Blockchain games; now and forever
Weekly roundup
It’s been a busy week of news with CCP Games dropping a lot of information about EVE Frontier, its open source, blockchain-enabled MMOG, which is shaping up to be nothing less than a from-the-ground-up rebuild of EVE Online for the 21st century … and beyond.
It’s worth just skimming through the whitepaper just to get a sense of how ambitious the title is, as well as how complex the development process will be, given that a key element of the project is making it fully composable so that anyone will be able to build upon and extend the game world.
But first CCP has to build and solidify the underlying ruleset to the extent that it’s confident enough to throw away the keys, at which stage any other developer or agent will have the same in-game rights and permissions as CCP.
TL;DR
“EVE Frontier is built upon a legal and technical premise which affords a pragmatic path forward for an autonomous virtual world, where players have rightful access and ownership over their creative efforts:
A virtual world true only to itself through digital physics.”
The process is likely to take years. In the meantime plenty of less ambitious — but potentially more accessible — blockchain games have been going live.
PC shooter MetalCore is now into open beta, with a bunch of new modes, also moving from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5. From my limited experience, it feels like it offers a decent balance of accessibility and depth so it will be interesting to see if developer Studio369 can start to build network effects in the coming months.
That’s something Yuga Labs and Faraway Games are leaning into with the launch of endless runner Dookey Dash: Unclogged through mobile app stores. Its $1 million leaderboard-based prize pool is now live.
More significant, however, will be whether the game’s full monetization suite ranging from IAPs to in-game ads will build a sustainable business.
Earlier in the week I looked back at investment into the blockchain gaming sector during August, recording $60 million.
That was up on July’s year-low of $20 million but overall 2024 is trending down compared to 2023, currently lagging by 28%.
Finally, the latest episode of the Blockchain Gaming World podcast discussed the world of fully onchain games with Cartridge CEO Tarrence van As.
In that context, it will be fascinating to see whether CCP Games’ adoption of this hardest form of blockchain gaming will kickstart a broader interest.
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Weekly News Roundup
Gala Games’ lawsuit against Spider Tanks dev Gamedia dismissed.
Gameloft is making a mobile game based on Claynosaurz NFT collection.
Super Champs announces L3 Super Champs Chain.
Sky Mavis marks Axie Infinity: Origin’s 2nd birthday with exclusive rewards.
Sky Mavis launches its SSO MPC wallet solution Ronin Waypoint.
Gamee’s WAT token airdropping to 5 million wallets at TGE on 23rd September.
Nazara acquires 16% stake in Indian mobile web3 esports platform STAN.
Com2uS to launch PLAY3 community hub on XPLA.
Square Enix’s Symbiogenesis and Mocaverse strengthen ties.
As discussed with some vigor below:
Random Nyan Numbers news
Cat-themed mech shooter Nyan Heroes has just entered its third playtest, which runs until 25th September. Some golden cohort KPIs are:
>325,000 players
124,300 hours of play — 23 minutes per player
41% retention — no timeframe provided. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s also reported that the game currently #4 on Epic Games Store wishlist. I have to confess I have not gotten around to playing it yet.
So What Has Jon Been Playing This Week?
First play of idle mobile game Immortal Rising 2 [YT].
First play of endless runner mobile game Dookey Dash: Unclogged [YT].
Upgrading my latest legendary guardian in Guild of Guardians [YT].
Pool Masters pre-launch beta is live [YT].
Additional Links
Dogami Academy’s public beta is over. It’s racked up 13 million races with an average playtime of 1 hour per day. The game goes live globally through mobile app stores on Monday 16th September.
MAGIC token holders are voting on a proposal to move TreasureDAO and its forthcoming TreasureChain from Arbitrum to ZKsync.
Create your own NFT collections — PFP, music, art, trading cards, comics etc — on Ronin.
As I always tell you: millions of tokens have been launched on Pump.fun: only 89 have a market cap >$1 million; a 99.7% failure rate.
Gold has hit another ATH: $2,850 and counting.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.