And all your NFTs will die...
But your dynasty will live on
On a couple of occasions I’ve stated that ‘this is my best podcast ever’ and so it is that once again I state ‘this is my best podcast ever’.
Of course, much of the reason is the willingness of the interviewee to engage deeply in terms of their answers.
In the case of MetaKing Studios’ David Johansson, it also helps that this is his second appearance on Blockchain Gaming World, and that I’ve been playing his PC strategy game Blocklords and its more recent companion browser game Blocklords Dynasty pretty heavily.
But asides from all the alpha Johansson provided in terms of specific game features, he was also extremely open in terms of why MetaKing has done certain things.
Notably in the case of Blocklords Dynasty — the fully onchain game running on the Base blockchain, which I’ve been writing about a lot in terms of its onchain activity and level of botting — he explained that external pressure from some of the company’s advisors was that the game needed to publicly demonstrate it had users, particularly ahead of the LRDS token launch.
“We were like, we got a lot of users. They don’t all have to be onchain. But we kept getting this feedback that we need more onchain transactions, because that’s how people measure traction in this space. That’s definitely not the only factor, but it was one factor behind Dynasty,” he explained.
Hence the following graph. For the record, the token launched on 24th July, hence the huge spike picked up by Dune Analytics, although not DappRadar, which I think was just measuring in-game transactions.
Perhaps the most significant quote, however, was talking about the decision to launch the game’s own Base-based L3 blockchain. Called Lordchain, this will have utility in terms of securing the game’s existing infrastructure.
For example, Blocklords currently has NFTs across Immutable’s legacy ImmutableX blockchain as well as Polygon (for Blocklords) and now also Base (for Blocklords Dynasty). It also allows — even encourages — players to move these hero characters between Blocklords and Blocklords Dynasty, which it does by burning the NFT on its hosted blockchain and then reissuing it wherever it needs to go.
In this way, Lordchain will provide a more transparent way of allowing everyone to verify quickly, easily and cheaply what’s going on inside the games.
However, Johansson also points out that “having our own infrastructure adds a ton of utility to the token on top of the game”.
Specifically he says that deploying your own infrastructure is crucial in terms of token market dynamics because while every blockchain game talks about driving the utility of their tokens in terms of in-game utility, Johansson is stark in terms of the actual user numbers required for that to happen.
“This isn’t really going to make a dent until we have 5, 10, 15 million users. And I do think it's going to take a couple more years to really achieve that realistically. So having the chain really opens up a lot of avenues for validator nodes.”
Aside from the specific numbers — 5, 10 or 15 million is quite the range — this is the first time that I’ve heard a blockchain game CEO highlight the sort of audience scale required for their token to function. Currently only one blockchain game— Pixels — is operating even within an order of magnitude of this.
For the record, Johansson reckons Blocklords has a core player base of around 30,000, respectively on PC and browser versions, so it will have to 100x its audience.
Yet despite all this blunt speaking, my favorite part of the podcast, however, was when I was half-complaining about the permadeath feature, which sees NFT Heroes turned into Fallen Hero NFTs. This means they can no longer be used in Blocklords Dynasty’s missions and duels.
“So I'm just warning you, that is going to happen at some point. Every hero is going to die,” Johansson said, with a gleam in his eye.
And this is a concept that really excites me.
Whether or not MetaKing can pull it off, the idea is that all the hero NFTs in the game — which are currently priced from $0.10 to $150 — will at some point lose their utility and become fallen heroes.
So, instead of being priced as an asset designed to continually increase in value for reasons unclear — as with most NFTs — they should be purely priced for their current utility. A much more sustainable approach.
Hence, success in playing Blocklords will come from creating lineages by breeding your characters using a CryptoKitties-style DNA system to create a dynasty that will outlast any single character.
This is likely ways off. First up will be an alpha of the game’s much anticipated battle mode, due late 2024 or early 2025.
Nevertheless, I think it’s this sort of thinking that highlights how blockchain technology opens up the design space for developers in terms of new high concept approaches and long term retention and monetization. It’s also a welcome break from the short termism of token price and daily player numbers, important as those KPIs also clearly are.
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Calendar
Aperion launches Season 3 beta — 22nd August
Forgotten Runiverse open beta on Ronin starts — 26th August
Ubisoft-backed The Watch launches its alpha — 28th August
Otherside launches Project Dragon Episode 2 — 29th August
Captain Laserhawk: the G.A.M.E. beta ends — 1st September
Polygon upgrades, MATIC becomes POL — 4th September
Nyan Heroes launches Season 3 playtest — 4th September
Flow launches EVM compatibility — 4th September
Game community Tribal’s TGE on Base — 5th September
Champions Tactics’ open beta launches — TBA September
Magic Eden’s ME token news
Favored NFT marketplace Magic Eden has announced more details about the launch of its ME token, by which I mean that the ME Foundation has announced the launch. Launching tokens for US companies remains a tricky legal situation, so no doubt the ME Foundation is not based in the US and has a set of non-US citizens at the held.
Anyhow, the ME token is labelled as powering “the #1 cross chain dApps ecosystem”, and will be initially adopted by Magic Eden as a payment method. Indeed, the ability to claim the token will only be via the Magic Eden mobile wallet, and users will be incentivized through the wallet in terms of the long term use of the token.
Magic Eden has been running its own offchain diamond reward system for about year and it seems likely this will act as the method for allocating the token whenever it goes live.
Collecting Donuts news
Ahead of its 26th August open beta, Ronin-based MMORPG Forgotten Runiverse has announced its point farming system. In this players earn points — called Donuts — by completing active and passive quests ranging from social engagements to daily clicking, mini-games, and in-game Forgotten Runiverse milestones.
In its previous two day closed beta, the game generated an average of 8.6 hours of gameplay per player, with 3% of players spending 30 hours playing.
Forgotten Runiverse will be distributed via Epic Game Store with a mobile version due later. In the meantime, start collecting Donuts here, perhaps even using my referral link!
Additional Links
What Peter Molyneux did with his share of $54 million raised from Legacy’s land NFT sale on Gala back in late 2021.
Pirate Nation is tackling bots by integrating the Privy auth system (also used by Blocklords Dynasty), which means players have to sign in via email or Discord and wallet.
Further to its recent investment from TON Venture, Gamee’s WAT Protocol has now also received funding from Pantera Capital.
Gordon Goner is back working with Yuga.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.