Independence Day’s Roland Emmerich announces Space Nation MMORPG: It’s another token-encrusted NFT game

June 29, 2023 9:30 AM

Movie fans no doubt know the name “Roland Emmerich,” a blockbuster director who made a household name for himself by destroying the earth on multiple occasions (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) While his latest effort, Moonfall, was a massive bomb, it hasn’t deterred him from taking his love of sci-fi in a new direction.

According to Deadline, Emmerich has teamed up with World of Warcraft and Warframe vets to create a new multimedia franchise called Space Nation. The core of this — and most germane to our readers — is a three-years-in-the-making MMORPG that’s aiming to start alpha testing this summer and closed beta in January, with the hopes of a 2024 open beta launch.

There’s a catch, though: Although the Deadline piece doesn’t mention it, this game’s press materials make it abundantly clear the new game is a seemingly late attempt to go ham on the crypto blockchain. It even has the requisite whitepaper of these ubiquitous Web3 startups, which promises a hybrid setup for Web2 and Web3 users.

Space Nation will purportedly put players in the captains’ seats of starships to embark “on an epic journey to unravel the mysteries of the Telikos Cluster and immerse themselves in the unfolding grand space opera.” Apparently there will be three factions spread across an alien-infested galaxy.

Ex-World of Warcraft product manager and co-creator of Space Nation’s Jerome Wu embraced the crypto aspect, saying, “Drawing from valuable lessons learned from the history of Web3 gaming, coupled with our two decades of experience in traditional MMORPGs, we firmly believe that blending the elements of entertainment and economic incentives is the optimal direction for the future of Web3 gaming. Throughout the meticulous three-year development of the game, our unwavering focus has been on creating immersive gameplay and placing fun-first as our guiding principle, while leveraging Web3 technology and tools to enrich the player journey.”

How will fun be achieved? We’ll let the whitepaper speak for itself.

“By differentiating certain individuals’ pursuits from monetary gain and differentiating groups that exclusively pursue FUN, the game has the potential for long-term sustainability. The issue of how to differentiate FUN is a viable topic within the realm of game design, and we believe we can achieve it through an immersive, operatic, and epic game: Space Nation Online and its subsidiary games. However, we will not delve into the details here as we need to focus the discussion on tokenomics.”

Emmerich called this the start of an “expansive universe” that will eventually involve a TV series, animated cartoons, and other video games. The project has already received $50 million in funding with more anticipated to come this fall – assuming, of course, it survives the ongoing crypto collapse and the fate of other MMOs who’ve tried all this before.