A new studio by the name of Core Loop has raised $12 million to develop their Massively Multiplayer Sandbox Game using blockchain technology. The studio was started by mobile game veterans Vincenzo Alagna and Dan Chao, who initially raised $2.4 million dollars for the studio, not discussing blockchain technology at the time.
Since then, the technology behind Blockchain has exploded with several big-name studios such as Take-Two and EA seeing it as viable for future growth. While Core Loops game is planned to have a player-driven economy, and a dynamically changing world, it is also set to include Blockchain components as well.
It is the use of Blockchain within the game that cause their previous round of investing to be led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional investments from Galaxy Digital, Initial Capital, Dune ventures, 1up Ventures, and Sisu Game Ventures.
Jonathan Lai, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, stated:
We believe the next generation of MMOs will combine the best of social and systems design from traditional MMOs with a Web 3 powered virtual economy built on true ownership and the ability for players to earn a living in the game. Core Loop is leading the way and we couldn’t be more excited to work together.
Blockchain is the technology that is used NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens. Since digital ownership is easily established these items can be bought and resold easily. This opens up new ways that the games community can self-govern. Not every aspect of the game will rely on this blockchain tech though, as Chao states:
As a free-to-play game, you don’t have to buy you know anything to start playing our game. I think that’s really important for us. In the game economy, not everything will be a blockchain token. So you can still play, harvest gold, pick some berries from a bush, all that sort of good stuff. That’s still just normal MMO activity. There will be some like blockchain currencies that people can earn.
It is important to note that while many studios and developers are embracing this tech, not everybody has been so accommodating. Steam recently enacted a policy that bans games that use NFTs or Blockchain technology from the platform, cutting off a huge path of revenue for the developers.
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