Not just because he is one of the nicest people in gaming, I always enjoy talking to David Amor.
Starting out at EA in the 1990s, before co-founding Buzz! studio Relentless and then working with word game mobile company Mag Interactive, he co-founded Brighton studio Playmint in mid-2021. It’s been building fully onchain game Downstream since late 2022.
And it’s this experience in terms of what he’s previously worked on and what he’s now working on that I think places Playmint at the forefront of the burgeoning fully onchain game sector.
As David says, building such games — something he describes generally as “autonomous worlds” and in the specific case of Downstream a “godless game” because there’s no god mode for the developer: anyone will be able to extend the game with the same privileges — is intellectually very challenging.
Of course, that brings up the response, but will it make Downstream more enjoyable to play? That’s something David confesses is one of his biggest worries.
‘The previous games I worked had 350 million downloads but at the moment I’d be happy with 100 people playing Downstream’, he muses.
Still, as we both agreed, with the general gaming market currently in something of a funk in terms of imagination and innovation, the stage is set for blockchain to shake things up in 2024.
And whatever you think, I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast as much as I enjoyed the conversation — Bitcoin-rewarded audio here: also available through your podcast provider of choice.
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Calendar
MetaBrew’s Gamers Brew Uniqs launch on Ultra — 24th January
Decentraland Wellness Week starts — 24th January
Pixels posts final leaderboard positions for PIXEL airdrop — 26th January
Synergy Land launches land sale and mainnet — 22nd February
Funding news
The degens are back in full force with the news that game earning platform Arcade2Earn has raised $4.8 million in a private sale of its ARC token. Crypto.com was the lead, presumably because there’s also going to be public token sale on 27th February.
Other investors included Shima, GSR, KuCoin Labs and Solana Ventures, the latter a surprise as Arcade2Earn was originally built on Solana but ditched the blockchain. Instead it’s launching ARC on Ethereum, while the platform runs on Avalanche. The US company, which was originally a P2E gaming guild, previously announced a $3.2 million round from much the same set of investors in October 2022.
In terms of how Arcade2Earn operates, it effectively creates a gamified wrapper around the renting of NFTs from games — Arcade2Earn is particularly focused on Illuvium but also including Big Time, My Pet Hooligan etc — with consumer activity gated and juiced via ownership and staking of the ARC token.
Less Than Casual Crypto news
Animoca and iCandy have released Snake.io-clone Snaky Cat onto Coinbase’s Base blockchain. Developed by internal Malaysian studio Appxplore, Snaky Cat was originally a mobile game. This web3 version rewards players via leaderboard placement with TOWER, the franchise token from Animoca’s various tower defense games.
Significantly, however, a wallet is required to play the game and you have to buy entry tickets, again using the TOWER token. It’s a somewhat odd decision, given the highly casual nature of the game and the highly technical aspects required to get TOWER in your Base wallet.
Game7 Turning Up To 8 news
Gaming community DAO Game7 has revealed plans for 2024 including its vision to promote new economic models for blockchain gaming and release a tech stack that will enable these to be deployed.
Key to the latter is its HyperPlay launcher for web3 PC games, which will acts as the consumer interface for integration of standard industry tech including APIs, SDKs and other open source libraries. There will also be a protocol layer that allows developers to choose which blockchains they want to use.
Magic Eden Open Source + Airdrop news
NFT marketplace Magic Eden is making some big moves, in particularly by looking to kickstart activity, including for its forthcoming multichain Magic Eden wallet, through a token airdrop program. However, more than a typical token airdrop, Magic Eden has also announced the Non-Fungible DAO, which will be governed by the new NFT token. The DAO will also control various open source tech including Magic Eden’s smart contracts for NFT trading on Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Bitcoin.
As for the airdrop itself, there will be a retrospective aspect, particularly for early Magic Eden users when it launched on Solana in 2021. However, it will feed into Magic Eden’s existing diamonds reward program, which will also be integrated within the new wallet.
Additional Links
NFT price is never about the art but Age of Dinos’ reveal is… 🤮
TL;DR — Matthew Ball’s latest missive on games 😵💫
Reality+ is standardizing on Hedera Hashgraph 🤷
Space TCG Cosmik Battle is getting early access via Ultra 🚀
Doom is now a fully onchain game on Doge 🐕
Despite the end of its play-to-airdrop event, Pixels is still growing 📈
Blocklords has announced its token airdrop campaign 😂
Axie Infinity: Homeland beta is now live, which means my maxed out game account has been reset 😭
Listen👂 to Blockchain Gaming World on Fountain and get paid in ₿itcoin.