It wasn’t that many years ago when the Epic Games’ keynote was a couple dozen journalists cramped into a tiny presentation ‘room’ to be talked through some obscure tech and rendering changes to Unreal Engine, with Tim Sweeney nowhere in sight.
Now, however, the State of Unreal is a global PR event covering everything from Unreal Engine to the new comprehensive Fab asset marketplace to whatever Fortnite’s 500 million registered users will be playing next — although what they will be building next was the big news at GDC 2023.
Looping back to Fortnite’s original genesis as a creator platform prior to its Battle Royale incarnation saw the release of Unreal Editor for Fortnite, which alongside the promise of 40% creator payouts, hopes to reposition the game as a creator platform more equivalent to Roblox and Minecraft.
Of course, there was no mention of blockchain but plenty of talk of metaverse and how Epic hopes its tools will be aligned with creating these future experiences.
But you know it’s coming — if nothing else to crush those pesky 27% thirdparty payment processing fees!
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing in the future of games
Aavegotchi’s Long Funding news
Over the years, I’ve attempted to get to grips with Aavegotchi — the DeFi-inspired NFT gaming protocol running on Polygon — on a number of occasions, and even have the odd NFT, but the concept has never really stuck with me. Maybe that will change as the ecosystem continues build out and the UX gets less clunky.
And now, at least there’s confirmation that there’s the resources to be building the Gotchiverse for years to come as it’s been announced that developer Pixelcraft and the Aavegotchi DAO have between them raised $30 million, split 25:75%.
Interestingly, this has been happening since 2020 when the ecosystem’s GHST token was made available through a bonding curve sale mechanism. The process was only halted following the recent depegging of USDC in the Silicon Valley Bank debacle, as it was feared contagion to DAI — part of GHST sale — would cause issues.
As for the future, Aavegotchi is going to be one of the first projects using Polygon’s Supernet tech — of course labelled Gotchichain — which is expected to launch in Q3.
Web3 Rebooting TCG news
Good to see blockchain enabling games that didn’t quite make it to have another attempt, and that’s the context for the reboot of PC tactics TCG Shardbound. Announced in 2015, it made it into Steam early access — where it currently remains.
But now newish US startup Bazooka Tango — ex-execs from Vainglory dev Super Evil — has hooked up with Immutable to add web3 components into what-we-assume is a fairly solid game.
As well as using Immutable tech such as its Passport system, Shardbound will also be one of the first games to use the zkEVM scaling tech it’s licensed from Polygon. It will be free-to-play, first released on PC with a mobile version expected in 2024.
You can pre-register now for some launch goodies.
Mocaverse XP news
Animoca has revealed more details about the utility for its Mocaverse PFP collection, notably its XP system. This is the process whereby each NFT generates eight XP points every seven days when it’s ‘soft staked’ i.e. not listed for sale. But every time an NFT is sold or transfered, it won’t accumulate any XP for that week. All the XP previously accumulated will be transfered along with the sale or transfer, however.
XP can also be earned by participating in particular experiences and even through Discord and Twitter interactions.
The point of XP is to act as a reputation system to increase holders’ chances of getting whitelisted for future NFT mints, as well as gaining Mocaverse reward boxes.
Additional Links
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