‘Witcher’ Animator Launches DRKVRS Game, NFTs To Bridge Cyberpunk With Horror

Marcin Kobylecki, who previously worked on video games “The Witcher” and “Cyberpunk 2077,” wants to bring a darker fantasy edge to the still-nascent metaverse with a new project: DRKVRS.

Kobylecki leads the creative development of DRKVRS in collaboration with Aleph Zero. Aleph Zero is a proof-of-stake blockchain launched in November 2021, with the AZERO native token powering the network.

Kobylecki also served as executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated animated short “The Cathedral”, directed by Tomasz Bagiński. He tells Decrypt that his background in computer animation and special effects on games such as “The Witcher” is helping to drive the development of DRKVRS.

“‘The Witcher’ is a good example because ‘The Witcher’ is a stylized game,” Kobyleck said Decrypt. “So our universe, DRKVRS, we created a stylized one [game]and we tried to find a new look for this kind of project.”

The metaverse is a popular buzzword used to describe what will potentially be the next iteration of the internet and gaming. Crypto enthusiasts see money-making games like Axie Infinity as a critical component of what the metaverse can be. But players outside of crypto haven’t shown much interest in these games.

Some players have expressed outright hostility to the addition of digital assets, such as in the case of Team17, which had plans to release Ethereum NFTs based on the “Worms” video game franchise in February, but faced almost immediate backlash from fans who saw them as at best a money grab, at worst a Ponzi scheme.

Play-to-earn games are video games where the player can receive real-world rewards through earning cryptocurrencies or NFTs. NFTs are cryptographically unique tokens that prove ownership of content. Blockchain games allow users to take ownership of in-game items, such as skins, clothing, or virtual real estate.

DRKVRS aims to change the perception of metaverse games as purely play-for-profit schemes. The developers say the goal is to produce a game developed by gaming industry professionals first, merging their expertise with blockchain technology.

“With Marcin and the team’s background, we are very excited to see what comes of it,” says Aleph Zero co-founder Antoni Zolciak. “The whole idea behind DRKVRS is to make it the way it sounds, grim and dark.”

Collaborators include the popular Polish fantasy, science fiction and horror authors Łukasz Orbitowski and Jacek Dukaj.

As Zolciak explains, two tokens will be used for DRKVRS: a tradable token, SPECK, and a second called God’s Blood that will be used in-game, with Aleph Zero providing the underlying infrastructure for token transfers, voting and NFT issuance.

Plans for DRKVRS include a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to oversee governance and vote on game development.

A decentralized autonomous organization, better known as a DAO, is an organizational structure in which control is dispersed rather than hierarchical. DAOs use smart contracts on a blockchain, with participants using governance tokens to vote on proposed actions.

“We seek to empower the community to come up with their own ideas and provide an opportunity to reward the independent creators,” Zolciak said.

DRKVRS takes players to the bowels of an ancient cosmic beast called Leviathan. Players will explore the city of Babalon (named after the Thelemic goddess). This “transhumanist dystopia” serves as the central hub for players to interact with each other, advance the story, and make complex moral choices.

Zolciak says the team often references the work of Tomasz Bagiński, a Polish illustrator who also created cinema for “The Witcher” and “Cyberpunk 2077.”

“It’s basically the same style, and the guys operate in this kind of area where they can pull the beauty out of the darkness, so to speak,” he said.

But Kobyleck says players shouldn’t expect a straight fantasy or cyberpunk game, but a mix of both. “It won’t be ‘The Witcher,'” he says. “It will be different than ‘Cyberpunk’ with a mix of Guillermo Del Toro and his creatures.”

As Kobyleck explains, DRKVRS is still in the initial stages of development, and the medium in which the game will appear has yet to be determined. “We don’t know if it will be a stand-alone application or if it will be a website application. So we have to figure that out,” he said.