Off The Grid; already the most popular blockchain game
It’s been almost four weeks since the launch of the first blockchain-enabled console game and it looks like things are going well for Gunzilla Games’ Off The Grid.
As previously discussed, it had a strong launch weekend thanks to paid sponsorship from the likes of Ninja, Shroud and TimTheTatman and although player numbers dipped in the following week, they’ve been very solid ever since.
Indeed, crunching the numbers, it’s clear that Off The Grid is already the most popular blockchain game in terms of daily unique wallets.
Of course, there are some caveats. One is that everyone who plays the game gets a wallet automatically created for them in the background. With over seven million wallets created on Gunzilla’s Gunz blockchain since the game went live, that’s a big audience; massive for a blockchain game.
Another comparable product in terms of scale would be Mythical Games’ NFL Rivals — with over five million downloads. It does something similar for players in terms of wallets, but we don’t have any figures on its performance.
It’s also significant that the game which has been the most popular blockchain games for the rest of 2024 — Pixels — is once again optimizing its rewards funnel, with the result that its headline audience is consequentially declining.
As CEO Luke Barwikowski contextualizes it, “we’ve managed to lower our daily active wallets, (mostly) maintain real DAU, and increase monthly revenue”.
The result of these two events is the graph below.
And there’s plenty more to come from Gunzilla as it prepares to rollout new modes for Off The Grid, including the single-player Campaign mode, as well as transitioning the game’s underlying Gunz blockchain from testnet to mainnet.
This — and more — was discussed when I spoke to Gunzilla’s director of web3 Theodore Arganat and Ava Labs’ head of games marketing Andrew Cooper for episode 185 of Blockchain Gaming World.
You can also check out the transcription on BlockchainGamer.biz.
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Calendar
EVE Frontier’s Phase V test starts — 7th November
Ragnarok: Monster World’s play-to-airdrop ends — 7th November
Ronin MMORPG Lumiterra launches its second CBT — 11th November
Blast Royale’s NOOB token goes live — 13th November
The Evergreen’s Midnight Market goes live — 13th November
MapleStory Universe starts its second pioneer test — 20th November
The Sandbox Alpha Season 4 ends — 17th December
Most Popular Blockchain Games news
Further to checking out Off The Grid and Pixels’ daily activity, I’ve also been plotting the numbers for the other usual suspects. To be honest, not too much of significance happened in October. But I thought it was pointing out that Ronin-based PC/mobile RTS Wild Forest is running under the radar.
Yes, its engagement is juiced by the forthcoming WF token launch, but even so this is a proper strategy game from an experienced game dev team. And I think that’s reflected in its growth curve below, which is displayed below by taking the average of the past 90 days’ trailing DAUWs to give a smoother curve that we’d otherwise see.
So, whereas the likes of Axie Infinity, Nine Chronicles and Alien Worlds have seen steady growth during 2024, Wild Forest has gone from zero to a sustained 100,000 DAUWs in a matter of months.
Lots of other games are generating buzz on Ronin but this would be my tip for a breakout.
Additional Links
Pixels CEO Luke Barwikowski has announced Login With Pixels, a way for thirdparty apps to get certain information about users, which is powered by their reputation within Pixels. He says it will be useful for airdrops or gating features.
Immutable has added support for Telegram mini-games to its Passport wallet onboard tech.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report 👀 Q3 2024 👀 here.