Back to school week for some, also a busy news week in the world of blockchain games.
We kicked off with the news that Zynga’s Sugartown web3 project has been acquired by newco D20 Labs in a management buy-out. The project’s lead Matt Wolf becomes D20 Labs CEO.
No details were provided about the MBO or future funding, but hopefully the move will see Sugartown accelerating its roadmap, which to-this-point has been glacial (and geo-locked).
Tuesday was all about the launch of pre-orders for Mysten Labs’ SuiPlay0X1 PC handheld console.
At $600 sans taxes and delivery — due sometime in H1 2025 — it’s clearly a device that will only be picked up by a small subset of crypto-natives. Mysten Labs hasn’t been open about how many devices it expects to sell, merely noting 1,500 pre-orders on day 1. For the record, I was #1,527.
The 0X1 will support games via Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG, but the hardware specs aren’t as good as Asus’ ROG Ally range, or Valve’s SteamDeck. Nevertheless, with Sui-exclusive games like Xociety and Darktimes coming, and the promise of exclusive rewards, it may not be a total waste of money for that certain subset.
The rest of the week was spent running the numbers on sector activity during August. It wasn’t great.
Certainly, crypto sentiment seems to be draining away from 2024 fast; something only the US Fed’s attitude to interest rate cuts is likely to change.
In terms of performance during 2024 to-date, all but two of the gaming tokens ranked in the top 400 cryptos have experienced a drop in price.
The average decline was 44%, with only two tokens seeing gains.
The bright spark was Mocaverse’ MOCA token, up 51% but it only launched in July so plenty of time to reflect the prevailing trajectory.
As for onchain activity from games, the place to keep an eye on continues to be Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain, which as well as hosting the most popular game — Pixels — is the only place where new games appear to be building audience.
Of course, much of this activity is a combination of social farming and token giveaways but behind such spam, there are a set of surprisingly decent products inching toward some semblance of product market fit.
In particular, mobile RTS Wild Forest now attracts over 100,000 daily active unique wallets, albeit in the build up to its WF token launch.
Finally, Blockchain Gaming World got back on track with episode 178 being an interview with Justin Gary, the CEO of Stone Blade Entertainment, who explained why he thought blockchain would be a positive factor in the growth of its hybrid deck builder SolForge Fusion.
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Weekly News Roundup
Faraway integrates HV-MTL and Mara NFTs into Rebel Skies and Villains mobile games.
Dapper Labs launches CryptoKitties’-related Egg NFT collection and Telegram mini-game.
Gods Unchained reintroduces player tournaments.
Telegram-based Goat Gaming hits 250,000 users and 3 million transactions.
Ex-Tapjoy CEO Drobick joins Earn Alliance.
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Osom, the US phone OEM which designed Solana’s original Saga phone — but not its Saga 2 — has shut down, although a handful of staff will continue working until the end of the year on a security update and other Saga-related work.
Magic Eden splits into US and international domains.
Animoca Brands Japan is working on integrating real world assets (RWAs) via a partnership with Tokyo Stupid Games (who could have come up a better name!).
Dogami is the latest blockchain game working on Telegram mini-games.
PuffPaw has raised $6 million for its "vape to quit smoking & earn" model. No joke.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.