Anyone here remember Ember Sword? It’s an upcoming sandbox MMORPG that touts a number of the usual features like PvE and PvP and one unusual feature in the shape of a cryptocurrency-based player economy, with cosmetic items that are limited in number to make them more collectible and can be traded among players for PIXEL, the title’s blockchain-based currency. It’s a monetization scheme that raised a few eyebrows but also brought one of the developers, Sune, into our own comments section to elaborate on the scheme.
“We only use blockchain tech for the player-to-player economy and premium currency. To enable players to freely trade these items in a secure way (as opposed to making it against our ToS), and distribute them through gameplay instead of selling them through loot boxes or the like.”
Regardless of how you might feel about this blockchain economy, it’s full steam ahead for the title as developer Bright Star Studios has achieved $700K in pre-seed funding from venture capital firm Play Ventures. This investment is being used to expand the development team, bringing in former Unity Studios CEO Allan Kirkeby as the senior producer and Popdog and SK Gaming co-founder Andreas Thorstensson as an advisor. Ember Sword itself is also open for pre-registration.
On the subject of the game’s cryptocurrency economy, that’s seen an adjustment as well, with PIXEL now an ERC-721 or “non-fungible token,” which ensures that the value of PIXEL won’t fluctuate and will allow for easier and more secure third-party trading of items, as well as a promise of “the highest possible level of transparency,” with items having a visible history to verify their scarcity as well as how much items have been traded for.
If none of this cryptocurrency stuff is of any interest or bother to you, though, you can just look at some pre-alpha footage of the game below.
