ICO Analysis: Parsec FrontiersPublished on May 29, 2018
By Joshua Larson
TeamThe project is undertaken by renowned game development Artplant studio, based in Norway and Russia. The team of 15+ people has 5-25 years of game development experience and extensive experience with MMOs and virtual worlds.
The project has six advisers, including three listed below.
Christian Lassem: Creator of Planetarion, later followed by AD2460. They are both reference games that online space games have been inspired by, and they still have an active community.
John Kavanagh: An accomplished industry executive with a video game career of nearly 35 years. He has also been involved in designing, developing and licensing games and technology to Sega, Nintendo, Apple, Atari, Commodore and Broderbund. He’s since worked at Eidos, Crystal Dynamics and Paramount Pictures.
Shaban Shaame: Founded EverdreamSoft, a Swiss-based game company, in 2010. He pioneered in-game blockchain integration with Spells of Genesis and BitCrystals economy, giving players true ownership of their digital game assets.
When it comes to the dev team, many are from Artplant.
VerdictOn the surface level, this seems like an easy pass. But after digging into it, it seems more like a good gamble. It’s definitely been overlooked by investors. The team is legit and are trying to produce quality.
Blockchain-based MMOs will have a giant place in the future gaming industry. Putting digital assets on the chain so that they can be securely traded like tokens is game-changing.
Parsec is partnered with BitSpace, an up and coming block producer candidate and new project incubator for EOS blockchain. BitSpace was campaigning hard to bring Parsec Fronteir to EOS. However, they decided to go with NEO. According to Telegram, NEO hasn’t announced Parsec to their community yet. NEO is a huge and passionate community. This game could get many new players once they start marketing.
Risks More often than not, ambitious MMORPG projects such as Parsec underestimate and over-scope what it will take to produce, and the game never gets released. -1.5
The original token sale was only supposed to last 2 weeks in May. However, they were nowhere near hitting the cap, so they extended it until the end of June. As of May 25, they have raised 850 ETH. Their soft cap is 2,500 ETH and the hard cap is over 10,000 ETH. -3
Scalability is always an issue. They will build on the NEO blockchain, which is extremely risky at this point. Here’s the quote given in their whitepaper about how they will handle this issue:
“The modular approach also has the benefit of scaling well with the money raised to fund the project. We see many projects requiring a huge amount of money just for an initial release, not to mention the cost it takes to run and expand an MMORPG. Parsec however is a manageable project to get out the door, but scales infinitely upwards as time passes and funding is secured. Over time, we believe Parsec will be one of the richest MMO experiences on the market, and a true next generation of blockchain gaming.” -2
Marketing seems lacking. If they can’t sell out their soft cap, what makes them think they will be able to introduce this game to the masses? -2
Growth Potential
A large supply coins, if popular, have typically done extremely well in terms of ROI for ICO contributors. +1
Partnerships. As mentioned above, Parsec is partnered with BitSpace. Axie is a fantasy creature collecting game. Shufti Pro is a screen identity verification tool. And EverdreamSoft is a Swiss-based mobile game and app developer, created Spells of Genesis. +2
Space-based MMO Eve Online does not publish subscription numbers, but reportedly has about 500,000 monthly subscribers. Star Citizen is on track to raise close to $200 million from over 2 million prospective players. The team at Parsec wrote a blog breaking down what could happen to the token value if this game gets adopted. +3
The team has had success in the past with games such as Battlestar Gallactica Online, which has seen over 20 million users.+4
The rare in-game assets will be sold on exchanges such as WAX. If this game goes mainstream, some of these ships that can be bid on today for 1 or 2 ETH, could be worth thousands of dollars in the future. Players are bidding on ships as we speak here .+2
Here’s a 5 minute demo showing what they have so far:+2
DispositionThis is a possible sleeper that could either pay off huge or crash and burn. Blockchain-based MMOs will have a giant place in the future gaming industry. Putting in-game digital assets on the chain so that they can be securely traded like tokens is game-changing. 5.5/10
Proof:
https://hacked.com/ico-analysis-parsec-frontiers/
