Informative as I hope they are, my most recent podcasts were with people I didn’t previously know so it was most excellent to have a more freeform chat with Com2uS USA president Kyu Lee, who I’ve known for more than decade from back in early days of mobile, when Korean game developers would have to remove their IAP monetization because it wasn’t yet supported by US app stores.
Similarly, when it comes to blockchain games, Com2uS is fully committed to the sector’s long-term success despite early teething pains, notably the collapse of the Terra blockchain in May 2022, which took down its related gaming infrastructure C2X, as well as marking the end of crypto’s most recent bull market.
As explained in the interview, however, the result was Com2uS doubled-down on its decision, releasing its own more extensive XPLA blockchain, on which it’s now launched eight games, including key title Summoners War: Chronicles.
Yet, the approach remains cautious with Lee saying that its in-game economies are often zero-sum games to ensure they remains sustainable, adding:
Over time we believe [blockchain] is going to be more generally adopted by users and we’re going to get more comfortable because we understand what the user behaviors are. It’s going to be a slow adoption phase, but we’re bringing blockchain into one of the biggest games that we have. I think there’s a huge upside to what this can add over time, but at the beginning we’re launching it softly.
You can check out a transcript of the interview here plus here are the YouTube and Spotify versions, while the audio is available through your podcast platform of choice.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing in the future of gaming
Calendar
Angry Dynomites Lab’s demo 4 gets squad mode — 11th August
Parallel is launching packs priced at 0.05 ETH on Base — 11th August
Mech.com is launching. It will be F2P — 12th August
Lamina1 hub goes live — 14th August
Illuvium’s Beyond Wave 2 sale starts — 15th August
Mighty Action Heroes releases APK — 16th August
Perion launches its MVP web2/web3 gaming bridge app — 23th August
Let’s meet at Gamescom (at Radisson Blu) — 23-24th August
MonkeyLeague Moves news
Solana-based monkey soccer game MonkeyLeague has announced it’s expanding to Coinbase’s BASE L2 blockchain, which runs on Optimism's open-source OP Stack. In fact its MBS token is already live on the chain with liquidity via Uniswap.
In this move, MonkeyLeague follows the example of other once-Solana-only games such as Aurory, which also expanded to an EVM L2, in its case Arbitrum.
More Beta Data news
Following up from yesterday’s data dump from BlockLord’s community beta comes something similar from Immutable’s Guild of Guardians test. It was limited — only 168 players: including me — but over the five days, 82% played for more than an hour — including me — with an amazing 65% playing for more than 12 hours; no, not me.
The average was 8 hours, with the top player racking up 45 hours of gameplay.
Additional Links
Nitro Nation: World Tour is now in open beta via App Store and Google Play (and Number 1 son loves it!).
Solana’s Saga phone is now available priced $699, down from $1,000.
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