The current status of the Gamefi track
The overall performance of the GameFi track in 2022 can be summarized as opening high and closing low. Except for outperforming the market in April, the market value of GameFi has basically maintained a trend of advancing and retreating with the cryptocurrency market, and the decline has been even greater, entering a deep bear market.
The sluggishness of the market is directly reflected in the short life cycle of the project and the rapid loss of users. From the "Play to Earn" model established in 2021 to the "Move to Earn" and "X to Earn" models that broke the circle in 2022, the "old wine in new bottles" game model still uses a variety of Ponzi models and attractive returns as gimmicks, attracting a large number of new users to this track, but the abused Ponzi model gives wrong guidance to project parties and players:
• For project developers, giving DeFi a Game shell and using complex token economics to disguise its unsustainable nature, once players fail to make a profit and leave, all GameFis will fall into an inescapable death spiral, and few projects can remain active for more than three months.
• For users, actual benefits have become their most important consideration, and both game beliefs and community culture have been replaced by the payback period. Players compromised on the gaming experience, causing the project to once again fall into the revision of the economic model plan and be unable to extricate themselves.
But behind the cruel reality, there is also a turning point. The GameFi track is still one of the areas that absorbs the most financing in the crypto industry in 2022, with the amount of financing nearly doubling year-on-year. In the development of GameFi, the chain game ecosystem has played an important role. Gala Games, which led the last round of GameFi bull market, has introduced new products, TreasureDAO, which has incubated the popular chain game The Beacon, has gained brand awareness, and Block Ape Scissors, which is backed by Binance, wants to achieve a "big reshaping" of the BSC chain game circle. Between the old and the new, the market may have reached the bottom. After the precipitation of the bear market, they may become the driving force for the outbreak of the GameFi track in the next round of bull market.
Gala Games: A pioneer in the GameFi field, how far has the "Steam of blockchain games" come?
Gala Games: "Steam for Blockchain Games"
Gala Games is a blockchain game development company founded in 2018, aiming to build a decentralized game ecosystem and become the "Steam" of blockchain games. Unlike the real Steam, Gala Games needs to play two roles: game developer and game aggregation platform. In addition to the games developed by the team itself, other game manufacturers can also launch games on the Gala platform after obtaining the vote approval of the nodes.
Gala Games is developing and operating a variety of different types of games, which gives players control over their in-game assets and allows them to trade items and props they obtain from the game on the blockchain. Players will not only experience the fun of the game, but also control their own game assets, and earn income with their gaming skills in GameFi.
The Gala Games ecosystem consists of five parts: games, game publishing platform, NFT marketplace, cloud hosting, and $GALA token economics. Gala Games runs on a distributed network of computers rather than on centralized servers controlled by a single entity. These "computers" (called nodes) provide processing power to Gala Games' decentralized gaming network in exchange for rewards.
In the decentralized node network of Gala Games, users can decide which games can be launched on the Gala Games platform through consensus voting, and can also decide the reward ratio of nodes through voting. For games launched on the Gala Games platform, most of their in-game NFTs will be launched in the Gala NFT store, and a small number of NFTs will be allocated to the founder nodes using a random allocation algorithm.
Gala Games has released 18 games
Currently, Gala Games has launched 18 games. In addition to the official self-developed games Town Star, Meow Match, Mirandus and Last Expedition that are popular among players, there are also games from other studios such as GRIT, PokerGo Play, Spider Tanks, Superior, Legends Reborn, etc. These games cover various types such as role-playing, shooting, simulation business, card strategy and tower defense. The game platforms also span the web, PC, mobile, etc., covering almost all popular game types and operating platforms.
In addition, from the perspective of graphics, the quality of these games has far exceeded that of some other blockchain games of the same period. However, while ensuring the quality of the games, some problems have also arisen. High-quality games (3A or quasi-3A level) have high investment costs and long development cycles. In the fast-paced Crypto circle, how to adapt the economic model to the development progress is a huge challenge. In addition, the overall operation of Gala Games is centralized, and the decision-making is relatively efficient and centralized, but the community atmosphere is relatively weak, and the scope of node governance is limited. For ordinary investors, whether it is to obtain information or participate in investment, the entry threshold is quite high.
TreasureDAO: The "Nintendo" of the crypto world is ready to go, and "small and beautiful" is the first priority
Treasure DAO
Treasure DAO is a gaming ecosystem built on Arbitrum and connected by MAGIC tokens, with the goal of building a "decentralized Nintendo". Every item in the Treasure ecosystem (Legions NFT, MAGIC tokens, etc.) is distributed free of charge, and other collections on the Treasure market are also distributed free and fairly. Treasure was originally built on the Ethereum mainnet, but later because the Ethereum network gas cost was high at the time, in order to lower the user threshold, Treasure migrated to the L2 Arbitrum chain.
TreasureDAO Ecosystem Overview (Source: PKU Blockchain)
TreasureDAO was launched by the community in November 2021 in a community-driven, fair-launched manner. From a Loot copycat Treasure NFT, through the blockchain game Legions, Life NFT, and Magic, which started from air coins, it has slowly grown into one of the most well-known game ecosystems in the GameFi field. Looking back on its development history, the growth of TreasureDAO is inseparable from the support of its internal supporting infrastructure: the universal currency Magic and the three pillars Trove, Bridgeworld, and MagicSwap.
Trove is an NFT market and game launcher on Arbtrium that allows NFT transactions. Bridgeworld is the core economic hub of Treasure DAO. As a resource coordination game, it integrates many Defi gameplays around mining, farming, summoning, exploration, etc., to promote the development of Treasure DAO's economic system. In addition, there is the AMM protocol MagicSwap, which is committed to becoming the portal for the cross-game economy of the TreasureDAO ecosystem. Currently, Magicswap's swap and pool only have two trading pairs online: Magic/Gfly (BattleFly DAO's governance token) and Magic/ELM (Tales of Elleria's governance token).
The Beacon
With infrastructure support, we also need blockbuster games to make the ecosystem prosperous. The Beacon is the detonator that ignites the ecosystem. As a phenomenal product launched by Treasure DAO, The Beacon has nearly exceeded 26,000+ players in just one month since its launch on Arbitrum, and the number of purchases of the in-game creation character NFT has reached 65,000. The popularity of The Beacon has also driven the increase in Treasure DAO data, increasing the weekly active users of Treasure DAO from 5,000 to around 20,000, nearly quadrupling.
The Beacon is an RPG game. In the game, players can choose a basic weapon to enter the dungeon to explore. During the exploration, they can upgrade the weapon to fight better. The game modes include home mode, single-player PVE mode, and tavern Q&A. Home mode is used to edit houses, single-player PVE mode is to successfully explore the dungeon within the specified time, and you can get rewards. Tavern Q&A is mainly to answer questions from NPCs.
Although The Beacon itself is not very amazing, it has attracted a lot of attention in the Web3 field. One of the important reasons is that there are few really fun games in Web3 games. The emergence of The Beacon has brought some surprises to people. Although it may not be the top game in Web2 games, it is at a good level in Web3 games. This also shows that Web3 games are still in their early stages and there will be more exploration and development.
TreasureDAO is targeting the long-tail game market. 3A games are a standard that only a few game giants can reach. The growing number of Web3 players will have a great demand for such small games and AA games. TreasureDAO is trying to make this "small and beautiful" model work. Starting from the popular games, from point to surface, TreasureDAO has established a set of infrastructure and ecology to meet the needs of independent developers. Each game can benefit from the economic value and shared resources of MAGIC, and the accumulated player activity content can be used to form an economy. It will not be affected by the short cycle of a single game, so it has stronger ecosystem resilience.
Block Ape Scissors: Backed by Binance, the BSC blockchain game circle is "reshaped"
Compared with traditional 3A games, most of the previous GameFi projects still have very simple gameplay. Many projects that were hastily launched to catch up with the hot market still use the old routine of DeFi mining, and are engaged in the business of "mining, withdrawing and selling" under the guise of a game. In terms of game experience, it is very different from traditional online stand-alone games. From the perspective of economic model, many project parties even treat games as capital pools, which also leads to the dilemma of chain games "dying in the light". The BSC chain is even more severely affected by this kind of "local dog chain games". Looking back at history, some well-known GameFi 1.0 projects such as Farmer's World, Spaceship, THG, Raca, Valkyrio Valkyrie, and BNB Hero eventually could not escape the death spiral.
It is not to nail these GameFi 1.0 projects to the "pillar of shame". In fact, these low-quality Play-to-earn chain games also play an important role in the development of GameFi, but in essence, they are similar to dog mines and meme coins to some extent, and ultimately become short-term speculative tools for a small number of high-risk enthusiasts. At this stage, game players are no longer satisfied with this. They have higher requirements for the basic quality of the game and the token economy. Players will pay more attention to whether there is a way to solve the economic mechanism of a single game, whether the game is more playable, whether it has social attributes, etc. In this case, is there a way for players to promote the process themselves, select the chain games they like in all aspects, and participate in the development process? This is what Block Ape Scissors is doing.
Block ape scissors is a gaming community platform based on BNB Chain. It was announced on November 15, 2021 that it was incubated by Binance Labs. Its vision is to provide players with entertainment and create lasting value through innovative mechanisms and well-designed gaming experiences, and is committed to building the most diverse and advanced Play to Earn ecosystem. The platform introduces the DAO governance model to break the traffic barriers and power monopoly of traditional gaming platforms, provide more opportunities for emerging developers, and provide players with a safe, fair, and interesting gaming environment.
The most important of these is the DAO governance model. Players can obtain token pledge rights by purchasing a platform equity card called "Ape Banana miners", which uses a POS mining mechanism. Block Ape Scissors adopts a shared economy model to encourage community members to participate in the construction and operation of the platform. Participating in games, contributing content, and participating in governance activities can also earn a certain amount of platform tokens $Banana. Developers can also earn Banana by contributing games or providing services. This shared economy model encourages community members to actively participate and promotes a self-sufficient and sustainable ecosystem.
Community members and independent game developers will "act separately". For independent game developers, at a fixed time every month, they can upload their demos in the form of proposals, and then Block Ape Scissors DAO will process these proposals. Community members will select the most attractive and playable games through community voting. Block Ape Scissors will then incubate them, help developers complete the construction of the entire game, and then put them on the homepage of Block Ape Scissors for recommendation.
During the voting process, all DAO members who participated in the voting can enjoy the profits after the game is launched. For example, if game A is voted in and Block Ape Scissors incubates it, when game A brings in $1 million in profits, Block Ape Scissors can get 25% of the profits (to support further construction and expansion of the platform), Block Ape Scissors DAO Treasury can get 15% of the profits (for the salaries of DAO contributors and part of the proposal expenses), DAO members can get 10% (according to their corresponding voting rights), and the remaining 50% will be repurchased and burned in $Banana (to accelerate token deflation). (The above data is for example, the exact data is subject to official announcement)
It can be seen that community members and independent game developers have the same goal, and project owners and gamers are no longer on opposite sides. The entire Block Ape Scissors ecosystem will also be committed to developing games that are more suitable for the current blockchain game market. Whether pursuing the playability of the game or the closed loop of the economic model, community members will vote for the blockchain game they want, or in other words, the interest-driven game can select those games that make the Block Ape Scissors ecosystem more profitable.
In addition, for a blockchain game with financial attributes, the fairness of the game and the verification of transaction validity are crucial. Block Ape Scissors uses zk-SNARKs to achieve fast and efficient gameplay, allowing a large number of transactions to be processed in a few seconds, maintaining transaction privacy while verifying its correctness.
Block Ape Scissors is still exploring AI. In the future, it will train an AI robot to generate different economic models. DAO members will vote every week for the one they think is better to help the AI robot continuously optimize and find new solutions for GameFi.
Large Web2 game companies such as Ubisoft and Lilith are also looking for opportunities for change
It is worth mentioning that according to the Block Ape Scissors team, it has maintained good relations with many large Web2 game companies, and will gradually transform several game IPs that have swept the world in the next six months, using games to bring more players in traditional fields into the crypto world. Web3 games may break the dilemma of buying volume for traditional games in terms of business model (that is, attracting players through paid advertising and other means), and subvert the traditional profit distribution structure, providing developers with more monetization opportunities and creating new markets for the game industry. In the process of transitioning games from Web2 to Web3, Block Ape Scissors may have an opportunity to overtake on the curve, and the "big reshaping" of the BSC chain game circle may be just around the corner.
GameFi's future opportunities and challenges
On May 25, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said, “Web3 games are one of the biggest drivers of mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. In the next 6-18 months, some top games will be released in Web3. Last year alone, Web3 games raised more than $2 billion in funding.”
At present, the historical development of the entire game has reached a very critical turning point. The game industry urgently needs to cross the gap from Web2 to Web3 and move towards the era of blockchain games. Given the playability and economic value of games and NFTs, GameFi provides an opportunity to bring the next tens of millions of new users into the field of cryptocurrency. Looking back at the development history and development cycle of GameFi, the bull market in this segment may have been ready to move. We have bid farewell to the first half of GameFi's barbaric development. Who can achieve a paradigm shift and open up a new round of innovation and growth for the sluggish market? Let us wait and see.
Reference
The ZK-Snark Gaming Revolution
A brief discussion on the rise of Gala Games and its implications for Project 12
STEAM of Web3? — In-depth analysis of Treasure DAO
Understanding Treasure Dao's Iteration Journey in One Article
The Secret of Blockchain Game Economic Model
