Building the first meta economy game
Talking to Voya Games' Oliver Loffler
The latest episode of Blockchain Gaming World has dropped. In #157, I talk to Oliver Loffler, the CEO of Berlin-based Voya Games.
I previously spoke to Oli in October 2022 (#118), when he first launched Angry Dynomites Lab. That project has now become the overall IP, with its first playable experience being called Craft World.
Leveraging Oli’s experience making idle games — he was one of the co-founders of idle mobile specialist Kolibri Games, which sold to Ubisoft in 2020 — Craft World is described as “the world’s first meta economy game”.
Inspired by Factorio, on one level it’s a very functional tech tree, in which you create increasingly complex resources by unlocking new interlinked factories. It gets pretty complex, pretty quick. Here’s a screenshot of part of my current world.
What’s significant about this, however, is how players combine their resources together to create what are called Masterpieces, which require enormous numbers of different resources to complete.
These collaborative goals provide a meta layer to the experience, something Oli hopes to expand into an NFT launchpad in which other projects and games will be able to define blueprints requiring large amounts of resources, rewarding those who get involved with the ability to mint out NFTs.
In this way, Craft World could gamify NFT minting, taking it from a hard-to-control whitelist process into something that’s collaborative and defined by real-world value.
Another option is integrate existing assets. This is already being discussed in terms of integrating CyberKongz’ BANANA token, which would provide more utility for the token and more players for Craft World.
Currently running on a testnet, when Craft World goes live in the summer its resources will all be onchain crypto tokens controlled via liquidity pools and paired with a native token for intra-token trading, meaning that everything in the game and everything generated by the game will have a discrete value based on the native token.
And it’s this that will allow it to be an interoperable platform in which any compatible token can also have a meta meaning and financial value.
So, as well as being the sort of experience you couldn’t operate without a blockchain, Craft World is also shaping up to be an intriguing take on the fully onchain gaming trend.
As ever, I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation.
You can check out the transcription at BlockchainGamer.biz or listen and get paid in Bitcoin via Fountain.
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Calendar
Shardbound’s 10-day closed playtest begins — 21st February
Synergy Land launches land sale and mainnet — 22nd February
Delabs’ RPG Metabolt mints first NFTs — 26th February
Aurory’s Seekers of Tokane playable ends — 26th February
Worldshards begins early access — 26th February
The Machines Arena skins become mintable on Ronin — 29th February
Wemade’s Night Crows goes live via app stores — 12th March
Not More Plai news
Initially a blockchain gaming studio that formally spun out of US mobile game dev Jam City in early 2023 — thanks in part to a $32 million seed round — Plai Labs has since pivoted into AI. It’s released PlaiDay, a consumer-focused generative AI app.
But where does that leave Champions Ascension, its combat-based blockchain game? It’s still in development, thankfully, gearing up with playtests via Epic Games Store and supported by Amazon Prime giveaways, but it does appear to have a new corporate home.
Now called Rough House Games, it’s not clear how it fits into the Jam City-Plai Labs structure or that large funding round. It does, however, reflect just how disrupted the startup tech scene currently is when it comes to maintaining focus.
Additional Links
“Cross-platform action RPG with a TCG roguelite twist” Sipher is now available for pre-registration via App Store and Google Play.
Walmart has re-ordered the physical Pudgy Penguins range.
Magic Eden’s wallet has 100,000 downloads.
Degen fave Portalcoin is already trading at $2 on OTC sites prior to its formal launch.
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