Philosophy
With EVE Frontier, we aim to push the boundaries of what a virtual world can aspire to be. Building on the worlds that have come before us, most notably EVE Online, we have identified valuable lessons
The design of EVE Online rests upon a single defining concept:
This principle is how the world of EVE Online has sustained itself over decades, and will continue to for decades to come. The concept permeates the entire material economy of EVE Online: where nothing ventured results in nothing gained.
EVE Frontier builds on this concept and extends it to player agency, posing two questions:
Could you create a virtual world that was true only to itself?
What truth would that virtual world have for its inhabitants?
EVE Frontier is a simulation of a universe where the rules - its digital physics - are fixed and immutable, beyond even the control of its developers. The incorporation of fundamental laws of energy brings the world closer to thermodynamic accuracy, enhancing its realism and fortifying the underlying foundations. On these foundations, inhabitants of the Frontier are free to create novel emergent experiences, particularly through the groundbreaking mechanic of Smart Assemblies. As both future development and player participation shape its evolution, the world will continue to grow and transform in ways currently unimaginable.
We have long recognized that virtual worlds, though shaped as much by their players as by their developers, rarely see these contributions formally acknowledged. Despite the pivotal role players play in building these worlds, their efforts often remain unrecognized in any explicit or meaningful way. Through strict End User License Agreements, developers and operators confer very limited rights to what players can create and have created. Player-driven creativity is in most cases owned by the proprietors of such worlds, or in others banned or removed entirely, wiped from record. In other cases many worlds are retrofitted to support these efforts: player-built creations are derived from APIs added after the fact, rather than from the world’s foundational design.
In short, despite decades of creativity and effort being poured into virtual worlds by players, the ability of developers and operators to grant digital property rights and access to their players is a complicated cultural, technical and legal undertaking. EVE Frontier will change this by building the world on a very different premise.
Combining its permanence with open access, EVE Frontier can survive eternally: a self-sustaining and persistent digital reality, as true to players and their actions as our own physical world is to our own. A sovereign virtual world, that will become self-governing and operating. You, the community will hold the power in perpetuity for a world designed to last forever.
EVE Frontier is thus built upon a legal and technical premise which affords a pragmatic path forward for an autonomous virtual world, where players have rightful access and ownership over their creative efforts:
When the ontology of a virtual world is held by a distributed and consensus-based ledger, granting digital property rights to participants can become real
A virtual world true only to itself through digital physics
By enabling players to program within an open environment and by open-sourcing our development platform, we empower the inhabitants of EVE Frontier with the tools and freedom to shape and rebuild the world according to their own vision. This moddable layer rests upon the world's digital physics and spans the entire universe, continuously simulated and persisted. This openness not only empowers players but formally recognizes them as active co-creators of EVE Frontier, a role supported by the game's technological infrastructure, business model, and economic design.
The whitepaper details this vision for EVE Frontier, a dynamic, emergent, and community-driven world where players hold the power, and in which their actions have lasting consequences. The following sections outline its foundational components, starting with the core beliefs that drive its development and the design principles which shape it.
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