This game not only provides entertainment value to users, but may also have economic value.
Written by: Mu Mu
In the cold winter, the call for “Summer of Games” suddenly sounded in the Web3 circle. One of the signs of recovery is that Ubisoft, a traditional 3A game manufacturer, is producing Web3 games, and NFTs in the games have been launched first.
On December 19, the NFT series The Warlords of Champions Tactics (hereinafter referred to as “The Warlords”) of the game “Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles” were all minted as soon as they were launched, and sales exceeded US$2 million within a few hours.
According to data from the NFT trading market Opensea, the floor price of The Warlords NFT is currently quoted at 0.18 ETH (equivalent to approximately 2,800 yuan). Currently, only 8% of the 9,999 NFTs are on sale, and not much has flowed into the secondary market. This suggests that the majority of addresses minting this NFT are holding it, rather than selling it.
The Champions Tactics game has not yet been officially launched, and potential enthusiasm is lurking. The main reason is the official information. The gameplay and production of this game tend to be traditional chain games. It has also reached a cooperation with the Web3 game guild Yield Guild Games. This company The guild is also a well-known “gold-making commune” in the chain gaming circle.
This strong signal indicates that this game not only provides entertainment value to users, but may also have economic value, which is the “Earn” in Play To Earn.
Only 8% of the 9999 minted NFTs went to the market
The chain game “Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles” (translated as “Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles”) produced by Ubisoft itself was exposed in July this year. At that time, the company released a trailer for the game , and positioned it in a high-profile way as a Web3 game.
For a time, the Web3 game circle began to track Ubisoft, a traditional 3A game giant.
On December 18, the NFT series “The Warlords” of the “Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles” (hereinafter referred to as “Champions Tactics”) game had its first round of priority list casting, and more people who were not eligible were waiting for the next day.
On December 19th, The Warlords opened for public casting, and they were all built in 20 minutes. Not long after, this series of NFTs appeared on the trading market Opensea, generating sales of US$2 million within a few hours, and quickly topped the market’s “24-hour hot list.”
The Warlords sales are booming
Official information shows that a total of 9,999 Warlords NFTs have been issued. The issuance chain of this series of NFTs is Ethereum, but the game “Champions Tactics” itself is deployed on the Oasys blockchain that is compatible with the Ethereum network. 8,000 NFTs are available for users to mint. It costs Ethereum fees (ETH) to mint, with another 1,000 provided to the Oasys community and 999 NFTs retained by Ubisoft for future marketing.
In other words, only 20% of NFTs remain in the hands of “team” groups, and more NFTs are targeted at the mass market.
On the NFT secondary market Opensea, the floor price of this pixel-style NFT is currently quoted at 0.18 ETH. Only 8% of the total issued NFT is on sale. There are almost only 800 Warlords NFTs listed for sale in the market by minters. Most minters seem to Keep the NFT.
In addition to the possibility of “holding the currency and waiting for it to rise”, this kind of user intention also has some people waiting to use it, and it cannot be ruled out that they are game users.
Because according to the official statement, holding Warlords NFT is equivalent to getting a ticket to visit the game’s “Foundry”, and you can cast 5 characters from the “Champions Tactics” game for free at a later time; in addition, these “Creation NFT” There are also additional benefits such as “airdrop” and “minting whitelist”.
Let’s take a look at how the game is played.
The official positioning of “Champions Tactics” is a PVP tactical role-playing game, which should be familiar to users who have played “Honor of Kings”. The game requires players to have combat strategies and call on the character’s “champions” for team battles. From “Warrior” to “Wizard”, each champion has its own ability points, and players who control these characters can use tactics and terrain to achieve victory.
Game characters are carried by NFT
The developer of “Champions Tactics” promises to provide a rich narrative experience. Judging from the second half of the game’s name, “Grimoria Chronicles”, this game will provide A grand story will be told, and NFT will be the character carrier in the game.
There are NFTs issued on the open public chain Ethereum, and there are also games deployed on the Oasys blockchain. Ubisoft’s “champion” can be called a true full-chain game, and it has the AAA status of this French gaming giant. With the endorsement of production capabilities, it’s no surprise that the market is so popular.
In fact, before “Champions Tactics”, Ubisoft had been eyeing Web3 games for a long time, but it was not very successful.
Not marked as 3A but with the expectation of “gold making”
2021 is the “final year” for Ubisoft’s entry into Web3. At that time, the method was just to test the water + investment, including building Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that can support NFT, and also launched Ubisoft Quartz on this platform to PC players that can be used in the 3A game “Ghost Recon” “Playable NFT” in “Breakpoint”; in addition, Ubisoft invested US$65 million in the blockchain game company Animoca Brands that year.
The return on investment is unclear, but the free NFTs awarded to users in “Breakpoint” did not impress PC players, and even attracted criticism from some users who said “I don’t know what these NFTs are for.” In April 2022, the subsequent development of “Breakpoint” was stopped, and NFT, which was not very popular, also died.
But Ubisoft does not intend to give up on the Web3 game market.
Baptiste Chardon, the company’s blockchain product director, believed at the time that in the long run, the integration of games and blockchain contains new opportunities, “such as interoperability between games… We believe that blockchain is It’s a way for creators to put the value they create back into the hands of players through games.”
Ubisoft has always been known for its narrative and production capabilities in game masterpieces. Since it began to test the waters of Web3 games, blockchain gamers have been looking forward to this major manufacturer to produce a game with both AAA quality and blockchain. A great game with special characteristics, in short, it is a chain game with good graphics, strong playability and the ability to “make gold”.
But this requirement is not easy to achieve, because the current blockchain network is far less smooth than the bottom layer of the traditional Internet, and cannot support 3A games that “make miracles with great effort”.
The AAA large-scale production concept proposed by Japanese game manufacturers uses money to create visual impact and gaming experience, but whether it can recover the cost depends on the market response. In recent years, Ubisoft has not been able to replicate the popularity of the AAA masterpiece “Assassin’s Creed”, and its market value has continued to shrink. At one point, it even had to rely on classic IP to “fried rice”.
Against this background, Ubisoft’s long-running Web3 games finally saw the light of day in the NFT sales of “Champions Tactics”. If you notice, Champions Tactics is not labeled “AAA” either. Ubisoft, which has been deeply involved in Web3 games for two years, has finally figured out this market. Whether it is NFT in the game or the chain required by the game, it cannot be built on its own platform, but needs to rely on a wider open area. Blockchain is the huge pool of traffic and funds.
This is also the biggest difference between “Champions Tactics” and “Breaking Point” launched two years ago. The latter is that the game is online and the NFT is on the chain. The result of “two skins” is that users on both sides do not buy it. PC Players cannot understand NFT, and NFT players have no “oil and water” to earn in the game.
It can be seen that Ubisoft also wants to understand. If it is only obsessed with designing Web3 games to be “as good” as traditional games, then it will lose the “watermelon and sesame seeds” and compare the weaknesses of blockchain with the strengths of traditional games.
Let’s talk about the Web3 game circle. Although developers are indeed holding back “big production”, judging from the market response, 3A-level exquisite graphics are not an absolute “magic pill” to stimulate players’ nerves. This year’s most popular Web3 game “BigTime” is indeed a step above other chain games in terms of graphics and sound effects, and the token BIGTIME, which has increased by 265% in a week, is the fuse that directly ignited market enthusiasm.
Excellent production is at best the icing on the cake for Web3 chain games, but more importantly, the design of the economic system in the game can attract capital inflow. “BigTime” has attracted more than 20 game guilds to compete, and the funds invested in the game have exceeded 21 million US dollars.
The most prominent attribute of Web3 games is value circulation, which is why it is called Play To Earn. Players play games on the chain because the time spent in the game can be monetized through various created NFTs and tokens.
Warlords NFT has started the prelude to character collection, and “Champions Tactics” has also attracted game guilds. The famous chain game guild Yield Guild Games (YGG) has cooperated with it. The guild has set a record in the phenomenal Web3 game “Axie Infinity” Record of monthly revenue exceeding US$100 million.
By partnering with an organization like YGG, Champions Tactics can undoubtedly accelerate its efforts to open up the Web3 player market.
As for how quickly it can gain a foothold, it still depends on when the game will be officially launched. One user on Reddit believes that only if the game can provide a new gaming experience and attract a lot of attention and active players, it can become an important milestone in the development of Web3 games.
