September's most popular blockchain games
Rise and fall
It’s time for our monthly look at what’s been happening in terms of the most popular blockchain games when it comes to daily onchain activity.
But instead of the usual array of graphs — which you can still get here — this time I thought up another way of presenting the information.
I’ve listed what I consider the most significant games, including their average onchain activity during September, as well as the change in audience from the start to the end of the month.
Granted it is a very discrete metric but one that throws up some interesting data.
In particular, The Machines Arena saw incredible growth — up 2,216%, from a very low base — while Forgotten Runiverse and Blocklords Dynasty shed 100% and 99% of their respective audiences across September.
Of course, the main reasons for such volatility is the starting (and stopping) of play-to-airdrop campaigns, which reward players for their onchain activity with tokens or other prizes.
This was compounded in the case of Forgotten Runiverse as it also shut down access to the game when the event ended, hence the 100% decline. As for Blocklords Dynasty, after it shut down its airdrop event, it also started to require players to use its own LRDS token for gas, which really reduced activity.
It’s also worth noting in passing the number of games running on Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain on the list. At present, it’s the one blockchain where games can launch and find a decent indigenous audience of c.100,000 active wallets.
Indeed, of the 16 games listed, only seven of them are what I would considered ‘properly released’ and hence not running these type of airdrop events, although most are using tokens and NFTs as rewards as part of their overall player incentives. This has been a strong influence on the growth of Axie Infinity during 2024, for example.
Hence, we should expect plenty of volatility for most of these games over the coming months as they inch towards their global launches.
But looking at another metric, 90 day trailing average, we can also see that blockchain game can sustain — and even modestly grow — their audiences month-on-month.
As ever, you can get the full details via my regular analysis video [YT].
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Calendar
Ragnarok: Monster World’s first season starts — 10th October
Fight League’s first NFT mint on Ronin — 10th October
Mythical’s Forest token airdrop event ends — 13th October
Loot Legends launches through app stores — 14th October
Guild of Guardians’ Frostmine expansion goes live — 16th October
Planet Mojo’s free NFT mint on Base — 23rd October
Blast Royale’s NOOB token goes live — 29th October
Next FOMC meeting: 50bps cut now not expected — 7th November
The Sandbox Alpha Season 4 ends — 17th December
Games Going Live news
Is there something about today’s date? Not sure, but a bunch of blockchain games are doing new live stuff today.
The main one is Gunzilla’s battle royale shooter Off The Grid, which is now in early access on PC via Epic Games Store and on PlayStation 5, making it the first blockchain-enabled game to be live on console. It is also playable on Xbox X Series in Europe and North America through the Xbox Insider Hub for testing from 6pm to 2am CET daily.
The available mode is 3-on-3 battles, with 2-on-2 and solo modes expected soon.
In conjunction with the launch, Gunzilla has partnered up with streamers such as Ninja — who got himself a custom skin — Timthetatman, Scump, Kyroh and Inhuman. It will be very interesting to get early KPIs from this. Maybe it will feature in October’s most popular roundup!
Also, Immutable-based deck-building tactics game Shardbound has gone into open beta via Epic Games Store and Steam, hopefully without getting review bombed.
Finally, The Sandbox has started its 10-week Alpha Season 4, during which it will give away $2.5 million-worth of tokens and NFTs.
I expect to have coverage of all these in due course!
Guild Of Guardians’ Expansion news
Immutable’s mobile RPG Guild of Guardians has announced that a new expansion, which includes two new characters, will be released on 16th October. Featuring new locations and dungeons for the Adventure mode, Frostmire will be the largest content update since the game launched on 15th May. The new characters are warrior Dolvir and hunter Lisca. Both are legendary in terms of their rarity, which is the game’s highest level.
Player will be able to summon them directly in-app via a gacha system using the new frost currency, or via the web-based altar of sacrifice. The NFTs will also be traded on the usual marketplaces. In addition to the Frostmire content, the game will introduce level 7 equipment.
Guild of Guardians has had more than 1 million downloads, but onchain activity — not the only measure of success! — is down from a peak of over 16,000 at launch to less than 5,000.
Additional Links
DigiDaigaku Genesis floor now down to 5.2 ETH.
Animoca takes a deep dive in Telegram and TON’s co-existence.
Only 2 of the 34 tokens listed on Binance during 2024 are up.
Good advice from Packy McCormick: “Burn the Playbooks”.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.