Late last year, Alien Worlds made headlines by announcing a collaboration with acclaimed sci-fi author Kevin J. Anderson. The outcome of this meeting of minds? A vision for tokenized storytelling, where the game’s community members would be able to participate in narrative creation and world building.
With Anderson having created a vivid lore foundation featuring new alien technologies, races and cultures, the goal was to empower Alien Worlds’ players to carry the torch forward, with all contributions governed by on-chain mechanisms. Announcing the collaboration, Kevin Rose, chief marketing officer of Alien Worlds’ lead contributor Dacoco, predicted that “the next great franchise will be built by a community, not a corporation.”
Could the next great franchise in question be Alien Worlds? It’s fair to say the starter gun has already been fired: over 10 stories have been voted into canon and two installments of a Galactic Hubs-funded comic (Starblind) that builds on the foundational lore have been released.
Revolutionizing Sci-Fi Storytelling
Decentralized content development is a novel idea that has gained traction due to growing apathy about franchise mismanagement by major Hollywood studios, coupled with rising awareness and adoption of web3 technologies such as NFTs and DAOs.
The notion that the next major franchise could be built by a community rather than a corporate entity like Disney is a radical departure from the Hollywood model. But blockchain and AI hold the key for distributing the creative process. The Lynx Discord bot, an AI-driven ‘Large Lore Model’, is a key component of this vision.
The idea of an LLM exclusively trained on mythology that has been voted on and approved by the community is certainly novel. This lore can take many forms: characters, stories, games, artwork, animated series, comics, spinoffs, and more. The tokenized storytelling model was pioneered to expand and scale the lore written by a master storyteller, introducing a level of interactivity and community involvement that simply wasn’t possible before.
In a way, Alien Worlds is the perfect vehicle for such a collaborative and creative initiative: its battle-tested DAOs already facilitate weekly elections, which determine the allocation of Planetary treasury budgets. Interestingly, Custodians of Planetary Syndicates were involved in bringing tokenized storytelling to life, as they voted to approve the initial proposal for the foundation of Tokenized Lore.
It is now the responsibility of the community to take the reins and maintain/update Alien Worlds’ canon. Aside from Syndicates, support will come from the Galactic Hubs Grant Program, which already bootstraps promising initiatives and projects. Case in point: the Scribe Community Grant, special funding for a community member tasked with compiling lore into Alien Worlds’ Fandom repository.
What Does Tokenized Storytelling Actually Mean?
The Alien Worlds Metaverse features a great many NFTs as well as a fungible token, Trilium. So where does Tokenized Lore fit into the equation?
In essence, players can utilize their Trilium to vet creative contributions and decide which elements are canonized. As such, players can effectively orchestrate the overall narrative. It’s akin to Star Wars fans wielding a galactic currency to influence the franchise they love.
Clearly, this model could be a harbinger of the future – and not just for sci-fi franchises either, but for all narrative-driven projects. The success of Alien Worlds’ tokenized storytelling could set a precedent for other franchises, where narrative creation and decision-making are concentrated into the hands of the community rather than a select few tastemakers. The implications of a decentralized, community-driven approach to storytelling are profound.
We are already seeing this fan-driven model being adopted elsewhere: Incention’s new collaboration platform uses AI and blockchain tech to “transform intellectual property into programmable digital assets, empowering IP holders to tokenize, protect, share, and monetize their ideas in the age of AI.” Like Alien Worlds, it aims to create a sci-fi franchise with the aid of The Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer.
Can a community be relied upon to write good stories and create compelling art? Well, that’s the beauty of on-chain voting: only the most impactful contributions will become part of the game’s mythology. Alien Worlds’ existing economic model will also incentivize higher-quality contributions and greater community involvement, leading to richer and more diverse narratives breaking through.
The prospect of decentralized content creation and participatory narrative creation is very real. And the appeal of a model that transforms passive consumers into active creators and custodians of the worlds they cherish cannot be understated.
In light of periodic Hollywood writers’ strikes, the vision of a community-owned and -driven franchise represents a bold and exciting new experiment. One that Web2 franchise-builders will be watching with great curiosity.