Film director Roland Emmerich is creating a shared universe of TV, gaming and Web3 tomfoolery

Film director Roland Emmerich is powered by everyone’s favorite punching bags, NFTs. The director of Independence Day, Stargate just announced Space Nation Online, a forthcoming RPG that's going to be part of a larger shared universe encompassing animated shorts, a live-action TV show and plenty of Web3 nonsense.

To that end, there’s a bile-inducing page surrounding the “Web3 Space Opera MMO”, if you want to throw away your money on a procedurally-generated picture of a starship or whatever. The developers say the NFT-based framework is “designed for the purpose of solving multiple issues and enhancing the potential of Web3 games by means of our observation, investigation and research.” Okay. 

Now on to the good news. Despite the heavy emphasis on non-fungible tokens, there’s some decent talent behind the scenes here, beyond Emmerich. Jerome Wu, who worked on World of Warcraft, is on board, as is Tony Tang from Warframe. The shared-universe title has received more than $50 million in financial backing, with more funding rounds to come, There's even a first-look video if you want to see how development is coming along.

Space Nation Online, which puts players on an “epic journey to unravel the mysteries of the Telikos Cluster”, drops an alpha build later this summer, with a full release planned for 2024. Assuming some level of success, animated shorts, TV shows and spinoff games come after that.