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Yesterday I listed the 10 blockchain games I’m personally most interested in, so today we’re going to look at some of the hottest (or most hyped) blockchain games due out in some form in 2022.
Note: the two lists are not mutually exclusive but I generally think these games have received undue levels of enthusiasm, notably in terms of their investment potential. Maybe that’s not the developer’s fault, but them’s the rules in blockchainland.
And this isn’t to say that these games aren’t interesting. I already own assets in some of them and no doubt will be attempting to play them all.
However, I think their main significance during 2022 is whether they can justify the attention that they’ve generated (or attracted) by actually releasing anything playable, or whether this will prove to be a cohort that ultimately just reflects the market’s current level of over-exuberance.
After all, it’s easy to write a lite paper and get your token listed.
One of the first games to capitalize on Solana’s incredible rise in the second half of 2021, Aurory generated $100 million from the public sale of its $AURY token, which currently gives the project a market cap of $130 million.
Trading for its avatar NFTs — which reflect its standout art style — remains strong too; the floor price is currently around $3,400.
Whether the 30+ team can build out their vision of an open Pokemon-style world with PVE and PVP elements, plus all the usual long term goals of land, DAO etc remains less clear, however.
At least some of the leads have experience in the traditional game space in companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Eidos and Warners.
I included Big Time on my most anticipated list because I think its team probably has the best mix of blockchain and gaming experience, but I still have concerns about how it’s going to handle the levels of expectation being generated.
In that regard, I consider Big Time to be the most high profile example in 2022 of whether a hyped blockchain game can launch well; fulfilling both its product vision as and its community’s vision for enjoyment and financial gain.
In that context, I think it’s interesting that it doesn’t use the term ‘play-to-earn’, instead focusing on cosmetic NFTs and ‘multiplayer action with friends’. That’s a good sign.
Labelling itself “the ultimate sandbox MMORPG, rich in both PVP and PVE experiences”, the Ember Sword project has been live in some form since 2019 but really hit the headlines in 2021 when its novel ‘name your price’ land NFT sale process accumulated 35,000 responses pledging $203 million.
The project, in development at Danish start up Bright Star, still has a very long way to go, however. It hopes to enable “alpha testing of its engine” in Q1 with “more gameplay focused alphas” later in 2022.
Personally I would be surprised to see any public gameplay testing before 2023. It’s going to be a long wait.
Another bubble expanded by Solana’s rise, Genopets labels itself as “the world’s first move-to-earn NFT game”, eventually planning to combine elements of Tamagotchi and Pokemon-style creature nurturing and battling, with real-world fitness hardware integration.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition, of course, but given the team has no game development experience, there are some obvious concerns.
That stated, while Genopets may never fulfil its gameplay potential, one thing the team has demonstrated is its ability to operate at crypto speed.
Its first NFT drop of 3,218 Genesis Genopets (current floor price $2,100) combined with the launch of its $GENE token also provides plenty of opportunity for early functionality in 2022.
Indeed, 4-6 week release cycles are promised as it now builds out habitats and token staking as well as key functionality such as step counting.
Illuvium
I got nervous when Illuvium’s $ILV price hit $1,800 in early December. Now down to $1,017 that still values the “open world RPG adventure” at $640 million.
That’s an awful lot for an auto battler in development at a distributed start up without much game dev experience.
Of course, the project’s dynastic roots with DeFi royalty accounts for much of the initial interest and investment. If nothing else, Illuvium’s staking features are first class and it’s also been running a governance DAO for months. Even its cosmetic NFTs are selling for at least $1,000 on OpenSea.
Still, we’ll get a much better take on how the project is shaping up with the launch of Illuvium: Zero — a mobile mini-base-building game — which is due in Q1 2022.
Ground zero when it comes to over-ambitious Solana-based blockchain games, Star Atlas actually impressed me during 2021, at least in terms of its activity.
Maybe that’s easy to do when you’ve raised $50+ million but aside from OTT video trailers, Star Atlas has also launched two tokens, built an impressive NFT marketplace with assets ranging from $200 to $500,000, just released its first on-chain mini-game, and generally flew the flag that building out a blockchain game community (for what’s clearly going to be a multi-year project) is a very different task to whatever we’ve seen before.
Maybe it will eventually boil down to ‘Star Citizen on the blockchain’, but even in that case, perhaps the ability to collect, own and trade assets for a game universe that’s never actually released becomes the meta.