Author: RMG Studio
The purpose of a finite game is to win; the purpose of an infinite game is to keep the game going forever.
-James P. Carse
Infinite games are the holy grail of all Web3 games
With Axie Infinity's monthly revenue exceeding 200 million US dollars, Web3 games have quickly become the hottest track in the entire Web3 field and are highly anticipated by the entire industry. Because games can complete the important transformation from pure speculation to consumption and practicality, and the game user base is extremely large, and users are more receptive to new technologies. So we see that from 2021 to 2022, no less than 1,000 play-to-earn games will be released, and the financing amount of Web3 games in 2022 alone will exceed 4.49 billion US dollars.
However, Axie Infinity is not an infinite game. None of these popular games escaped the nightmare of the death spiral. As the price of the currency fell, the already small number of real users further decreased, and eventually it became a graveyard filled with only robots.
P2E can quickly acquire users in the early stages, but how to make a game run permanently, or how to create infinite games in the Web3 field, is the biggest problem facing all practitioners.
This is also the core issue of this article and the actions we (Real Money Games Studio) will take to deal with this problem.
The bottleneck of Web3 games is not fun
Unfortunately, we haven’t seen much innovation in the existing projects in the market, and there is still no clear path to solve this problem.
Outside of P2E, most games are simply mature Web2 games ported to Web3. The only difference is that the game props can be extracted to the chain and circulated in the form of NFT.
The representative of this is 3A Games. They believe that the reason for the failure of GameFi represented by Axie is that the game quality is too poor and not playable, and it is just a speculative Ponzi scheme. Therefore, they are often successful studios in the field of Web2 games, with mature experience and game industry production capabilities to produce high-quality games. VCs are also willing to pay for this story. Funds represented by A16Z often bet more than $10M on a single project.
The production cycle of 3A games is long, often more than three years, so it is difficult for us to judge whether this path is feasible through real market feedback. But let's do a thought experiment. If we cast the game props that have been proven in the market in Web2 into NFT, will it become a successful Web3 game? If it is feasible, wouldn't it save three years to directly acquire a mature Web2 game for transformation?
Most game props cannot be traded, but fortunately, there is a famous game that can support us to conduct this experiment - CSGO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive).
CSGO was launched in 2012, with 35 million daily active users, making it a fun game. Its trading market is also very active, with no less than 100 trading platforms in addition to Steam (which shares the same parent company as CSGO, Valve). After communicating with the founders of some trading platforms, it is estimated that the annual trading volume of CSGO's game assets is around $50B.
So the question is, if we cast CSGO props into NFT, would you buy it?
——I won’t, because the appreciation expectations are insufficient. The price of rare items in CSGO is maintaining a moderate growth, but the annualized 6% is obviously not attractive enough for NFT traders. Moreover, there is also the risk of decline.
——If someone is hyping it, then I will. But I probably won’t hold it for a long time.
——I won’t, because I’m not a CSGO player. So let’s assume that if you are a CSGO player, will you buy it? Most likely not, because the trading platform of Web2 is more mature than Web3. Now the legal currency payment and mnemonic-free account that Web3 is trying to open up are already mature in Web2, and players don’t need to go around Web3 to buy.
Although the feedback we received was not positive, we still decided to carry out this thought experiment in reality. After all, CSGO is a real big IP and will definitely attract a group of people's attention.
However, when we actually put it into practice, we discovered the most serious problem. There is no Total Supply for all game props in CSGO. Yes, players have been trading an "NFT" whose total amount is unknown and the project party can issue more at any time. In Web2, everyone is used to black box operations and information opacity, but for Web3 users, the unclear Total Supply is considered to have touched the bottom line.
All props in CSGO are obtained by opening treasure chests. Treasure chests drop randomly in the game. The game props obtained by opening treasure chests are obtained randomly. Props with lower rarity are synthesized into props with higher rarity, but which prop with higher rarity will be synthesized is random. These random numbers are all centralized and can be changed and regulated at any time, and it is difficult for players to perceive them after adjustment because they don’t know what the probability is.
In this case, it is hard to believe that CSGO officials did not manipulate the market to maintain the stability of the economic system.
But if all props are issued and all probabilities in the game are on the chain, Total Supply is open and transparent, assets are freely circulated and traded, and the official centralized manipulation methods are useless, can the trading price of CSGO be maintained?
What Web3 games need to solve most at present is sustainable Tokenomics
In fact, looking back, playability is a mature industrial capability in Web2. If the shortcoming is here, it can be quickly solved by spending money. With so much capital and Web2 talent pouring in, this problem should be easily solved. But obviously, this direction is wrong.
After all, from Web2 to Web3, the playability has not changed. The most important thing that has changed is the logic of assets. Yes, it has returned to the old-fashioned logic of moving from the information Internet to the value Internet.
So, the part that has changed is 1, that is, the asset is 1, and the playability is just the 0 behind it. Before the asset problem is formally solved, no matter how much playability there is, it is meaningless. Therefore, it is important to quickly solve the Tokenomics problem.
So far, there are only two GameFi projects that have really gone viral and attracted the attention of the entire industry: Axie and Stepn. The reason for their success is Tokenomics. The reason for their failure is also the unsustainability of Tokenomics.
Tokenomics seems simple, especially for many people who have worked in game numerical planning, they will subconsciously think that it is not much different from digital planning. However, the immutability of rules, the openness and transparency of global information, and most importantly, the free market of assets, these changes have made the numerical planners of games and Tokenomics designers so different that they have caused reproductive isolation.
Moreover, the design of Tokenomics also needs to match the current blockchain infrastructure. Blockchain can give birth to new species that do not exist in the traditional world, such as flash loans, but due to current performance limitations, it is not suitable for the implementation of some existing businesses. For example, AMM was proposed long before the birth of blockchain, but it was not until 2020 that it became well-known because of Uniswap, and because AMM is more suitable for the existing infrastructure of blockchain than order books.
Make a game with only Tokenomics — Real Money Games
Many Web3 game companies raise funds and then put a lot of money into game development and art design. I personally think it is not worth it at this stage. Skin (art design and story background) is conducive to the understanding of ordinary users and helps to attract more people, but as mentioned above, it is ultimately the 0 behind 1. Our first task is to solve the problem of 1.
Therefore, we plan to put aside the operation skills, art design, story, etc., and make a series of games with only Tokenomics, so as to continuously iterate through the real feedback from the market and explore Tokenomics suitable for the sustainable development of Web3 games. The first game is the sequel to FOMO3D, World Boss.
The logic is very simple, so simple that there is only one type of FT and no NFT.
All players fight the boss together, 1 oken = 1 HP.
After the boss is killed, the lv will increase, and the health of the boss of the new lv will increase by 9%.
Players who kill the boss will immediately get back 60% of the attack tokens. At the same time, they will get 8% of the kill bonus. The bonus and 40% of the attack tokens will be collected after three levels.
If the boss is not killed within the specified time, the current round of the game ends and a new round begins. The last participant of the last level will take back the 100% attack token and share the prize pool.
For more detailed rules, please visit:
Rule
I believe many people will wonder, if we want to make an infinite game, why do we start with a game that will obviously end?
Although Axie looks like an infinite game, when the economic system expands and the bubble grows to a certain extent, and there is a shortage of new entrants and funds, it is already powerless to turn the tide. Project owners generally do not have enough motivation to continue construction, and continue construction with huge "debts". Instead, the human choice is to start new projects. So what looks like an infinite game is actually a finite game.
But World Boss seems to be a finite game, and each round has a clear boundary. But precisely because each round has an end, the bubbles accumulated in the system will be eliminated at the end and start from scratch, and everyone has the motivation to start from scratch.
A finite game with infinite rounds becomes an infinite game.
Real Money Games is the first stage in achieving Infinite Game
World Boss is just the beginning. In the future, we will design more Tokenomics, and you will see more magic of Token and NFT combinations. In order to match the current blockchain infrastructure, RMG also has these requirements for each game design:
Fully on-chain
Only by being completely on-chain can we eliminate the weaknesses of human nature, no rug, no inside-info, and achieve complete openness, transparency and fairness;
Anti-bot
This does not mean that bots cannot play games. On the contrary, we may also develop a series of bots to assist people in playing games. Anti-bots are mainly designed to make bots have no advantages over ordinary people, such as no front-running;
When such Tokenomics practices become stable, it is easy to turn it into a game that the public can understand by simply adding a skin for a car or a card. Each skin game is aimed at people with different preferences and brings them into the world of Web3.
I believe that by that time, Web3 games will explode. World Boss is just the beginning, and more exciting games are on the way.
This is the mission of RMG. LFG!
RMG Studio: A community incubator focused on web3 games. Only incubates fully on-chain games with well-designed in-game economic models. The first game of RMG Studio, World Boss, is scheduled to be released in March,2023.
RMG Studio: A community incubator focused on Web3 games. Only fully on-chain games with well-designed game economic models are incubated. RMG Studio's first game, World Boss, is scheduled to be released in March 2023.
