The final frontier meets the technological bleeding edge.
In a move that makes all the sense, blockchain gamers will soon be able to buy (and presumably trade) tokenized versions of Star Trek starships on the Ethereum blockchain.
On Tuesday, blockchain gaming company Lucid Sight, makers of MLB Champions—the official blockchain game of Major League Baseball—announced a deal with CBS Interactive to bring the U.S.S. Enterprise, among other Star Trek ships, to its space-based, multiplayer title, Crypto Space Commander (CSC).
Star Trek items will become available for purchase on CSC for a “limited time” later this year, according to statement from Lucid Sight. COO Octavio Herrera said the company is unable to provide any more details at this time, but said the Lucid Sight team is “pumped” over this partnership and its potential.
The deal with CBS comes on the heels of the LA-based gaming startup’s fresh haul of VC cash, raising $6 million in a funding round led by Salem Partners, the Galaxy EOS VC Fund, and the Digital Currency Group in April.
Herrera said at the time that the funds would be used to advance Lucid Sight’s goal of bringing its blockchain games to traditional gaming platforms, such as consoles like PlayStation and XBOX, and mobile apps on Android and iOS.
Merging Star Trek with Crypto Space Commander can be viewed, then, as another step in broadening blockchain gaming’s mainstream appeal.
But why Star Trek, and not, say, Star Wars or some other space-themed, pop-culture classic?
It seems Lucid Sight’s CTO and co-founder, Fazri Zubair, is, in fact, an unabashed Trekkie.
“Star Trek inspired me at a young age to pursue a career in technology,” Zubair said in a statement. “It is such a privilege to get the chance to bring Star Trek into a new frontier with the first blockchain U.S.S. Enterprise.”
The Lucid Sight team describes CSC as an “open-universe” massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in which players “command starships to mine, harvest, and craft items that are secured by the Ethereum blockchain.” The game, however, has not yet been widely released, said Herrera. CSC remains in “closed alpha” on PC, and only 1,000 or so players are currently active in the game.
But that could soon change.
Herrera said that roughly 17,000 gamers have signed up for the “early access launch” of Crypto Space Commander on game-distribution platform Steam later this summer.
That means thousands of crypto-curious adventures could soon set forth to explore strange, new blockchain worlds. Yet so many questions remain unanswered: What will they find when they get there? Will the game live long and prosper? Could Trekkies really unlock blockchain’s killer app? And what does the Shatman think of all this?
William Shatner, much to our disappointment, declined to be interviewed for this story.