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Playchemy unveils blockchain-enabled Immortal Player Characters.
Ed Annunziata is known for creating memorable games, such as Ecco the Dolphin, Jurassic Park, and Mr. Bones. And now at startup Playchemy, he wants to create characters that live forever.

Annunziata is unveiling Immortal Player Characters, or IPCs, which are unique characters that are designed to take advantage of the blockchain and cryptocurrency to transfer across games and live on as long as people are willing to play with them. It is an unusual strategy but one that could build up into something big over time as more players and more games adopt the characters and the immortality that they promise, Annunziata said in an interview with GamesBeat. Annunziata has been thinking about the idea for a while, and he is now putting it into action.

Annunziata has released the first set of five characters. They live on the Ethereum cryptocurrency, and he thinks they are different from other ideas about games meeting the blockchain, which is a transparent and immutable ledger that is distributed across many computers on the Internet. Blockchain is used to provide secure transactions behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but it has other uses as well, as Annunziata has discovered. Over time, players and designers (some known as modders) could create their own IPCs.

“I want it to take a life of its own,” Annunziata said. “The users can make the characters or models. The game designers are the ones I want to get excited about this. The IPC standard will be open, and any game developers will be welcome to use those characters.”