A 'will it won't it' week
Going six digits...
Basking in the reflected glow of how the question of BTC breaking $100,000 has moved from ‘if’ to ‘when’ — for the record SOL has already hit an all-time-high of $269 — we’ll instead consider the week in blockchain games.
I started the week by looking at the efforts of South Korean social media outfits Kakao and Line to combine their blockchain forces and bring web3 content — including games — to the Line mobile platform.
They hope to harness the sort of synergies that have made Telegram and TON such a force in 2024, albeit with much more of a southeast Asian focus. The top countries of Line’s 200 million MAUs are Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia.
And staying in that location, the YGG Gaming Summit has been taking place in Manila. The main news was the announcement of YGG’s Onchain Guilds, which will launch on the Base blockchain.
Onchain Guilds are the logical outworking of YGG’s progression from being a single guild to providing a protocol that everyone can plug into, with offered functionality ranging from minting NFTs, running treasury wallets and analytics through dashboards.
The rest of the week was spent crunching some numbers.
One title on the move that caught my eye was mobile 4X game Age of Dino, which has seen its audience accelerating quickly in November.
According to Jeremy Horn — who’s a co-founder at Xterio, the blockchain gaming ecosystem that Age of Dino is using — this is due to its web2 mobile UA campaign.
However, it’s also worth mentioning that the game seems to be juicing activity with giveaways of its ROAR token, as well as Xterio’s XTER token.
The growth from PC/mobile idle RPG Nine Chronicles hasn’t been so sudden since its launch through the app stores 12 months ago, but its average DAUW count is up 113%.
On the other hand, the price of its NCG token is down 68%, although both metrics were rising in step until April when sentiment around gaming tokens soured.
Still — as I argue — this is a good opportunity for players (like me) who are happy to spend some crypto to accelerate their game progression more cheaply than otherwise would have been the case.
Risking a humble brag, I am currently ranked #621 in the PVP arena.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Weekly news roundup
Mythical Games’ mobile FIFA Rivals is due out in summer 2025.
Limit Break enhances its NFT creator-first protocols.
KGeN raises $10 million for its web3 gamer network.
Nexon launches second playtest of Maplestory N ahead of 2025 launch.
Guild of Guardians releases a new event and two new guardian NFTs.
Metacade and SuperVerse launch $10,000 prize pool for Gangs of Metacadia.
Sui boosts support for developers by integrating Switchboard On-Demand tech.
NHN partners to use Ludo’s web3/AI retention and loyalty tech.
Reality+ and BBC Studios’ Top Gear launch The Stigverse in The Sandbox.
LAOS Network taps Sequence for web3 gaming scaling solution.
As discussed below:
Additional Links
Columbian YGG guild member Zeliaser won $20,000 at the Parallel esports tournament at YGG Play Summit.
Philippines CEX Coins.ph has announced a launchpool for projects within the YGG ecosystem.
South Korea-based web3 gaming guild WPG is launching.
Open Loot’s OL token is up 4% in its launch week.
Super Champs’ CHAMP token is up 21% in its launch week.
El Salvador’s bitcoin holdings now boast an (as-yet) unrealized profit of +$300 million.
🏴☠️ Pirate Nation Season 3 🏴☠️ is now live. Jump in with my referral code. 🦜