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Welcome to the ’Blade Runner’ Crypto Version!
The pixels are large and chunky. A large number of pixels are present. When you visit most of the early crypto metaverses, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, you will see something similar. Avatars are straightforward. The graphics are a little rough. The ambitions are lofty, and the future may be bright, but the actual aesthetics are still in their "early days," to put it mildly.
Neon District is another option.
The Neon District is a hybrid of the crypto metaverse and the role-playing video game. It merely appears to be different. The visuals are stunning, but also hauntingly bleak – a cyberpunk dystopia filled with thieves, hackers, guilds, and assassins. It's pitch black outside. It's actually quite lovely. "What if we made a cyberpunk Final Fantasy 7?" Marguerite deCourcelle, aka "Coin Artist," the CEO and co-founder of Blockade Games, the company building Neon District that recently raised $5 million, had the original idea. (Among the investors are Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs and Animoca Brands.)
"The current version of the game is very rudimentary," says Blockade's chief technology officer and co-founder, Ben Heidorn. According to Heidorn, even with the raw prototype, an average of 33,000 gamers play it every day. Perhaps they're playing because it looks and feels like a game, a game with a real story and emotion. A game that simply... appears to be undeniably cool.
DeCourcelle deserves credit for this. DeCourcelle, a former gallery director, was among the first – if not the very first – artists to create cryptographic art puzzles, beginning with "Dark Wallet" in 2014, a digital painting that concealed a key to 3.4 bitcoin. She read "Snow Crash" and "Ready Player One" around that time.
"It dawned on me that bitcoin had real-world value, but could be used anywhere on the internet," says deCourcelle, who began to imagine a crypto-infused metaverse.
DeCourcelle experimented further. Her crypto puzzles were published in Andreas Antonopoulos' "Mastering Bitcoin," one of the first influential books on blockchain. In 2015, she unveiled "The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto," a collection of art puzzles that included one painting containing the key to 4.87 bitcoin, which was worth $1,200 at the time. (She frequently gave her bitcoin away.)
Crypto experts rushed to solve the puzzle. For a week, however, no one was able to solve the puzzle. After that, it will be a month. After that, it'll be a year. "The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto" became a legend in its own right, going unsolved for nearly three years. Meanwhile, bitcoin's value has skyrocketed. The jackpot was increased to $100,000. DeCourcelle began to consider the puzzle to be a "sword in the stone." Is there anyone who deserves it?
Finally, in January 2018, an unidentified programmer cracked the code and claimed the prise. DeCourcelle was thrust into the spotlight when mainstream media outlets such as Vice and the BBC covered the story. That burst of publicity would be life-altering. The publicity quickly drew the attention of "Pine," an anonymous benefactor who established the "Pineapple Fund," which donated $50 million to charitable causes.
By the time Pine contacted deCourcelle, the majority of the $50 million had already been distributed. "However, for his final giveaway, he wanted to give it to the community," deCourcelle says. Pine specifically requested that deCourcelle devise a series of challenges and puzzles that would award additional bitcoin. As a result, he funded the "Pineapple Arcade," which resulted in eight crypto-arcade games, including a crypto Pac-Man ("CoiinMan") and a crypto Space Invaders ("DAO Invaders"). "We did everything in a month and a half, and it was insane," says deCourcelle.
The idea for Blockade Games arose. Heidorn and Diego Rodriguez (now the lead artist), a longtime crypto-artist who worked at Bitcoin Magazine in 2012, were among the early members of the team. "I was doing Bitcoin art without realising it was Bitcoin art," says Rodriguez, who met Vitalik Buterin, a computer programmer and one of the Ethereum network's founders, briefly while writing for Bitcoin Magazine.
So, in early 2018, the core team of deCourcelle, Heidorn, and Rodriguez started brainstorming ideas for Neon District. The setting: "300 to 400 years in the future." The planet has been devastated by climate change. Some cities, such as "Unity," a haven for the well-heeled and privileged, have shielded themselves from the damage. You're not a member of Unity. The majority of Neon District's gameplay takes place outside of the protected area, where you explore the Mad Max-inspired wastelands.
Anyone who enjoys role-playing games will recognise the game's mechanics. To begin, choose a character class, such as Demons (combat specialists), Ghosts (assassins), or Jacks (hackers). After that, you form a team. You can earn or buy new skills, weapons, and "cards" to use in battle over time. You have the option of spending money to build your squad and upgrade your characters, but you are not required to do so.
DeCourcelle valued this. "Neon District is the only free-to-play blockchain game," she explains, adding that while some games provide a free starter kit, in order to compete, you must spend money. "The Neon District truly is free." You don't need anything to get started. You can complete the game and win without spending any money."
What is your aim? In the "Neon Pizza" mode, you can play one of two roles: either go on missions to deliver pizza or ambush the people delivering pizza. Heidorn admits that this mode of entry is "extremely simple." That will change in the near future. Heidorn proposes the following scenario: Assume you've been assigned the task of stealing money from a bank. After completing the steps to gain access to the vault, which include deactivating a robot guard, you learn that the money you're stealing will be donated to charity. "You must make a moral decision," says Heidorn. These decisions would then affect how the game would be played in the future.
In theory, your chain of moral decisions – which may alter your characters' non-fungible tokens – will have long-term consequences. If you betray a hacker, it may complicate a future mission. These are the kinds of engrossing choices, stories, and narrative arcs that kept me playing RPGs like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic for inexcusably long periods of time.
Then you incorporate NFTs. Then you include a neighbourhood. deCourcelle envisions a "creator economy" of gamers who customise their characters and build assets, form alliances, and eventually change the world and the story of Neon District itself. They're even considering 3D rendering for the game.
The game hasn't arrived... yet. However, it demonstrates intriguing potential, implying that there are numerous paths to the metaverse's future. The future could be an open blank canvas like Decentraland, a centralised monster like Meta, or a game with a highly specific tone and personality like Neon District. (Or maybe it's a combination of the three.)
What are deCourcelle's objectives? Her resolutions for the New Year are straightforward. 1) Get up at 6:30 a.m., 2) refrain from drinking "except if offered at dinner," 3) arrive home by midnight every night, and 4) "found a billion-dollar company."
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By Crypto PiratesThe pixels are large and chunky. A large number of pixels are present. When you visit most of the early crypto metaverses, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, you will see something similar. Avatars are straightforward. The graphics are a little rough. The ambitions are lofty, and the future may be bright, but the actual aesthetics are still in their "early days," to put it mildly.
Neon District is another option.
The Neon District is a hybrid of the crypto metaverse and the role-playing video game. It merely appears to be different. The visuals are stunning, but also hauntingly bleak – a cyberpunk dystopia filled with thieves, hackers, guilds, and assassins. It's pitch black outside. It's actually quite lovely. "What if we made a cyberpunk Final Fantasy 7?" Marguerite deCourcelle, aka "Coin Artist," the CEO and co-founder of Blockade Games, the company building Neon District that recently raised $5 million, had the original idea. (Among the investors are Roham Gharegozlou of Dapper Labs and Animoca Brands.)
"The current version of the game is very rudimentary," says Blockade's chief technology officer and co-founder, Ben Heidorn. According to Heidorn, even with the raw prototype, an average of 33,000 gamers play it every day. Perhaps they're playing because it looks and feels like a game, a game with a real story and emotion. A game that simply... appears to be undeniably cool.
DeCourcelle deserves credit for this. DeCourcelle, a former gallery director, was among the first – if not the very first – artists to create cryptographic art puzzles, beginning with "Dark Wallet" in 2014, a digital painting that concealed a key to 3.4 bitcoin. She read "Snow Crash" and "Ready Player One" around that time.
"It dawned on me that bitcoin had real-world value, but could be used anywhere on the internet," says deCourcelle, who began to imagine a crypto-infused metaverse.
DeCourcelle experimented further. Her crypto puzzles were published in Andreas Antonopoulos' "Mastering Bitcoin," one of the first influential books on blockchain. In 2015, she unveiled "The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto," a collection of art puzzles that included one painting containing the key to 4.87 bitcoin, which was worth $1,200 at the time. (She frequently gave her bitcoin away.)
Crypto experts rushed to solve the puzzle. For a week, however, no one was able to solve the puzzle. After that, it will be a month. After that, it'll be a year. "The Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto" became a legend in its own right, going unsolved for nearly three years. Meanwhile, bitcoin's value has skyrocketed. The jackpot was increased to $100,000. DeCourcelle began to consider the puzzle to be a "sword in the stone." Is there anyone who deserves it?
Finally, in January 2018, an unidentified programmer cracked the code and claimed the prise. DeCourcelle was thrust into the spotlight when mainstream media outlets such as Vice and the BBC covered the story. That burst of publicity would be life-altering. The publicity quickly drew the attention of "Pine," an anonymous benefactor who established the "Pineapple Fund," which donated $50 million to charitable causes.
By the time Pine contacted deCourcelle, the majority of the $50 million had already been distributed. "However, for his final giveaway, he wanted to give it to the community," deCourcelle says. Pine specifically requested that deCourcelle devise a series of challenges and puzzles that would award additional bitcoin. As a result, he funded the "Pineapple Arcade," which resulted in eight crypto-arcade games, including a crypto Pac-Man ("CoiinMan") and a crypto Space Invaders ("DAO Invaders"). "We did everything in a month and a half, and it was insane," says deCourcelle.
The idea for Blockade Games arose. Heidorn and Diego Rodriguez (now the lead artist), a longtime crypto-artist who worked at Bitcoin Magazine in 2012, were among the early members of the team. "I was doing Bitcoin art without realising it was Bitcoin art," says Rodriguez, who met Vitalik Buterin, a computer programmer and one of the Ethereum network's founders, briefly while writing for Bitcoin Magazine.
So, in early 2018, the core team of deCourcelle, Heidorn, and Rodriguez started brainstorming ideas for Neon District. The setting: "300 to 400 years in the future." The planet has been devastated by climate change. Some cities, such as "Unity," a haven for the well-heeled and privileged, have shielded themselves from the damage. You're not a member of Unity. The majority of Neon District's gameplay takes place outside of the protected area, where you explore the Mad Max-inspired wastelands.
Anyone who enjoys role-playing games will recognise the game's mechanics. To begin, choose a character class, such as Demons (combat specialists), Ghosts (assassins), or Jacks (hackers). After that, you form a team. You can earn or buy new skills, weapons, and "cards" to use in battle over time. You have the option of spending money to build your squad and upgrade your characters, but you are not required to do so.
DeCourcelle valued this. "Neon District is the only free-to-play blockchain game," she explains, adding that while some games provide a free starter kit, in order to compete, you must spend money. "The Neon District truly is free." You don't need anything to get started. You can complete the game and win without spending any money."
What is your aim? In the "Neon Pizza" mode, you can play one of two roles: either go on missions to deliver pizza or ambush the people delivering pizza. Heidorn admits that this mode of entry is "extremely simple." That will change in the near future. Heidorn proposes the following scenario: Assume you've been assigned the task of stealing money from a bank. After completing the steps to gain access to the vault, which include deactivating a robot guard, you learn that the money you're stealing will be donated to charity. "You must make a moral decision," says Heidorn. These decisions would then affect how the game would be played in the future.
In theory, your chain of moral decisions – which may alter your characters' non-fungible tokens – will have long-term consequences. If you betray a hacker, it may complicate a future mission. These are the kinds of engrossing choices, stories, and narrative arcs that kept me playing RPGs like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Knights of the Old Republic for inexcusably long periods of time.
Then you incorporate NFTs. Then you include a neighbourhood. deCourcelle envisions a "creator economy" of gamers who customise their characters and build assets, form alliances, and eventually change the world and the story of Neon District itself. They're even considering 3D rendering for the game.
The game hasn't arrived... yet. However, it demonstrates intriguing potential, implying that there are numerous paths to the metaverse's future. The future could be an open blank canvas like Decentraland, a centralised monster like Meta, or a game with a highly specific tone and personality like Neon District. (Or maybe it's a combination of the three.)
What are deCourcelle's objectives? Her resolutions for the New Year are straightforward. 1) Get up at 6:30 a.m., 2) refrain from drinking "except if offered at dinner," 3) arrive home by midnight every night, and 4) "found a billion-dollar company."
Support us!