Whatever happened to guilds?
Your flexible friends
During peak GameFi — I use the term advisedly but correctly — Axie Infinity was the foundation on which dozens of projects labelled themselves guilds and tried to build play-to-earn communities.
The Axie Infinity part of the equation may have only lasted for a couple of weeks in terms of actual returns. Nevertheless, some of those guilds managed to raise capital — some of them a lot of capital.
So, two years on, whatever happened to them?
It’s an ongoing question but in the current bull run we’re getting some answers; current answers at least.
As many blockchain games struggle to deliver fully featured experiences — and instead cycle through time-gated playtests or low velocity early access seasons — guilds are stepping up, becoming engagement platforms for the entire sector.
The mechanics are simple.
Nominally at least, guilds have a lot of registered users, who aren’t doing much, as well as tokens without much utility. All games want more attention and even if they can’t offer a lot of gameplay, they do have a lot of tweets and Discord activity they want more people to see.
Combining the two, we’ve seen an explosion in guilds setting up quests and missions that attempt to funnel their communities into games, with individuals ranking up their reputation within guilds, and maybe getting some assets — at least whitelisting optionality — out of the games too.
Recent examples include Earn Alliance’s Challenges feature, which enables game developers to create quests to onboard Earn Alliance’s 650,000 users. Current projects taking advantage of the opportunity — which can be deployed either in templated or self-serve modes — include Mighty Action Heroes and Apeiron.
Game7 has also launched its Dungeons & Degen quests. Partnered with games such as Shrapnel, Pirate Nation, Sorare and Star Atlas, this is a points-based engagement system that’s been curated by Game7 and its partners who act as Dungeon Masters.
Running for the next three months, the launch event is called Community Raids, which sees players collecting badges and experience points, all-the-while building up their reputation via their onchain but soul-bound Game7 avatars.
A more comprehensive transformation is being tried by GuildFi, which raised $140 million back in 2021. Rebranded as Zentry — with its GF token becoming ZENT via a 1-to10 split — the Thai-based outfit is moving towards a protocol-based engagement and reward model.
“Zentry aims to unite the silos in gaming, and also bridge the silos between our physical and virtual lives. It’s all about gamifying daily life, because most people’s ‘real’ life includes untold hours spent online,” says CEO Jarindr Thitadilaka
“In this new Play Economy, you can buy a coffee from your barista and your Zentry character gets a perk, or vice versa.”
And it’s not just historic guilds who are operating in this manner. US-based Forge raised $11 million as an engagement portal for web3 games. It doesn’t (yet?) have a token but partners with games to get users to do things to get points that propel them along its battle pass to receive digital and real-world rewards.
Of course, stripping out the web3 rewards, the underlying business model here is just user acquisition. Guilds are acting as ad funnels, getting paid in terms of how many users they can onboard.
Probably it will work for some clients in current market conditions but I’m less convinced it’s a long term solution.
However, the best guilds have already demonstrated their flexibility over the years. Expect more innovation in the coming months.
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Calendar
Forgotten Playground launches — 25th April
PixelPals’ season zero ends — 29th April
Lattice’s Redstone L2 goes live — 1st May
Mocaverse MOCA token sale ends — 2nd May
Axie Infinity: Homeland gathering showdown ends — 3rd May.
Heroes of Mavia launches its Ruby NFT marketplace — 5th May
Guild of Guardians’ global launch via app stores — 15th May
Next Project Awakening playtest — 21st May
Funding news
Current BNB project Puffverse has announced it’s moving to Sky Mavis’ Ronin blockchain. The news was backed by a $3 million investment, which was led by Animoca Brands. Other investors included Sky Mavis, Spartan, Foresight, HashKey and Arcane Group. All of these entities are based in China and southeast Asia.
The first title from the Puffverse universe to launch on Ronin will be PuffGo, a Fall Guys-style multiplayer mobile game that enables UGC maps. It’s currently live on BNB via APK.
A key element of Puffverse are its rotund colorful characters, which have their own abilities and can be customized with costumes, skills, and bonuses. Other products making up the platform will include PuffTown, PuffLand and PuffWorld, and future features include AI-driven cloud-based tools, which it is hoped will enable players to build content via text prompts.
Indeed, the press release wins bonus points for employing the whole gamut of tech buzzwords — web3, NFTs, cloud gaming, metaverse and AI tools are all present and correct.
As for the process of migration, a snapshot of Puffverse’s current NFTs will be taken on 29th April, with all assets subsequently airdropped to the equivalent Ronin wallet address. Puffverse will also launch its PUFF token and an exclusive Ronin-themed NFT character collection later in 2024.
Sui Gets A Game news
Despite a large amount of VC investment, Mysten Labs’ Sui blockchain has been remarkably light in terms of solid gaming projects to-date. Indeed, of the 13 titles it announced almost 12 months ago, few have reached any level of playability and some have become discontinued.
Still, hope springs eternity and the news Mysten has partnered with South Korean developer Team NDUS for its Unreal-based PC multiplayer shooter Xociety means the blockchain now has a poster child around which to gather support.
In development for a couple of years, Xociety currently has its base avatar NFTs live on Ethereum and has been running regular playtests during 2024.
It plans to enter early access via Epic Games Store in Q4 2024 and will also launch its MCT token on Sui during the summer, which will unlock the game’s economy in terms of crafting weapons and gear, and avatar customization.
Additional Links
Following recent some dry days, 10,354 wallets minted $419,008-worth of CROW tokens yesterday. Night Crows’ concurrent userbase is 379,170.
Marketmaker Caldan (previously AlphaLab) has invested an undisclosed amount into Com2uS’ XPLA blockchain.
Once of Ronin, mobile shooter Battle Bears has now announced it will deploy on Immutable zkEVM.
My Pet Hooligan’s KARRAT token is live and down 27% from its first tracked price.
Faraway’s Creator Suite is live for making stickers and vehicles that will be usable and sellable in Yuga’s forthcoming Dookey Dash: Unclogged.
What an ex-VC says about investors when he’s running his own gig. 🤣
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q1 2024 👀 here or 👀 via PDF.