Blockchain

A Multiplayer Online Survival Game Powered by Blockchain: Interview with Stephen Arnold, the CEO of Decimated.

Decimated gives you an amazing, fun-filled survival game to enjoy and a platform to make money through cryptocurrencies. Powered by blockchain technology and with one of the best graphics designs ever, the CEO Stephen Arnold will be telling us more about Decimated in this interview.

1) Please tell us your name and about yourself?

My name is Stephen Arnold – I’m the CEO and creative director of Fracture Labs; a videogame production studio that is bringing blockchain to the online multiplayer game industry.

During my career, I’ve arranged art, animation and cinematics for many hugely successful titles including The Division (Ubisoft Massive), Evolve (2K Games), Star Citizen (Cloud Imperium Games), Batman: Arkham Origins (Warner Bros Montreal), Paladins (Hi Rez Studios), Injustice 2 (Netherrealm Studios) and more. I started Fracture Labs in 2018, with the intention of running an ICO from Malta and being regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA).

2) What is Decimated?

Decimated is a post-apocalyptic multiplayer online survival game with a blockchain based economy. We use blockchain to manage the flow of items and tokens in the game world, to mitigate hacking, enable digital scarcity and allow peer-to-peer trading between players. The game itself is a huge open world where players can choose to play a human survivor or a cyborg cop, explore the entire game world freely, and compete or cooperate with other players.


Cinematic teaser trailer of Decimated

All players will begin as human citizens, and can be whitelisted to play a cyborg cop if they have been playing by the rules of the game, and pass their training. There will be ranks to be promoted to as a cop, but breaking the law or not performing duties will result in demotion, and potentially being blacklisted temporarily or permanently from playing on the cop side.

Missions will spawn around the map, attracting players from all directions, and the last man (or last clan) standing will get the loot, or, players can collect resources and transport them to a drop off point for a token reward.

Players will have to find food, water and in some cases, oxygen to survive. Food and water can be found around the environment and in shops and dispenser machines.

If players are injured, they will have to treat their wounds or risk bleeding to death. Players can treat each other and help recover from injury, however, they can become addicted to medication and their performance and judgment will be affected by their addictions.

Robbing other gamers, banks and shops will be illegal in green zones but fair game in the red zones and the vast wasteland. Only the items and tokens that players are holding can be robbed – contents of wallets are safe, and we will have in-game ATM’s where players can bank and withdraw their crypto. If players feel that they have been illegally robbed, they can call the cops or bounty hunters (played by other gamers) to catch thieves and have them fined, imprisoned or sent to a battle royale style deathmatch arena,  so certain gamers can collect bounties on wanted criminals and bring them to justice. It’s a sci fi wild west scenario where there are safe pockets of law and order, and dangerous areas not for the faint hearted.

If you die in the game, you will respawn with limited items. There will be safes and safehouses where players can store items and respawn from custom locations, and they will also be able to build and fortify their own bases. 

In-game screenshot from the prototype

3) How does the Decimated ecosystem work and what is the technology behind the project?

In-game, players can choose to perform a number of missions in the game which range from low risk low reward tasks such as shipping cargo or salvaging technology for trade, to high risk high reward tasks such as heists and shipping hot cargo. There’s also the option to play as a cyborg cop, policing the entire area and trying to maintain order in a world of chaos. This creates a dynamic of good cop/bad cop vs good citizen/rogue citizen.

We are using a fork of Ethereum that is specifically designed for online multiplayer games, which allows us to keep track of the entire game economy, have a fixed number of tokens and items in existence, have an in-game exchange for trading items and tokens, a secure wallet accessible via the game or smartphone, and most importantly, enable player to earn cryptocurrency by playing our game. 

4) Decimated has a blockchain based economy and true digital scarcity, could you tell us more about your product and the major services you provide?

Unlike other games which are based on full upfront payment of the game, payment for downloadable content (DLC), or in-game transactions with no return, we want to create a free-to-play game with in-game microtransactions, and a play-to-earn business model. 

Gamers can invest in themselves by spending a small amount of money to gear up for a mission, buy fuel or protection, embark on the mission and earn cryptocurrency in-game by doing missions and trading, that they can spend in-game to upgrade their character, vehicle or base further, or, trade what they have acquired with another player who wants to buy it from them.

The core pillars of gameplay are exploration, survival and doing missions. To support the core game, we are implementing a bulletin board of missions that players can choose to do for a token reward, and a digital marketplace where players can sell virtual items, whether they be low value commodities such as metals, plastics or salvaged technology, to high value commodities such as ships, buildings and rare items.

Blockchain allows for rare, one-of-a-kind collectables, which accrue value based on their supply and demand, and we expect the digital collectables market to grow in the future. Imagine if there was only one digital version of a recogniseable spaceship – people could part own it through tokenization, or it could have one owner. We believe that digital collectors items will have real-world value just like real-world items such as art and historical artefacts. 


Concept art of a cyborg cop car  in the Decimated world.

 5) If the gaming industry is ready for the cryptocurrency market, what is the market size demand for crypto tokens like the DIO token in the Gaming market?

The Total Accessible Market for the type of games that we create is more than 30 million gamers. We are not necessarily targeting people who are interested in cryptocurrency – we are using blockchain and cryptocurrency as a more secure method of managing in-game currency, and the transfer of ownership of virtual items. The end user will not be aware that blockchain is being used, but will certainly notice the difference when they realise that the tokens and items that they have acquired in-game have a real world value. We want to give gamers the ability to play-to-earn, and by investing in themselves by way of in-game microtransactions to gear up, prepare for missions and customize their abilities, they can potentially complete missions and survive tasks for a token reward. These tokens can then be reinvested into the game or exchanged with other players for real money. 

6) Tell us more about the DIO token, how it works and the benefits for investors?

The DIO token is an Ethereum based ERC20 token, which is compatible with our in-game blockchain. It is used as a means of exchange in the game, and can be earned by salvaging the environment and selling commodities, completing skill based missions, or offering services to other players.

Players will be able to spend the DIO tokens on vehicles, weapons, armour, upgrades, services and customizations, and trade their in-game earnings with others who are interested in purchasing them.

In terms of the benefit for investors, we are tapping into a huge market of more than 30 million gamers who are fans of the survival game genre, plus Youtubers and Twitch streamers with millions of subscribers, who are involved in Esports and competitive gaming. We want to create a game that is fun to play and fun to watch, and we believe that the play-to-earn business model has huge potential for growth. 

We have a target of 1 million gamers in our first year, who we estimate around 50% of whom will spend an average of $50 per person per year. We hope to double the number of users in year two as we will be constantly developing, improving and marketing the game to this audience.

Our ICO is split into 3 stages, the pre-sale (40% discount) the private sale (20% discount) and the public sale (€0.05 per token). We have exactly 1 billion tokens in existence, and believe that early investors will be able to trade their tokens to the huge audience that we will acquire as the game in announced. We are also considering doing an tokenized equity STO with a separate token, and keeping the DIO token as a pure utility token. Investors will be able to choose if they prefer to purchase the utility token, the security token, or a combination of both. 

We have had our ICO evaluated, which includes a forecast of the potential future token value based on supply and demand. The full report can be read at https://medium.com/@fracturelabs/decimated-evaluation-report-d7f124f70734 

Concept art of a marketplace in the Decimated world. 

7) On what stage of development is the Decimated platform, what is next on your roadmap?

We have a working prototype and the next stage is to continue with the token sale, develop the product further by setting up the in-game marketplace and smartphone wallet so players can trade even when they are not playing. We also have a strategic marketing plan that is focused more on the videogame industry than the blockchain industry, though we are looking at both of these markets and particularly the audience in the middle that are interested in both. We are also planning a kickstarter campaign and an auction of digitally scare collectible items that can be used in-game, or customized and traded with others.

8) Could you tell us about your team?

The team are veteran game developers and cryptography experts. We have Ken Thain who has worked on Mass Effect, Star Wars The Old Republic, Dragon Age; Joe Garth who has worked on Warface, Ryse: Son of Rome, Robinson; Jason Chee a talented animator from movies such as Bladerunner 2049, War of the Planet of the Apes, Pacific Rim. Samuel Visscher, who developed the skycoin digital wallets; Devin Seto (Zynga, Electronic Arts, Lucasarts) and many more. Our team is growing, and we are all very well connected with some of the most talented people in the industry.

The team have worked on many successful videogames.

9) How Safe is Decimated, would you like to talk about your legal and security measures?

We are based in Malta and will be regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). We are taking all the necessary legal steps to launch an ICO, to build confidence with investors and the community at large.

The DIO token is considered a utility token as it’s the mean of exchange in the DECIMATED world, but if we do an STO and get the token listed on public exchanges, we will need to register it as a Virtual Financial Asset, and obtain the appropriate license to do so.

We also have identity checks in place, which are both smartphone and browser based, to ensure that our token buyers are legitimate people, and to ensure that we adhere to KYC/AML law.

Regarding the security of the blockchain technology, we have:

○ Security/Networking

○ Cloud DDOS prevention

○ SSLv3 session encryption

○ Secure password policy

○ 2FA requirement

○ ECDSA API Key Pair Authentication

○ Extensive user security preferences for Withdrawals / Access

○ Advanced internal wallet structure

○ Next-Gen cold storage implementation

○ Detailed internal Admin security policy 

Original concept art for Decimated by Gary Sanchez.

10) Do you have more information for our readers?

The game should be available in early access in late 2019, so people will be able to try it out long before the official release date. We are giving away free DIO tokens to people in our Discord community, and we have a level system there so the most active members get the rewards for being part of our community. We are also running creative competitions such as graffiti art to be used in the game, and will give token rewards to the winners! 

Head over to https://www.decimated.net/ for more details. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/n9NNpHV

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DecimatedOfficial/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/decimated_game

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/decimated_game

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fracture-labs-games/

Telegram ANN: https://t.me/decimated_game

Telegram Community: https://t.me/decimatedofficial

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/decimated_game/

Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4917883.0;all.

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