A week of new starts
Axie and EVE's future visions
Top 300 Web3 Games Index: ↓2% today, ↓50% YTD
Ronin Games Index: ↑2% today, ↓66% YTD
Immutable Games Index: ↓3% today, ↓56% YTD
AI Gaming Agents: ↓16% today, ↓47% YTD
Jon’s TX Games Index: ↑1% today, ↓47% YTD
What’s the easiest way to control an economy?
In the real world, a combination of free-ish markets, strong governmental power in terms of taxation, the rule of law, and independent-ish central bank interest rates has done a decent job over the past century or so. I guess we’ll see how well it handles the next decade.
If you’re building a blockchain-based game economy, however, two of these features aren’t available with sufficient agency. And the past couple of years have taught us that the free market alone is only sufficient to blow things up. However, code is law.
In that context, CCP Games’ approach for EVE Frontier is the most stark imaginable.
It lets everyone play in an open source fully onchain composable environment, in which trade is facilitated by the non-crypto LUX currency and the blockchain-backed EVE token. The two are linked by a free-floating exchange rate on which the whole game economy is built.
But every so often the entire game — all assets and tokens — are wiped. The game resets and a new Cycle begins.
“The galaxy will end in divine rapture — and be reborn”.
If nothing else, this drives out any idea of speculation, providing a better foundation to see what really interests players as the game slowly builds cycle-by-cycle.
Of course, speculation will rear its necessary head at some point but hopefully by that stage, the key agency in the game’s economy will be in the hands of those who have been educated in the concept of deeper values.
Another long term project has been announced this week in the shape of Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy.
Development on the PC/mobile MMOG started a year ago so it’s still early doors. Sky Mavis hopes to make a first playable MVP available in the summer, with another playtest scheduled for Q4. Clearly any open beta won’t be until next year, with a formal release perhaps 18 months away.
However, after various attempts to expand the Axie ecosystem, it’s good to see Sky Mavis still has the appetite to build something ambitious.
Given the hours I spent playing Axie Infinity: Homeland, I’m glad to see that some elements of that game will also feature, including utility for land NFTs and some sort of resource farming — although it’s unclear exactly how.
Instead, the game will be more combat-focused with the main loop being the levelling and gearing up of Axie NFTs, which are deployed into real-time PVE missions as four-character squads. Endgame missions will come in the form of Guild War between large groups of players for the rarest rewards.
In this way, Atia’s Legacy looks like it could end up being a combination of Axie Infinity’s combat, with a pinch of Homeland’s resource farming and a dash of Pixels’ social nature.
Sounds pretty good. You can pre-register here.
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Weekly News roundup
Animoca ended 2024 with $4.3 billion in total assets.
Autoverse raises $1 million from Coinbase’s Base eco fund for Auto Legends.
CCP Games hires former Central Bank economist Stefán Þórarinsson.
Farming game Moonfrost moves from Solana to Open Loot.
MapleStory Universe concludes genesis test as it preps for NXPC token launch.
Worldshards generated $1.1 million in 2024, plus $5 million in NFT trading.
Nyan Heroes unveils $200,000 NYAN token airdrop for playtest #4.
Parallel winner bags $100,000 as dev drops trailer for shooter Sanctuary.
WorldWide Agents launches AI-gaming platform.
Night Crows offers players in-game rewards in celebration of first anniversary.
Metacade launching L3 Base Appchain for skill-based tournament platform.
Why are crypto bros rage-quitting web3 gaming?
As discussed below:
RON vs AXS news
We live in strange times and so it is that the news of Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy has seen the market cap of the AXS token reflipping RON. But this isn’t just information. It’s now actionable information even if you don’t want to buy the tokens. Just head to Forkast and take a position via the prediction market on precisely this question.
Additional Links
A highend Pixels player gives up.
Ronin’s forthcoming fork will see a portion of all gas fees going to the Ronin Treasury.
Mad Immutable game TOKYO BEAST announces a $1 million launch tournament.
PC Gamer continues to struggle to work out whether it loves or hates EVE Frontier.
Nice framing from Decentralised.co — “Meme coins are to markets what porn is to media”.
⚔️ Pre-register for Axie Infinity: Atia’s Legacy here. ⚔️