Skill Tree #3 - January 22

🔥 Highlight

PlaiLabs raises $32m in a seed round led by a16z.

PlaiLabs is building web3 social platforms (a year ago everyone would have called it metaverse) with the use of AI. Not much info is publicly available, so we’ll just have to wait what that means.

Their first game is Champions Ascension, where AI will play a vital role, according to the team.

PlaiLabs is led by Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb, who have previously co-founded game studio Jam City and social media platform MySpace.

Jam City facts:

• 30m MAU across titles (e.g. Disney Emoji Blitz, Hogwarts Mystery, Frozen Adventures)

• Started with Match3 games but later expanded into other genres like Puzzle, RPG and Strategy

• Focused on licensed games, for example with Disney, Harry Potter, Frozen, and Family Guy

a16z shared an short article explaining their investment:

a16z Games @a16zGames

We’re excited to announce our investment in @PlaiLabs alongside @a16zcrypto. Founded by @Chris_DeWolfe & @AberWhitcomb, @Myspace & @JamCityHQ cofounders, PLAI is focused on building the next generation of social gaming platforms leveraging AI and web3.

a16z.comInvesting in PLAI LabsWe’re thrilled to announce our investment in PLAI Labs, founded by Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb, who previously founded MySpace and game studio Jam City.

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📰 News

— Voodoo (french hypercasual game studio and publisher) reveals its own blockchain ecosystem ‘Voodoo Infinity‘, launching in Q3 2023. 10 games are in development right now, with 3 planned for the launch. Voodoo Infinity will be launching as an app on the App Store and Google Play Store.

— Createra raises $10m Series A led by a16z. Createra is a cloud-based engine, allowing players to easily build multiplayer games with web3 elements. Createra aims to become the metaverse for UGC creators.

As a result of the announcement, Createra’s Genesis Land collection (FREE mint on January 14) jumped from a 0.25 ETH floor to 1.75 ETH at the peak. At the time of writing, floor price is 0.8 ETH.

Createra so far has been focused on Asia, accumulating ~15 million, 500k builders and 1.3 million average monthly users.

Createra @Createra_

Exciting News!👏 We've raised $10M led by @a16z to build a UGC #metaverse engine for #builders to create, distribute, and MetaFi games!🤗 A16z's first Meta Pub is also live on Createra!! 👉Enter: createra.fun/play/a16z-meta… The era of creators begins!🦾👇 finance.yahoo.com/news/createra-…

finance.yahoo.comCreatera Raises $10 Million Led by Andreessen Horowitz to Boost Gen Z-Focused Gaming MetaverseCreatera is a user-generated content (UGC) metaverse engine enabling creators to create, distribute, and MetaFi games.

— Club Game developer Formation Games expands development team with 3 industry veterans.

— Scenario, an AI-powered art engine for games, raises 6m

Emm @emmanuel_2m

BIG news for @Scenario_gg - we’re beyond thrilled to announce our $6M seed round with a group of incredible investors, including @PlayVentures, @AnorakVentures, @TheVRFund, @fdotinc, and more. @TechCrunch just covered the news this morning: techcrunch.com/2023/01/19/sce… #GenAI

— Intella X announces $12m raise

Polygon Gaming @PolygonGaming

Get ready to maximize your gaming experience 🎮🚀 @NEOWIZWest, the South Korean gaming giant, just raised $12M in private funding for their #Web3 gaming platform, IntellaX by @TeamIntella 🤯 AND it’s launching #onPolygon 💜 in Q1 2023 🗓️ intellax.io

— Stardust integrates Avalanche

Stardust @Stardust

We are excited to announce that we've partnered and fully integrated @avalancheavax! Gaming is a huge focus of the Avalanche ecosystem and we're stoked to accelerate game development with our low-code NFT tools and custodial wallet infrastructure!

gameon.stardust.ggStardust BlogStardust Adds Avalanche, Providing Powerful New Scaling Solutions for Game Developers

— Avalanche x ReadyPlayerDAO

Avalanche 🔺 @avalancheavax

The @GamingOnAvax community not only builds amazing products on #Avalanche, they also support and secure the ecosystem. @ReadyPlayerDAO is the latest to operate a validator on Avalanche, joining other gaming leaders like @GREE_pr_jp!

Avalanche Gaming 🔺 @GamingOnAvax

Gaming on #Avalanche is leveling up! @ReadyPlayerDAO is bringing accessible content creation at scale to game developers across @avalancheavax. Game devs now access and grow their games through top tier gaming influencers. https://t.co/LUKrqT3kKT

— TreasureDAO x MetaFab

Treasure @Treasure_DAO

We've teamed up with @tryMetaFab to unlock frictionless player and builder experiences across all of Treasure! As our newest strategic partner providing blockchain game dev infra, MetaFab will be leveraged for several first-party Treasure products. Why does this matter? 👇

— Parallel starter decks are coming to the Coinbase NFT marketplace before game release

Parallel @ParallelTCG

Introducing @ParallelTCG Starter Decks! Each deck is fully playable, contains 𝟰𝟬 𝗡𝗙𝗧 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀, and includes a short strategy guide to help you get a head start. 45,000 Parallel TCG Starter Decks will be available closer to full game release via our partner @Coinbase_NFT

— MatchBoxDAO launches eSports tournaments for developers. The goal is to find the best technical team

MatchboxDAO @matchbox_dao

We are finally launching: "Matchbox Arena"✨ With the "Battle of Titans" as the first CTF competition released on the platform, we'll officially release "Matchbox Arena" tomorrow where the players will be able to upload their code. mirror.xyz/matchboxdao.et… More info below 👇

mirror.xyzIntroducing MatchBox ArenaMatchboxDao is organizing an E-sport tournament: 0xMonaco: The battle of Titans in a closed league with only the best Web3 companies as participants. It will be the “World cup of the Web3 companies” to find out which company has the best technical team. There will be real-time streaming and top-tier…

— GDC survey: “Only 23 percent of developers say that their studios are interested in Web3 technology“

tbh, 23% doesn’t sound too bad, keeping in mind the negative NFT news in mainstream media and that there hasn’t been a (non-speculative) hit game yet.

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📚 Education

— Analysis of the skin economy in CS:GO

Rich Cabrera 🎮 @ReadyPlayerRich

CS:GO gave a talk at GDC in 2014 around the launch of their economy that is VERY important for everyone developing games in web3 I watched the entire hour long talk so I could break it down for you but feel free to check it out here: gdcvault.com/play/1021349/B… MEGA 🧵1/13

gdcvault.comBuilding the Content that Drives the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive EconomyWhen our team set out to add an economy to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, we were faced with two huge challenges. First, we needed to create enough content to satisfy over a million players with only two artists. That part wasn’t so bad....

— Currencies in game economies

Kiefer Zang @KieferZang

The model of using a volatile token as a medium of exchange currency is broken, but that doesn't mean Web3 games have to give up on tokens or use a stablecoin Let's dive into semi-stable currencies, learning from a metaverse with a $650 million GDP (Second Life) & from China👇

Taking on this central banking function may also introduce a new revenue stream for games (buying low, selling high).

— Overview of Nor’s Economy

I already provided my views in the WolvesDAO Discord, so just gonna share them here as well. Nor is one of the projects I’m looking forward to the most

— Jonah Blake on the FOGDAO Podcast, talking about value accrual in web3 games

Quick summary (more insights in the episode):

Game NFTs get value from the social significance of the game (note: especially for skins.). Other NFTs get value from art, price momentun, liquidity, etc.

As all games die after some time (with only a few notable exceptions), gaming tokens will tend to zero. The risk/reward is not there to try to find the exceptions. Jonah prefers publisher tokens over game tokens.

Note: I also wrote about the topic

0xKepler 🔭 | building in stealth @0xKepler

Investing in web3 gaming is difficult. Most games fail. Even if the game is successful, will it be a good investment too? But there are not just game tokens and NFTs as investment opportunities out there to profit from the rise of web3 gaming 🧵

— Breaking video game economies

h/t @0xAhri for the find

— Lighspeed is betting big on gaming

— Bankless show on the Arbitrum ecosystem, with TreasureDAO and Beacon

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🕵️ New projects

Peripheral

Twitter: @peripherl

Chief revenue officer for web3 games, spotting opportunities to retain, convert and nurture their most valuable players.

Moonbounce

Twitter: @getmoonbounce

Turning your browser into multiplayer mode.

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🎁Surprise

To make things more exciting (and give myself a space to share whatever I want), I decided to add a little surprise section to the newsletter. Sometimes it will be there, sometimes it won’t. The content will always be different.

This time, I wanted to use the section to recommend a great Substack about game design I just discovered this week.

Go check out:

Luden's Locker