"Project Awakening" (opens in new tab), announced yesterday by CCP Games, makers of EVE Online, is a new game set in the EVE universe that threatens to "combine CCP's 25 years of game design experience with the latest blockchain technology" It is. While the reaction from various crypto experts and those with ".eth" in their Twitter usernames was predictably bullish, the bulk of the EVE Online community reacted with, well, contempt. Pure, unbridled contempt.

The EVE Online sub-Reddit (opens in new tab) is currently a wasteland of memes, rants, and anger about the project. Much of the anger is centered around the concept of blockchain: players titled "Until CCP stops dealing with crypto, the shitposting will continue (opens in new tab)" and "EVE Online scams take the next step with blockchain (opens in new tab)." flooded the community with posts. Others cynically recalled CCP's rejection of NFT as "Not For Tranquility (opens in new tab)" (Tranquility being the name of EVE Online's lone game server).

Meanwhile, the reaction to CCP's tweet announcing the project was (opens in new tab) "Speaking for the entire Web3 space: can't wait!" A Twitter user named Kanonenfutter (opens in new tab) summarized the reaction as "people who have never played an hour of EVE Online and think this is a W. is," summarizing it as, "If the blockchain technology is not completely invisible to the average player," he predicts that Project Awakening will fail, and probably CCP as a whole as well.

But players also resent CCP's long history of pursuing flashy business ventures at the expense of EVE Online's development, especially its current CEO, Hilmar Pétursson. Many memes ridicule CCP's long library of cancelled and shuttered games like World of Darkness Online and Dust 514 (opens in new tab), and instead of focusing on solving EVE Online's problems, repeatedly the fashionable golden goose accusing Petursson of chasing after them.

Many feel that the $40 million raised by CCP for Project Awakening would be better spent tuning EVE. User mtgsyko82 (opens in new tab) stated, "It's funny that they don't put their money into something they earned their money on."

We asked CCP to comment on the EVE community's reaction to Project Awakening.

The EVE forums themselves are a bit more muted, but every thread posted so far about the new game has been decidedly negative in tone. One thread titled "Blockchain Folly (open in new tab)" was directed directly at Pétursson and stated, "Despite everyone in the world realizing that anything unnecessarily tied to the blockchain is at best almost universally untrustworthy, your This obsession of yours continues," he wrote, adding, "I hope EVE is not further destroyed by this latest mistake of yours."

Therefore, unless CCP succeeds in putting out a truly mind-blowing trailer that will feed us humble pie about this "blockchain" down the road, I do not expect many EVE players to migrate to Project Awakening. Still, I don't think the failure (or success) of this game will make EVE as a whole sink or swim. On the other hand, anything that diminishes the confidence and enthusiasm of EVE fans could be fatal in the long run.