The Inverted Cryptoeconomy: The Search for Endogenous Value in No Man’s Sky

Abstract

The Galactic Hub Project is a player response to a dehumanizing trend in video game culture. Players adopt blockchain technology to capture and retain the value of player labor, which suggests that players do not necessarily take issue with the reproducibility and aesthetics of procedurally generated content in No Man’ s Sky. This research identifies attempts to safeguard against alienation of play in virtual economies by using HubCoin as an inverted cryptoeconomy antithetical to cryptocurrency’s volatility and risk. While Hello Games managed to make resources free and infinite, players had to tokenize their time spent to create endogenous value and protect themselves from the procedurally generated environment where everything exists in abundance. Here, appropriation—or tokenization—of gameplay is less a player strategy of financialization of play and more about preserving the value of player labor. As a result, the HubCoin token is an inverted cryptocurrency with no value.