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To complete the full vision of the Star Atlas universe and game, fundraising in the form of asset sales will take place in several phases based on development milestones. For those of you who don’t know, asset sales can be anything from ships, mining structures, the ability to claim land, collectibles and more. They’ll sell these assets before the game is actually playable, and you can buy and sell them on the marketplace to make money and upgrade ships in preparation. These assets will be in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens.
The great part about building this game on the blockchain is that all assets like ships and structures are also tied to the blockchain. Now, while NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have put a bad taste in some people’s mouths, they really are incredible when they are used for more than just selling auto-generated cartoons of kittens and apes. Your ship can itself be owned by you on the blockchain for everyone to see. When you want to sell it, the blockchain acts as an untrickable middleman for the transaction, and that transaction is visible on the blockchain for everyone to see. We can go much further into the benefits of tying the assets you own to the blockchain, but trust me, it’s much better for a long term career in the Star Atlas Metaverse.
Now that we’ve covered what assets are, let’s dive into Star Atlas’s fundraising plan. I’m recording this before they have launched their full game, but even if you are listening afterward, this can be insightful.
Phase 1 is called the Galactic Asset Offering, or GAO, and while game assets sold via the Star Atlas Marketplace will not be playable until Phase 2, open trading with other players and traders will be immediately available.
Now before you give up and say, well I’ll never be able to afford that, just wait. This is why this game is so amazing. Through the ownership and trading of your assets as NFTs and through the banding of guilds and factions in the game, your team will absolutely be able to afford these. Just start small and do what you can. You can hear more about guilds (or teams) you can join in later episodes.
Phase 2 of this fundraising effort will be in what they call a minigame. Essentially, you are able to purchase assets as NFT’s and trade them on the marketplace for ATLAS tokens or USDC. We’ll touch on ATLAS tokens later.
This marketplace/minigame is their minimum viable product version of Star Atlas. You aren’t limited to just trading though. It’s also been stated that you’ll be able to send your ships on missions to collect rewards through the browser experience. I’m assuming this will be similar to strike team missions in Mass Effect Andromeda, but not much info has been revealed.
Then, once Phase 2 is fully released, all efforts will go towards finish developing the in game experience on Unreal Engine 5.
From there, Phase 3 will present the first milestone of the actual game version: a functional Shipyard Module. This mode allows players and collectors to view their final, in-game assets but is limited to the shipyard of their chosen faction’s central space station. These assets will include crew, components and ships
Then Phase 4 will be the final presale before the full beta goes live.
They also describe a Phase 5, which I find interesting. They say in Phase 5 that “alll production ready assets are no longer purchasable upon full launch of the live version of Star Atlas. This does not include the remaining phase 3 beta sale assets” So I’m thinking when the game launches, you’ll have to build assets from scratch. This seams to make it more important to start buying early.