A few days ago, I saw an article that said that several blue-chip PFP NFTs that were once brilliant have been falling endlessly in this round of bear market, and some prices have even dropped by 99%. Our hearts are bleeding. The PFP NFT sector should be the first type of project that new entrants in the last wave of the bull market came into contact with. It is simple and straightforward, and it can be rushed if there is a consensus. These new leeks are young, enthusiastic, and new to the encryption circle. I saw that there is a community with a DAO and a consensus. More importantly, Money is so easy to earn. You don’t need to understand code, learn finance, or do investment research like the old leeks. Get some pictures and say it's worth thousands of dollars and it's thousands of dollars. What are you waiting for, go! Then a big victory in one battle, another small victory, and the final battle...
For a bystander, I don't quite understand the logic of how PFP NFT can maintain its value for a long time without continuous empowerment. Even Yuga Labs, which has money, resources and understands operations like a boring ape, has to be launched early Chain game Otherside to increase the consensus of the project. Of course, a master in the encryption circle said: The consensus of fools is also consensus, but consensus is also like love, which needs to be cared for and maintained. What's more, in the bear market, idiots are also evolving. The number of pure idiots is not much, and those who are still insisting have said that "the landlord's family has no surplus food", and the life of the PFP NFT project will be even more difficult.
How to solve the problem? The most direct way is to make PFP-like NFTs usable first. While the social attributes of showing off are degraded, can adding other practical attributes can tide over the difficulties first? Just like housing, when the investment attribute is slowly stripped away, let’s increase the empowerment of the residential attribute.
In the world of blockchain and Web3, NFT and blockchain games have always been inseparable partners. From the creation of the ERC-721 standard by Dieter Shirley in 2017, the launch of the Crypto Kitty game by Axiom Zen, which led to ETH congestion, to the global GameFi boom caused by Axie at the climax of the last bull market, and the enrichment of the X 2 E track by StepN last year... NFT has given The soul of the game makes the game assets belong to the player, and makes the game characters and equipment fully capitalized; while the game expands the application territory of NFT, so that NFT has more practical functions and landing scenarios. In this article, we briefly analyze the possibility and actual implementation of the combination of PFP NFT and chain games, as well as some existing cases.
Although the cross-field development of NFT and blockchain games has been continuing, the depth and breadth are far from perfect integration. What we usually call NFT, the mainstream classification includes 6 types, including personal images (PFP), artwork, game assets, tickets and passes, virtual land, domain names, etc., among which PFP occupies the bulk of NFT, accounting for the total transaction 78.7% of the volume. There are so many PFP NFTs mentioned above, here is the formal definition: PFP NFT is an avatar NFT. In addition to being used as an avatar, this NFT can also be a kind of membership pass, which is a reflection of the social value and status of an Internet person. Community consensus quickly forms among groups with similar values and is accepted by most people. Obviously, PFP has jumped out of the small picture itself and has become a new paradigm of IP, and IP is the real narrative of the story behind PFP.
The PFP NFT community mainly based on IP attributes has strong cohesion, high NFT value and liquidity, can seamlessly connect with art and social networking, and has its own traffic; but its limitations are also obvious-the usage scenarios are relatively monotonous, and NFT endows If it is not enough, most projects lack the second layer of narrative, that is, the real usage scenario of NFT. PFP-type NFT projects have no problem in the bull market, and the price is soaring. You can enjoy yourself to the top every day when you face an ugly monkey with hanging eyes, and the adrenaline is desperately secreted. As long as the consensus is in place, a market value can be pulled up flat. The picture kingdom of Baiyi U, but is this path still feasible in a bear market?
In contrast to chain game projects, the NFT in most games is still based on the game content. NFT has usage scenarios (generally used for Pass cards, game heroes, equipment, etc.), but the main problem is that the consensus is weak, the influence is limited, and the traffic The bottleneck is obvious. Especially for the cold-start GameFi project, the project party needs to spend a lot of manpower and material resources to produce and promote its game NFT, and it also invisibly increases the learning cost of users.
Since PFP NFT and chain games have such a significant complementarity, let’s analyze their ideas for cross-border integration of the two sectors:
From the perspective of the path of NFT embedding games, there are several ways:
PFP NFT holders directly receive the game's Passcard or game value NFT. This method is the most simple and direct, but it feels abrupt, and if it is not done well, it will feel forced. This is the initial stage.
In some scenes or copies of the game, holders of a certain type of PFP NFT have special bonuses or privileges, and the development of the game in this scene or copy is related to the background of the NFT project, such as the color of the map and NPC . This is the intermediate stage.
Background and cultural integration. This is the advanced stage. It is necessary to embed the community theme, spirit and culture formed by the NFT community for a long time into the game. It is not simply to find a game and change the skin. We came into contact with a game supported by a PFP NFT project, and even added some stories and key characters from the early development of the project to a copy of the game.
From the point of view of the implementation of integration, there are also two ideas:
One is to expand from PFP NFT to the chain game field, that is, to establish IP first, and then fill in game application scenarios. Typical representatives of this category include Yuga Labs’ Otherside and the recently popular Flappy Moonbird;
The other is to build a game platform first, provide a GAAS (Gameplay as a Service) tool for IP project parties or holders, and further attract more IPs to settle in. The representative project is Mobaverse.
Let us introduce and analyze the three cases mentioned above one by one.
01、Otherside
Boring ape Yuga Labs has made brilliant achievements in the NFT PFP field, with multiple rounds of airdrop empowerment, countless star platforms, the acquisition of Cryptopunks and Meetbits, and announced that it will launch a game called Otherside, which culminated in the release of land NFT, triggering years of excitement. Unseen Gas War. As the metaverse game of Boring Ape World, Otherside can be said to be the benchmark project of PFP NFT crossover. Otherside is positioned as a MetaRPG and will be established as a gamified, decentralized interoperable world (Interoperable World). Not only the holders of Boring Ape, but also the NFT of other projects can be integrated into Otherside's metaverse game In the world, ambition is great.
What kind of Metaverse game world is Otherside? Although we got a preliminary glimpse of the game in the first Voyager voyage of Otherside in July last year and Legends of the Mara released in March this year, but because of the limited space of the game, there is still a lot of content to be further explored. According to the official statement, Otherside will follow three principles:
Build with the community. In addition to being able to participate in the internal beta of the game, Voyager can also personally download the development kit and use the construction tools;
Ownership and interactivity. Otherdeed is not just a picture, but also represents land ownership in the game world, and affects land attributes through activities;
incentives. Establish deep connections with players, provide incentives for creators, and become an open and interoperable Metaverse world.
I have to say that the layout of Otherside is a very clever move. From the perspective of embedding, BAYC holders can obtain the game pass card without barriers. The cultural background of the game is also tailored for the BAYC community. The grafting and transition of community culture is perfect. From the point of view of the landing method, with the help of BAYC's IP influence, from NFT to games, it directly exploded the sales of Otherdeed land, achieving the spectacle of a monkey land where thousands of people empty the alley. Through the Otherside metaverse world, Yuga Labs not only connected elements such as BAYC's NFT IP, Land NFT, and APE tokens in series, but also created an IP matrix centered on BAYC by linking with many head IPs. In addition, the game will also provide developers with an SDK so that developers can create based on the platform. The launch of Otherside is an innovation to the concept of games and metaverses. It has established a metaverse world based on strong IP identity and connection. This is not available in other metaverses and game projects, and it is also one of the great advantages of Otherside. And all of this is based on the BAYC community of Yuga Labs.
02、Flappy Moonbird
A recent piece of news "Flappy Moonbird completed a $2 million financing at a valuation of $60 million" was released to various WEB3 media, wondering if the blue-chip PFP NFT Moonbird is also going to enter the game field? After further research, it was found that the model of Flappy Moonbird is slightly different from that of Otherside. It is not a game made by the official Moonbird team, but a new project produced and operated by a third-party independent team authorized. The team claims to have developed more than 100 casual games.
Let me talk about the basic situation of the projects we researched: Flappy Moonbird was very popular when it first launched at the beginning of this year. Now I go to DappBay to check the data, and both user growth and weekly activity rank first in DappBay. Among the popular games, the Flappy Moonbird family contributed 11.1% of the active users, which can be said to be the master of the BNB ecosystem. And Flappy Moonbird can achieve such results, largely because the project makes full use of the traffic of Moonbird IP, and several games launched at the same time are very easy to use. This is one of the characteristics of WEB3 games we have been talking about: It can be difficult to advance, but easy to get started!
The project has a good background and is quite rich. The project angel round is participated by Moonbirds NFT holders. At the end of last year, it received a financing of 6 million US dollars led by LinkVC. In April this year, it completed the Pre-B round of 2 million led by FBG Capital. million dollars in financing.
According to the information on the official website, Flappy Moonbird consists of 4 parts: Flappy Moonbird, which is similar to Flappy Bird, Racing Birds, an AI Birdnopoly similar to Monopoly, and the casual game Metaverse. His family formed a continuous matryoshka through these four games:
First of all, through Flappy Moonbird free game, lower the entry threshold of the game, attract as many users as possible, and allow users to accumulate initial assets and game currency through playing games;
Then through Racing Bird, adding competitive quiz elements, the wealth accumulated by ordinary players in Flappy Moonbird has the opportunity to multiply;
Finally, through the establishment of Monopoly and casual metaverses, combined with AI technology, an interesting and rich metaverse world will be created.
The above three layers of gameplay and narrative are progressive, and form a closed loop on the economic model, which can quickly capture a large number of players in the early stage, and at the same time enhance player stickiness in the process, and establish a complete game ecosystem in the final metaverse , to better retain players. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with the logic, that is, the method of adding nesting doll modules to a single game in the economic model has been expanded to the mutual nesting of each game, making the value transmission line longer.
Take another look at how his family embeds PFP NFT into the game. The empowerment of Moonbird NFT holders in the Flappy Moonbird game mainly focuses on the first and third categories we described before, that is, Moonbird NFT holders who became supporters in the early stage of the project and can get the game Genesis bird airdrop; at the same time, the entire background and culture of the game is also in line with the Moonbird NFT project, allowing players to feel familiar as soon as they enter. From the point of view of the implementation method, based on the NFT community and expanding to game content, it is also similar to the Otherside model, but different from the Otherside, the two projects of NFT and games are relatively independent, and their operation and development are also decided independently.
Based on the existing roadmap, it can be seen that future projects include game pass NFT casting (coming online on May 9, 2023), token airdrops, rare bird NFTs, and land NFTs. We can infer that the project party ultimately wants to present a metaverse platform with Moonbird IP as the core, so that Moonbird NFT holders or other game participants can experience various casual games on the platform to gain more in-depth Learn about Moonbird culture.
03、Mobaverse
Mobaverse is a new project we have recently come into contact with. It is essentially a game platform compatible with various PFP NFTs. The first main game is the MOBA type. This project welcomes all kinds of PFP NFT project parties or holders to join in and play, let their NFT IP become the hero in the game, and produce a series of customized content, which can easily realize the commercialization of IP in the Mobaverse platform . Future projects will also focus on UGC to further incubate IP peripherals and new IP content.
Summarize
Summarize
Through the analysis of the above three cases, we can see three different integration ideas:
Yuga Labs is taking a relatively traditional, asset-heavy path, that is, with PFP NFT as the core, expanding the application scenarios of the NFT system horizontally, and the team is deeply involved in creating Otherside games. Such a strong control method can fully empower the game. It can give NFT to achieve real resource sharing and create a complete ecosystem; but the long development cycle of 3A games, a large amount of manpower and material investment, complex gameplay and economic models will also become shackles and push up the game’s value. risk.
Relatively speaking, Flappy Moonbird is taking a relatively light-weight path. It licenses IP to independent third-party game teams. At the beginning, the game opened up the market with the popularity of NFT and completed the first wave of user drainage; while casual games The ease of use allows Moonbird NFT holders to have a preconceived advantage to enter; at the same time, through rapid iteration and continuous market feedback, adjust the game's empowerment for NFT. There is more mutual support and cooperation between games and NFT.
Mobaverse, on the other hand, starts from the perspective of games, collects and integrates influential NFT IPs on the market, and puts them in the game, making full use of mature IP resources, while focusing on the creation of gameplay and game content.
Although Otherside and Flappy Moonbird have slightly different ideas, they are both paths from creating NFT IP to game development, while Mobaverse is the opposite, from developing a game platform to incubating IP. The above two are the mainstream paths for the integration of NFT and chain games in the market now, a bit like the transformation and switching between singers and actors, you can sing while you can act, or you can sing while you are excellent. These two paths have no advantages or disadvantages, but are different in direction and thinking, and both have certain feasibility.
However, subversion often comes from the outside. At present, besides actors and singers, Internet celebrities have stepped in and set foot in the roles of actors and singers. In the same way, in the web3 world, is it possible that projects in other related fields (such as SocialFi) will expand to PFP NFT (IP) and chain game tracks, and instead embark on a more successful path?
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