We’re back to blockchain at CCP. Something, something, crypto, blockchain, Project Awakening.
I don’t even know what to say, aside from the fact that this will fail like every blockchain scheme has failed so far. CCP can’t even make a second successful video game, so saddling any idea with blockchain nonsense seems like a double guarantee for failure.
It was just a year ago when we saw CCP’s CEO bragging about hanging out with a bunch of crypto grifters at GDC.
Hilmar in the middle of the crypto suite
The backlash was such that they had to swear that NFT meant Not For Tranquility.
You might think that sort of experience with your installed and paying player base might cause the company pause. But no. Pearl Abyss has invested heavily in blockchain and dammit, they’re going to get something out of it… and Hilmar is apparently just the sucker to believe he can do it.
So the announcement today is that Andreesen Horowitz… as in Marc Andreesen, whose one claim to fame was to be in the right place at the right time to make Netscape happen, and then sell it to AOL before its failure became manifest… is investing $40 million with CCP to fund them creating and “innovative new AAA game set in the EVE Online universe.”
To start with, as some devs I know are probably saying, it is charming to think that $40 million gets you the league of AAA games.
Then there is the fact that blockchain is pretty much a landscape of failure, an idea that has no practical application, a technology that is simply a tax on transactions promoted by rent seeking venture capitalists, and any benefit from it can be done… has been done… cheaper, faster, and easier with existing technology. It is a garbage idea promoted by scammers. It belongs in a museum alongside ideas for perpetual motion and those tablets that would turn water into gasoline.
But even with the spectacular failures and the myriad of stolen apes, people keep pushing on this like it just hasn’t found the right home. I wonder how many of last year’s crypto startups are even still around, or are still investing in this?
The Blockchain Game Alliance – GDC 2022
Oh Ubisoft, there you are, right at the top, right where you belong when it comes to bad ideas.
Anyway, this is me posting angry in the morning. I’ll probably have something coherent to say at some future date, possibly when they have something beyond overblown expectations and empty quotes about the project, should that ever come to pass.
But it will no doubt have an impact on CCP and what they work on. Software development isn’t 100% a zero sum game, but it can be close to it. You can only work on so many things at once. If we’re lucky maybe this fiasco will just pull resources off of their first person shooter project.
Related:
- CCP – Announcement page for Project Awakening
- Twitter – CCP’s announcement
- Twitter – Hilmar playing the fool
- Reddit – What does r/eve think about this?
- Massively OP – A better summary than I can manage right now
- Venture Beat – They love to shill for crypto
- WCCFTech – Compares this to Square Enix’s dumb crypto announcement
- PCGamer – EVE players are in revolt over CCP’s blockchain plans
- TNG – Project Awakening – The Web3 Game
- Twitter – Olmeca Gold explains it all
- INN – CCP Follows Past Endeavors with Big Investment in Blockchain
- The Greybill – Benefits of a Blockchain
- TNG – More Web3 Activity By CCP Games
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
The first thing I did was save that announcement page to the Internet Archive.
Also, if you Google “Ripple a16z” you’ll see what kind of company CCP is getting into bed with.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, now we know more about that FPS game the London studio has been working on for a couple of years.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Boy, that’s quite the zero-calorie word salad they spit out.
You should angry post more often. In this case, its well deserved.
Remember, the old poker game rule– if you don’t know who the dumb money at the table is, its you.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@p0tsh0t – Along with crypto, a16z is also big on AI, so it wouldn’t surprise me to find out later that their press release was all done with ChatGPT.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How is a world currency, and the ability to transfer money instantly to anyone in the world, like I did with Bitcoin to help Ukraine, a “garbage idea?” And how are “existing technologies” like greedy banks and credit card companies not an existing tax on any transactions people would like to make? In any case I’m going to assume that teams of professional developers are not more ignorant than I am, but you do you.
LikeLike
@Silverangel – We’ve been through this wringer before and we both know neither of us will budge.
As I have clearly stated previously, technologically speaking crypto is an appendage that adds nothing that could not be done better, faster, and cheaper with existing technologies. It exists only to act as a tax on transactions so that a few VCs can charge rent on the internet. It is an attempt by the rich to get richer and the draw is always the promise that they might take you along for the ride. They won’t. They want marks, suckers, people who will fall for this get rich quick scheme. As Potshot noted above, if you don’t know who the dumb money is at the table, then it is you.
All the other talk about things like decentralization or security are all provably false, chimeras used as distractions. We now have more than two years of crypto disasters and scams, such that I have trouble seeing how anybody can say “this time it will be different” and expect to be believed.
Even Bitcoin, arguably a success, is only good in as much as it is valued in dollars or Euros, how much you can cash it out for. Trying to use it as an actual currency has been a disaster, unless you’re buying drugs or laundering money.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pearl Abyss and CCP are such birds of a feather… They lucked up once with a single successful game and then failed ever after due to inability to perform starting with the higher ups and their notsobright ideas.
Meanwhile, an arguably successful company such as Square Enix kicks their Blockchain loving CEO, but what do they know…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I get how companies exist to make money, but companies also have to stand for something other than making money. Blockchain and NFTs are solely about prying money from people, nothing more and nothing less. When a company goes all in on blockchain, they’re signaling that they’re not interested in making games for any other reason than trying to vacuum dollars from people’s bank accounts. Perhaps it’s a very cynical way of looking at this whole thing, but all I ever get out of this is that CCP is merely interested in making money, not making games. In that respect, they’re a lot closer to a huckster than Sid Meier.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Meanwhile, the BGA appears to have shrunk somewhat since that pic in the post. That is basically 2022 GDC and 2023 GDC compared.
LikeLiked by 1 person