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My Hive Intro Post

Hello, I'm Matt DeBarth, although I usually go by the name I borrowed from Markus Korivak, one of my recurring characters (who I've been sneaking into nearly all of my stories for almost three decades now). He's a bit of an author insertion cameo, and usually only a minor character in the background somewhere. He's been a lot of things in a lot of settings, but most recently, he's an amateur cartographer that's related to a few of the major characters.

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In real life, I was born in Upstate New York, but moved slightly more north to Canada as a pre-teen. I've lived in two countries and two timezones, but still technically have lived in the same river valley I was born in the whole time.

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I'm a nerdy family man that loves sci-fi, naval history, and Oxford Commas.

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In addition to being an avid fan of science fiction, I'm also a writer with a lot of more-or-less unfinished projects over the years. But more recently, I've been getting more serious about actually polishing and publishing my ideas for a change. I wrote (and finished) a pretty good short story that's basically an elaborate retelling of the apocryphal Battleship and the Lighthouse joke.

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Two years ago, I followed a Reddit ad back to an upcoming Web3 game, and despite not having any interest or experience with blockchain at the time, the pitch for the game hooked me and I got into crypto specifically to be able to play it. I've explored a lot since then, because it turns out that crypto is endlessly fascinating. I recently discovered Hive, and was encouraged to give it a try by some of my fellow community members on Discord.

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That crypto game that first hooked me is Influence, a MMO economic space strategy game set in the asteroid belt of the (fictional) Adalia System and built entirely onchain on Starknet. When I first showed up on the Discord, I started writing what was basically fan fiction, filling in the broad-strokes story with my characters and plot lines. I named three of the five uninhabitable planets in the Adalia System.

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But the devs took notice of my work, and liked it. They contracted me to write the story for the official Crew Assignments feature. My planet names were used in the next trailer as the canon names. I got a Writer credit on the Team page.

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Having left my mark on the Adalia System, I've continued to build out the story with several other community members. Influence is, in addition to the game part and the technical challenge part, also one of the greatest experiments in collaborative storytelling (at least in my opinion).

The devs have clearly established a setting and a backstory and a tone for the game, but are mostly focussed on the technical challenges, the UI/UX design, and the community outreach and partnerships. They have marked out this huge blank canvas, but only painted in a few of the corners of it.

The rest of the canvas is left for the community to fill in, with the devs only giving the nod of canon approval or small bits of feedback on little details. If you are as intrigued by this as I am, follow me or come join the Influence community.

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