I really don't know what to make of EVE Frontier, the blockchain-based survival MMO in development at CCP Games. It landed with a thud in September 2024 over what was perceived as "crypto slop," but it also sounded possibly interesting when we took a closer look in February: As PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield wrote at the time, "The developers at CCP have actually articulated a vision of what they want Frontier to be, and why they think blockchain needs to be a part of it."
But now it feels like things are veering back into the crypto stuff: CCP announced today that it's hired Stefán Þórarinsson, a former economist at the Central Bank of Iceland, as its new Head of Economy, a move that "marks the next step in CCP Games’ commitment to deepening the legitimacy of virtual economies and pioneering research in the games industry."
"Stefán Þórarinsson’s appointment advances our goal toward building a truly open financial system within a virtual world," CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson. "Since our inception, we have strived to create worlds where players transcend the constraints of our own design—a story that has played out within EVE Online as it enters its third decade of operation.
"With EVE Frontier, we want to be bolder: Stefán’s experience from the Central Bank of Iceland adds vital rigor as we continue to design our economy and open it up to players. By removing currency controls and fostering emergent value systems, EVE Frontier will redefine virtual nation-building, offering insights into both digital and real-world economies."
As part of that process, CCP has also launched "a series of comprehensive economic updates" in EVE Frontier, which will help it "analyze fundamental aspects of the economy" within the game:
- Monetary Policy & Inflation: Understanding how economic levers influence pricing, currency stability, and market behavior in a fully player-driven world.
- Market Equilibrium & Trade Dynamics: Exploring how supply and demand fluctuate based on player and NPC interactions.
- Assets & Currency Flows: Assessing the integration of digital assets and their impact on in-game economic activity.
- Behavioral Economics in Virtual Worlds: Gathering data on player decision-making, financial speculation, and economic adaptation.
CCP held an economic policy update and Q&A session for EVE Frontier today, offering a deeper dive into how it's approaching that aspect of the game:
I have no doubt that Þórarinsson knows his stuff, and will bring a solid foundation of macroeconomic understanding to CCP Games. My question, though, is... well, why? I struggle to see who this benefits: CCP is apparently aiming to create a fully self-balancing game world that won't require constant developer intervention and I can understand where an economist would have a role to play in that, but it feels like putting the cart before the horse if the real goal here is to make a game that people actually want to play.
I may be off-base on that take—like Peter Molyneux, I'm not much of a crypto-understander—but there's an element of that feeling visible on Reddit, too. There are some cautiously optimistic reactions to be seen in the EVE subreddit but on the whole, enthusiasm seems in short supply; on the actual EVE Frontier subreddit, meanwhile, precisely one response has been posted in the six hours since the announcement of Þórarinsson’s hiring went up, and it's basically an observation that CCP's focus on EVE Frontier risks cannibalizing EVE Online—the game that actually makes money—with no guarantee of return.
Then again, this is not an unprecedented move from CCP Games: In 2007 the studio hired Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson as the lead economist for EVE Online, a role he held until 2014, and whose "foundational contributions to in-depth economic models and monetary policies will now continue with EVE Frontier and its ability to model advanced economic theories within an open environment." It worked for EVE Online, so maybe it's what EVE Frontier really needs, too.
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