I actually do not know what to make of EVE Frontier, the blockchain-based survival MMO in improvement at CCP Games. It landed with a thud in September 2024 over what was perceived as “crypto slop,” however it additionally sounded presumably fascinating once we took a better look in February: As PC Gamer’s Ted Litchfield wrote on the time, “The builders at CCP have truly articulated a imaginative and prescient of what they need Frontier to be, and why they suppose blockchain must be part of it.”
But now it looks like issues are veering again into the crypto stuff: CCP introduced right this moment that it is employed Stefán Þórarinsson, a former economist on the Central Bank of Iceland, as its new Head of Economy, a transfer that “marks the following step in CCP Games’ dedication to deepening the legitimacy of digital economies and pioneering analysis within the video games business.”
“Stefán Þórarinsson’s appointment advances our aim towards constructing a very open monetary system inside a digital world,” CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson. “Since our inception, we’ve strived to create worlds the place gamers transcend the constraints of our personal design—a narrative that has performed out inside EVE Online because it enters its third decade of operation.
“With EVE Frontier, we need to be bolder: Stefán’s expertise from the Central Bank of Iceland provides important rigor as we proceed to design our financial system and open it as much as gamers. By eradicating foreign money controls and fostering emergent worth methods, EVE Frontier will redefine digital nation-building, providing insights into each digital and real-world economies.”
As a part of that course of, CCP has additionally launched “a collection of complete financial updates” in EVE Frontier, which can assist it “analyze elementary elements of the financial system” throughout the sport:
- Monetary Policy & Inflation: Understanding how financial levers affect pricing, foreign money stability, and market habits in a completely player-driven world.
- Market Equilibrium & Trade Dynamics: Exploring how provide and demand fluctuate primarily based on participant and NPC interactions.
- Assets & Currency Flows: Assessing the mixing of digital belongings and their influence on in-game financial exercise.
- Behavioral Economics in Virtual Worlds: Gathering information on participant decision-making, monetary hypothesis, and financial adaptation.
CCP held an financial coverage replace and Q&A session for EVE Frontier right this moment, providing a deeper dive into the way it’s approaching that side of the sport:
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I’ve little doubt that Þórarinsson is aware of his stuff, and can deliver a strong basis of macroeconomic understanding to CCP Games. My query, although, is… nicely, why? I battle to see who this advantages: CCP is seemingly aiming to create a completely self-balancing sport world that will not require fixed developer intervention and I can perceive the place an economist would have a job to play in that, however it looks like placing the cart earlier than the horse if the actual aim right here is to make a sport that individuals truly need to play.
I could also be off-base on that take—like Peter Molyneux, I’m not a lot of a crypto-understander—however there’s a component of that feeling seen on Reddit, too. There are some cautiously optimistic reactions to be seen within the EVE subreddit however on the entire, enthusiasm appears in brief provide; on the precise EVE Frontier subreddit, in the meantime, exactly one response has been posted within the six hours because the announcement of Þórarinsson’s hiring went up, and it is principally an commentary that CCP’s deal with EVE Frontier dangers cannibalizing EVE Online—the sport that truly makes cash—with no assure of return.
Then once more, this isn’t an unprecedented transfer from CCP Games: In 2007 the studio employed Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson because the lead economist for EVE Online, a job he held till 2014, and whose “foundational contributions to in-depth financial fashions and financial insurance policies will now proceed with EVE Frontier and its capability to mannequin superior financial theories inside an open atmosphere.” It labored for EVE Online, so perhaps it is what EVE Frontier actually wants, too.
