Skill Tree #2 - January 15
🔥 Highlight
Limitbreak introduces opt-in programmable royalties.
TL;DR
Staking for NFTs: Holders stake their NFT and receive a wrapped version.
As logic can be embedded into the staking contract, this makes NFTs programmable. The logic can be different for each individual NFT.
This allows developers to add additional “parameters” to the NFT, such as transfer whitelist to enforce royalties (+ royalty sharing), an unstaking time-lock (extreme case: NFT locked forever), or a minimum (or maximum) price at which holders are allowed to sell.
As these parameters can be quite restrictive to holders, creators need to provide additional utility for stakers.
The system is opt-in because each holder can decide whether they want to stake their NFT or not.
Caveat: Some developers might lean heavily into restricting most functionality for non-staked NFTs. For example, all utility and even NFT reveal might be locked behind the contract.
The staking system gives developers a lot of power. In the end, it depends on how they’ll utilize staking. The model is primarily targeted towards games (NFTs with utility as there needs to be an incentive to stake and adhere to the restrictions embedded into the contract) who need to have levers to control the economy, and therefore, the NFT flow. Open economies are hard, so there needs to be some degree of control (including, enforcing royalties, which are basically taxes). On the other hand, overusing these tools closes down the economy and turns players into second-class citizens. In this case, NFTs would just be a new form of IAPs.
Staking functionality can be added for any NFT collection. NFTs don’t have to meet any special conditions, making the system “backwards-compatible“.
awaiting the definitely upcoming veNFTs and liquid wrappers for them /s
📰 News
— Gala Games reveals Ember Entertainment to be the mobile game studio they acquired. Their game ‘Dragon Strike‘ will have weekly play-to-earn tournaments.
— Wildcard mint details: 📅 January 26
— ‘Captain Tsubasa Rivals’ launches on Polygon. At the current stage, the game is invite-only. All info here.
— Axie Infinity: Origins Season 2 is live.
— Skyweaver’s expansion ‘Hexbound Invasion‘ starts on January 16
— Parallel Alpha Release Trailer. The last base set drop happened on January 14 and sold out in 1 minute.
— Stella Fantasy reveals tokenomics.
Stella’s token SFTY looks to be primarily used for high-grade resources and character upgrades.
Depending on how restrictive the game is (content requires high-level characters and gear), content may effectively end up ‘paywalled’ at a certain point. At the other end of the spectrum, SFTY usage may only be needed for hardcore players looking to maximize their stats (and earnings). As rewards earned from boss raids are determined by total damage done, strong characters are essential here, creating a cyclical loop.
Rewards can be earned in Abyss Rifts, seasonal boss raids, and in PvP. Token inflation is controlled in 2 key ways. (1) Boss raids and PvP content have a set reward pool which player share according to their rankings. (2) Abyss Rifts require an entry fee and have a weekly entry limit.
— Opensea launches on Arbitrum Nova, Arbitrum’s L2 for gaming and social.
Arbitrum Nova is a chain to look out for with regards to web3 gaming that is still flying under the radar. Arbitrum One hosts community-favorite DeFi projects, so I expect the same business development strength from Nova. Bringing Opensea over is a small step into the right direction.
📚 Education
— Games industry veteran Mitch Lasky (30 years of experience as a game executive at Activision and EA) starts podcast ‘Gamecraft’.
The 8 episodes will cover the history of business models and distribution, including F2P, casual and mobile gaming, user-generated content, virtual reality, and in-game economies.
The first two episodes are already live on https://www.gamecraftpod.com/
—
NFT predictions for 2023Gaming related trends
White-label in-game marketplaces
Verticalized NFT marketplaces (and aggregators 👀) for gaming
Digidaigaku could become the Genshin Impact of web3
— A Twitter Space with Activision Blizzard Chief Strategy Officer Ken Wee about web3 gaming.
Recording:
Summary by apix:
— A thesis for browser gaming
— Konvoy Ventures, a leading investor in gaming with $252m AUM, releases their Gaming Industry Report.
Summary:
— Blockchain Game Alliance releases their 2022 member survey and report.
Summary:
— Unity publishes 2022 report.
Summary:
— Analysis of why Brawl Stars retired loot boxes by Deconstructor of Fun (Javier Barnes).
tl;dr randomness-based systems become ineffective at enabling player progression once a lot of content has been released. The chances of players pulling items they want out of loot boxes become too small, putting pressure on monetization and engagement.
Allowing players to directly buy the items they want moves the game from vertical spending depth (pay a lot for one character) to horizontal spending depth (buying a specific character is cheap, but players want to own many different characters and buy upgrades, skins, etc. for them). If the change has a positive effect on revenue is an open question which can be answered in the coming weeks.
As players may progress through content quicker, it could lead to lower retention (especially of advanced players) and would require a faster flow of new content.
By removing loot boxes, monetization moves away from high spenders to mid spenders. This flattens the revenue curve, meaning it takes longer to reach a good ROAS. This may put pressure on UA activities. As Brawl Stars already has a huge audience, there focus is likely less on acquiring new players and more on retention and monetization of their existing player base.
As several specific conditions need to apply for such a move away from loot boxes to make sense, it’s unlikely many game studios will take the same route.
— Using AMMs in game economies
— A small idea I liked
— Web3 predictions by Justin Hulog, Chief Studio Officer at Immutable
🕵️ New projects
Bitmates
Twitter: @PlayBitmates
MMORPG with an upcoming beta in Q1
Souk markets
Twitter: @SoukMarkets
NFT & Marketplace Infrastructure on StarkNet. Their only published article specifically talks about new token standards for gaming.
Arclight Arena
Twitter: @ArclightArena
Card game/auto-battler
Mad Raid
Twitter: @MadRaidGame
F2P multiplayer strategy game
Town Story
Twitter: @townstorygamefi
Social simulation game coming to Arbitrum Nova
PS, a short anecdote from me
