Shanghai and Vancouver based game studio Pixelmatic , founded by current Blockstream CSO Samson Mow, is building a massively multiplayer online (MMO) space strategy game called Infinite Fleet .
Mow, a well-known executive in crypto and former game design director at Ubisoft, is taking a different approach from the numerous blockchain game projects that have proliferated in the space recently. Infinite Fleet is planned to be a full-on MMO space strategy game somewhere between Starcraft and EVE Online, but with a twist of cryptocurrency in its game economy.
The game will play like a traditional PC MMO, however the in-game money of Infinite Fleet will be a cryptocurrency, as supposed to traditional in-game money such as WoW Gold or ISK in EVE. With this approach, the team aims to have the performance and depth of traditional (off- chain) games, while utilizing the frictionless transactional benefits of cryptocurrency. With this, the game aims to have its in-game currency to be portable for players – meaning that players would be able to take the game currency outside of the game and trade it like any other crypto asset. The game token of Infinite Fleet will be issued on the Liquid Network , a second layer technology of Bitcoin developed by Blockstream.
Perhaps more promising is that this could prove to be the perfect “Trojan Horse” for bringing crypto adoption to the average online gamer. While playing Infinite Fleet, a player is not required to understand anything about blockchain, meaning no blockchain plug-ins or spending gas for making transactions. It is only when a player decides to take advantage of the portable characteristic of Infinite Fleet’s in-game currency that they need to learn about crypto and how to make transactions to a wallet or using a crypto exchange.
While not an extensive amount of information have been disclosed by the studio as of yet, the game’s website does show attractive scenes of space flight and ship designs resembling old school Macross styles. In Infinite Fleet, players will each play as the commander of a fleet of several ships, augmented by smaller AI-controlled support ships and fighters. Players must work together to defend the human race against a treacherous alien threat, while cooperatively writing the history of the game as it progresses.
Infinite Fleet is reported to be currently in development, led by a team of veteran game designers hailing from well-known game studios in Canada, such as Relic Entertainment and BioWare. The team has years of RTS game design experience from titles like Age of Empires, Homeworld, and Dawn of War, which certainly lends plenty of credibility to the prospects of Infinite Fleet.
The Infinite Fleet team has recently announced that a new cinematic trailer is in the making , and that alpha release is aimed for the end of the year.
