarning about CCP's foray into blockchain tech.
A post that actually expressed optimism about Frontier has precisely zero upvotes. Some of the first responses to it simply read "No," "Stop," and "I disagree."
You get the idea. It's not just Reddit, either. EVE Frontier's announcement tweet immediately attracted scepticism. "Releasing a blockchain game a year after the weird hype about that technology died," replied a user named Hannah. "You guys still pushing the blockchain horseshit with this, or did you learn your lesson and make an actual good game for once," asked hecksadecimal. "I initially liked this cos I like EVE, but I just wanted to say I retract my Like because of the blockchain nonsense, thanks," said Rob McLachlan.
The official EVE Online forums, and Discord, are much the same: The EVE Frontier discussion thread has garnered an entirely negative response from players so far. Meanwhile, the Discord is home to several players dismissing Frontier as "blockchain bullshit."
Still, CCP can take some comfort in the fact that at least the users on the official Frontier Discord—separate from the EVE Online one—are generally at least willing to hear the game out, which seems to be CCP's go-to messaging for the game. "All I'm going to say, as always," says community dev CCP Jötunn, "is that before anyone draws any conclusions they should check it out and then decide how they feel. If they're here for the web3 tech and still hyped about it afterwards, then hell yeah brother.
"If people want to play the game specifically to blow up crypto speculators, then hell yeah to that as well."
Before anyone draws any conclusions they should check it out and then decide how they feel.
Jötunn, CCP community dev
But mostly, it seems like CCP has quite a long road to hoe if it ever wants to win its currently existing playerbase over to Frontier, and I'll be very curious to see if it manages it once EVE Frontier becomes available outside of closed playtests. For now, all players have to go on is whatever CCP is willing to divulge about the game and the godawful pre-existing reputation of blockchain games and Web3 nonsense, so it's not exactly surprising the tone is this grim. If CCP does manage to get these players on board, it'll be a turnaround of historic proportions.
I hope it does, of course. Like I say, some of the ideas CCP spoke to me about sound genuinely fascinating, but there are still plenty of questions—especially about monetisation and, well, the United States Treasury—that need answering before I'm willing to commit to anything beyond curiosity. EVE Online's existing players, meanwhile, will be even harder to win over.
Still, if it all goes wrong, a user named Ralli-FW has a plan: "The best possible outcome here is that a bunch of crypto bros try this game, it sucks, and they come to EVE instead where we can slowly degrade their indoctrination and/or scam them into buying Enyocoin."
