Where will Blizzard's "refugees" go? Blockchain games extend an olive branch

PANews · 2023-02-06T05:05:01.000Z
Original text: "Blizzard doesn't care about the national server, chain games want to intervene" Author: Wen Dao "The Wandering Earth 2" recorded 2.83 billion in 11 days after its release. The box office is only one of the indicators of popularity. The residual fire of this Made in China science fiction work has burned into the Web3 world - the metaverse sandbox game The Sandbox has seized the opportunity to bring "The Wandering Earth 2" to the market. Objects in the novel "Earth" have become NFTs. This is not the first time The Sandbox has incorporated Chinese elements, but it’s even more so this year. During the Spring Festival, the "Lunar New Year" directly formed a series of activities on The Sandbox. NFT souvenirs, "Chinese Dragon" blind boxes, and virtual real estate were integrated into various games, covering McDull, MTR, Legend of Sword and Fairy, and Xiaoxiao. Elements familiar to Chinese people such as the Bawang game console.
Original article: "Blizzard doesn't care about the Chinese server, blockchain games want to intervene"
Author: Wen Dao
"The Wandering Earth 2" recorded 2.83 billion in 11 days after its release. The box office is only one indicator of popularity. The remaining fire of this Made in China science fiction work has spread to the Web3 world. The metaverse sandbox game The Sandbox seized the opportunity and turned the objects in the novel "The Wandering Earth" into NFTs.
This is not the first time that The Sandbox has integrated Chinese elements, but this year is even more so. During the Spring Festival, the "Lunar New Year" directly formed a series of activities on The Sandbox, and NFT souvenirs, "Chinese Dragon" blind boxes, and virtual real estate were integrated into various games, covering elements familiar to Chinese people such as McDull, MTR, Chinese Paladin, and Subor.
The ideal of "the whole world speaking Chinese" is yet to be realized. The Sandbox, a Web3 game metaverse open to the world, intends to "go Chinese", which is in sharp contrast to another traditional game manufacturer, Blizzard. After breaking up with NetEase after 14 years, Blizzard made a counterattack and banned Chinese players from participating in the "Hearthstone" event. The conflict of interests between the two game manufacturers finally left the Chinese server "refugees" with an "electronic urn" that consumed their years of youth.
In the Web2 era, all user data is locked in the servers of different centralized platforms, which has become the sharpest spear of the Web3 platform, stabbing the core of the opponent. On one hand, people turn around and leave without saying goodbye, while on the other hand, they wave and smile frequently. Can gamers control their own digital destiny in the Web3 world?
Web3 Metaverse Games Frequently See Chinese Elements
On January 19th of this year, which was the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month, the "Lunar New Year" event appeared prominently on the official website of The Sandbox, directly stating its purpose: In order to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit, partners and studios in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China have created games, NFT exhibitions, virtual space experiences, etc. around popular IPs, including McDull, MTR, The Legend of Sword and Fairy, etc.
The Sandbox is a blockchain-based metaverse sandbox game in which players can build games or play games created by others. Since its acquisition by Hong Kong venture capital firm Animoca Brands in 2018, the platform has entered the Web3 gaming ecosystem, where players can earn and trade digital game assets, NFTs, etc.
Perhaps considering the information lag and the Chinese New Year holiday cycle, The Sandbox has extended the "Lunar New Year" event to the end of February, including the "Lantern Festival" on the 15th day of the first lunar month and the "Dragon Head-raising Festival" on the second day of the second lunar month. In the series of activities, the official provided token rewards, souvenirs, NFTs, and virtual "Chinese Dragon" blind boxes. The banner is full of Chinese elements such as the "Year of the Rabbit", red envelopes, auspicious clouds, and the word "Fu".
The Sandbox Launches Lunar New Year Event
Don’t think that The Sandbox only focuses on China’s traditional culture. During the Spring Festival, it also announced that it will launch a scene experience called "Chongqing Underground City" and put the theme NFT series "Chongqing Wandering" of the science fiction novel "The Wandering Earth" on the shelves in the store. The creator 01a1 Studio turned the objects in the novel into NFTs, such as planetary engines, underground city residence permits, and "precious rabbits" with the theme of the "Rabbit" Year, etc.
The Sandbox directly stated in the "Lunar New Year" event that these experiences come from Chinese creators and well-known brands. This is not the first time that this Web3 gaming platform has shown goodwill to the Chinese market, and the friendship has been responded to, with Chinese brands, IPs and developers also flocking to The Sandbox to create Web3 sites.
In January this year, PCCW, a company owned by Li Ka-shing's son Richard Li, launched the metaverse space PCCW-HKT Futurera in The Sandbox, attracting gamers while also recruiting Web3 talents.
Last September, Softstar, the developer of the domestic online game "Legend of Sword and Fairy", purchased virtual plots in The Sandbox and built Softstar MetaPark. The story plots and IP characters of the "Legend of Sword and Fairy" series, such as Li Xiaoyao and Zhao Linger, are expected to appear in the Web3 virtual space.
At the beginning of last year, the Metaverse Cultural Exchange Center Mega City was established. In addition to the participation of female star Shu Qi, participants also include Hong Kong cultural entrepreneur Adrian Cheng, Sun Hung Kai Properties in the investment circle, consulting firm PwC (Hong Kong), blockchain investment and asset management company Times Capital, actor Stephen Fung, musician Dough-Boy, game IP "Little Fighter" and local illustrator Zhimagao, etc.
From last year to this year, all signs indicate that The Sandbox is getting closer and closer to the Chinese market.
The Sandbox and the Chinese market
The Sandbox's two-way rush to the Chinese market is in stark contrast to Blizzard, the leading Web2 game maker that recently "broke up" with NetEase. When the news of banning Chinese players from participating in Hearthstone events came out, Chinese players were indignant, saying, "Blizzard was not like this 20 years ago."
At that time, Bill Roper, vice president of Blizzard, visited China to try to open up the Chinese game market. On the day of the appearance, he wore a black Tang suit with a red dragon pattern embroidered on the outside and held a couplet that read "I am in China, I love China". 20 years have passed in the blink of an eye. Blizzard ended its 14-year cooperation with NetEase and withdrew games such as "World of Warcraft", "Hearthstone", "Overwatch", and "Diablo III" that countless Chinese players were obsessed with. This not only hit the players' emotions, but also "hurt money".
This outcome is one of the reasons why Web3 games emerged.
Take The Sandbox as an example. Its inclusiveness is determined by its gene of using the public blockchain network as its underlying foundation. Geographically, it is global in scope, and the Chinese market is of course one of them. More importantly, the gameplay and content are determined by the players, and the platform is only responsible for creating tools, maintaining the network, and improving operations. The assets in the game are also completely controlled by the players through private keys and are at their disposal. It is no longer like games like "World of Warcraft", where once the service is shut down, the players' hard work will be turned into a string of KB bytes of code.
The Sandbox's favor for the Chinese market is actually the result of the efforts of Chinese community builders and participants, who have provided a large number of games and metaverse experience scenarios with Chinese elements, bringing the Chinese market together with cultural roots. In the official community gathering place Discord, the Chinese channel is placed first above countries such as Italy, Japan, and Turkey, followed by the bulletin board, where activity information is frequently updated every day. In the discussion area, domestic players are discussing game and activity content almost every hour of every day, and there are also suggestions for improving the platform and bringing new tutorials.
The Sandbox is close to Chinese players in terms of content and settings
In the global crypto asset market, the huge and highly active Chinese user group has created a strong traffic attraction for The Sandbox, which takes blockchain and crypto assets as its core competitiveness. In the past, this group was called the "coin circle". When people thought that the coin speculators disappeared due to the closure of virtual currency mines and the withdrawal of exchanges, in fact, they have already "gone overseas" with these commercial entities.
In the global ranking of digital asset exchanges, 3 of the top 5 were founded by Chinese entrepreneurs. Binance, OKX, and Huobi still have a large number of Chinese-speaking users. These users have extensive overlaps with the NFT market, which is also a crypto asset, and are also heavy players of The Sandbox and Decentraland.
For the metaverse track, with the development of the digital economy, China is releasing favorable policies.
Since October last year, Hong Kong has shown an open attitude towards virtual assets, giving hope to relevant entrepreneurs and investors. On October 31, 2022, Hong Kong issued a virtual asset policy declaration, stating that it is studying pilot programs such as the digital Hong Kong dollar. In the following two months, Hong Kong said it was drafting a virtual asset service provider license system and two blockchain ETFs.
On January 1 this year, the country’s first national-level compliant digital asset secondary trading platform, the “China Digital Asset Trading Platform”, was launched in Beijing. It is reported that the platform’s trading targets may include “Chinese version of NFT” digital collections.
In this light, it is understandable that the Web3 Metaverse platform attaches great importance to the Chinese market. Although there are still uncertainties, The Sandbox, which adheres to openness and co-creation, has already extended an olive branch. The fertile land of the Chinese market is no longer the focus of Internet giants and top game manufacturers, and Web3 platforms also want to participate.