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'

pcgamer.com:

In an expanded documentary produced in collaboration with PC Gamer, CCP Games is providing a deeper look at the hardcore space survival MMO EVE Frontier after its showing at the 2024 PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted. This more unforgiving and zoomed-in sister game to EVE Online is also in the middle of a 10-day free trial of its closed alpha, allowing players to try it out for themselves without committing to an early access founder pack until February 24.

EVE Frontier is using blockchain, a technology I'd otherwise written off entirely, but it distinguishes itself from the wave of low-rent Web3 projects and questionable Ubisoft or Square Enix efforts we saw in the early 2020s. The developers at CCP have actually articulated a vision of what they want Frontier to be, and why they think blockchain needs to be a part of it. With Frontier, CCP is proposing an MMO built on moddability, with immutable rules CCP calls «digital physics» in place to preserve the game's balance without requiring constant developer intervention.

I don't know if this vision could be feasible on a more traditional online game's codebase, but CCP's promise of being able to program and share modifications to an online game on the fly like this doesn't sound like anything else I've seen in games. CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pètursson likened it to EVE Online's reliance on distinctly unsexy database software to deliver its still one of a kind emergent, digital economy. «Never did we really position the game, 'Eve Online: The First Database Game,'» said Pètursson. «And we're not really looking to do that with EVE Frontier either. It is not really a blockchain game, no more than EVE is a database game.»

The primary vehicle of Frontier's moddability is a spaceborn structure called a «smart assembly,» something EVE Frontier creative director Pavel Savchulk likens to your chest in other survival games, just with this added dimension of programming and mods on top. CCP chief blockchain engineer Cheryl Kara Ang