Matr1x: The right people did the right chain game on the right track

Source: ABCDE

It is not difficult to see from the blockchain conferences such as ETHCC that ended before that the blockchain industry has once again entered the “ice period” of the narrative (except for the inscription ecology of Bitcoin’s “prosperity”), and funds and projects are currently mainly concentrated at the infrastructure level, including public chain modularization, Mev, AA wallet, ZK, etc., and lack of new growth points in the narrative, especially the narrative of large-scale user adoption and conversion.

Whether it is V God said a few years ago that “the landing scene of blockchain will be finance and games first”, or Web2’s 3 billion massive players + 200 billion US dollars of huge industrial market value, Web3 Game carries great hope for blockchain to break the circle and the next narrative growth point at the current stage. Although the first attempt in the past two years, Play(Move)to Earn, represented by Axie and StepN, failed after a brief explosion due to its Ponzian economic model, which overemphasized the lack of play gameplay of Earn, hundreds of teams are actively exploring the new generation of “Gamefi 2.0” on the shoulders of their predecessors. The billions of dollars in financing in the past year of the entire Web3 game track also reflect the favor of developers and capital for this track.

In the past few months, we have seen more triple-A RPG games that emphasize more playability, as well as NFT+ games based on NFT Free to Own, or NFT+ games that continue to empower NFTs, or Bet to Earn/Skill to Earn that have added a certain degree of betting and competitive nature… New ideas emerge one after another, but back to the roots, the current direction of Web3 Game (or Gamefi 2.0) is basically two categories:

The first type can be called Web 2.5 style. Emphasize Play & Earn, weaken the component of Earn, and increase the proportion of Play. Different from 2018, when the hammer was used to find a nail, and various applications were “chain reformed”, the blockchain carries not only a simple concept of “assets on the chain”, but also the cultural and story background of the combination of games and blockchain, the NFT-based Web3 community of players, and the governance of on-chain and off-chain, etc., all give Web2.5 style and Web2 Game a different experience.

The second category is the more original “pure Web3 Game”, Crypto Native, Fully On-chain Game, and now there is a new term, Autonomous World, represented by the Dark Forest, OpCraft, Curio, Topology, Influence, etc. are at the forefront, this track narrative is more ambitious, more blockchain native, but it is still in the very early stages. To use a less appropriate analogy, it’s a bit like Defi in 2018, or ZK in 20, which still needs a few years to iterate and develop.

After all this foreshadowing, we finally get back to the point, why should we invest in Matr1x?

Because Matr1x is what we see in the current market, it is a project that has gone to the extreme in the first type of Web2.5 style game track, and there is no one for the time being.

There are four reasons for this:

• Track Selection — Web2 Games Proven for Years

If you are a veteran player with many years of gaming experience, you must have noticed that PUBG (Chicken), which was released 5 or 6 years ago, can almost be regarded as the last non-standalone “phenomenal game”, and the gaming industry has not had major exciting gameplay innovations for many years after that. With the gradual decline of MMORPGs represented by “World of Warcraft”, the two most mature game tracks in the current game market and most in line with the current fast-paced fragmented life are shooting and MOBA.

The shooting genre is basically CSGO genre (including Valorant) and PUBG genre (including Call of Duty, War Zone and Fortnite).

Everyone is more familiar with MOBA, DOTA, LOL, pesticides…

Matr1x directly chose this shooting to be a fully verified, extremely mature track, and the first game is directly benchmarked against CSGO, and the second gameplay under development is a chicken eating class (CSGO has also recently launched a chicken mode to verify that shooting can’t escape the two major modes of team confrontation and survival in the end), since it is a Web2.5 game, there is no need to seek innovation like Fully Onchain, and directly choose the hottest and most mature shooting track.

There is a more important reason for choosing shooting, that is, the competition and live broadcast, many viewers who don’t play chicken themselves like to watch streamers play chicken on Huya or Twitch. It can be seen how important a game with a “sense of competition” and “liveability” is to traffic. We’ve always wanted to go to “Mass Adoption” through Gamefi, and it’s the kind of non-gold, sustainable model, then the game and live broadcast are very likely to be the way to break the game, and the premise of all this is that the genre of this game is suitable for matches and live broadcasts, and the quality makes people “love to play” and “love to watch”. This is a live broadcast that Matr1x invited a former professional esports player to do in August, and the number of viewers reached 110,000.

By the way, the hottest game streams on Twitch over the past few months have been dominated by both Valorant and CSGO.

• Game quality — equivalent to Web2 headers

Web2.5 emphasizes Play more than Earn, Axie is obviously placed in Web2 more than 10 years ago The picture and playability are definitely not up to par, and the next generation of Web3 Game must at least have enough attraction at the “Play” level. Where is the ceiling of this “enough”? Naturally, it is Web2’s head game on the same track.

For Matr1x, the upper limit of playability is CSGO and Valorant.

As far as the beta video released so far and the feedback from the beta players, Matr1x’s first game, Matr1x Fire, is basically the same as Valorant in terms of graphics, playability and other aspects at the game level, in other words, even if this is not a Web3 game, Web2 is still competitive enough to attract many players in the shooting field. Now it is placed in the chain game circle is the absolute ceiling level.

Another very worthwhile thing to mention is that CSGO and Valorant do not have a mobile game version, which makes many players who want to experience these two games have been daunted, mobile games are currently a market three times that of the terminal game, and Matr1x Fire is to directly seize this opportunity to directly develop the mobile game version, and at the same time, players who want to experience the game on the PC side will also have a special emulator for them to use, which can be said to be very intimate

In the 20-day alpha test in August, there were more than 200,000 registered players, more than 100,000 downloads, an average of 15,000 daily active players, a maximum of 4,000 concurrent users, an average game time of two hours, and it is worth emphasizing that the test player base included a significant number of traditional shooter professional and semi-professional esports players. This data is already a very good result on the testnet of any Web2 game, and it is simply a game to beat the dust on the Web3 side, and it also once again verifies the quality of the game that Matr1x matches the Web2 head.

• Gameplay & Culture — Web2 Experience + Web3 Culture

As mentioned before, Web3 games that focus on Web2.5 hybrid style, if they are simply Web2 gameplay + tokens and NFT assets on the chain, will be no different from the “chain reform” that emerged in 2018, and it is difficult to operate for a long time, Legend 4 is the best example.

The hybrid style of Web2.5 must have an exclusive Web3 gameplay, and second, it must have a narrative and culture different from Web2. When Matr1x was first tested in closed beta, some players questioned why I didn’t just play CSGO or Valorant if I wanted to play the game.

The answer is because of culture – just as people in this circle don’t look at whether you’re wearing a Rolex or Patek Philippe, they look at your avatar if it’s not a Punk or a monkey.

It’s the same with playing games — when playability is consistent, why not play games that fit the culture of our circle?

Matr1x has really put a lot of effort into gameplay and culture, and the whole game is set in an AI society where the earth’s resources are depleted in the future, and human data sovereignty is monopolized by some super-large organizations such as Uranus (Black Mirror Season 6, Episode 1, Vision), and Matr1X Alliance is in a head-on conflict with Uranus in order to regain data sovereignty (think Web3’s Read, Write, Own…). ）。 At present, the novel with the background of the story has more than 100,000 words, and the entire structure is divided into a trilogy of unified world view, the first CSGO + chicken mode takes place on Earth, the second shooting + MMORPG game continues the first generation of the plot takes place on Mars, and the third game is the interstellar era, and the game type is to be determined.

As for the gameplay level, in fact, most users don’t perceive this as a Web3 game under normal circumstances, and when the official promotion is only to position itself as a CSGO-like game on the mobile game side, only when you want more dazzling characters, cooler gun skins, and want to find similar CSGO gun skin markets, will you notice these NFT and Market Place elements.

In short, the elements of Play to Earn are weakened very lightly in the whole game, and some unique genetics, incubation and other characteristics of NFT will bring Web2 players some different experiences. At present, it is only a limited beta stage, and the NFT 2061 issued by it has accumulated a trading volume of more than 7,000E, and the floor price is 2.1E, which has increased more than ten times in just a few months.

• A team that is both excellent and “gets things done”

The team is very important to do Web3 projects, and if you want to break the circle, the requirements for the team are even more exponential. For the game track, the team needs to have strong game production capabilities, a very deep understanding of the game market and Web3, and be able to “do things”. It may not be difficult to pull out any of the above conditions alone, but when combined, they are extremely scarce.

The Matr1x team is one of the few teams that we believe meets all of the above conditions, the team has both senior producers from major game manufacturers, as well as OG who has been immersed in blockchain for many years, and is well aware of the current market “The smell of wine is also afraid of deep alleys”.

• KOL Live — mentioned above;
• Community-initiated competitive competitions with a prize fund of 10,000 U;
• Character design — very cyberpunk style, some characters can find elements like Marvel’s Black Widow, CyberPunk characters;
• Well-known Coser Cosplay - The Friend.Tech who was very popular before found the entry point of Twitter KOLs and ignited the SocialFi craze. Matr1x is also cooperating with some well-known Cosers on Twi, and the traffic inside and outside the circle is not missed.
• According to the team, in the future, the number of players will increase, the popularity of game IP will increase, and there will be plans to make short videos and even movies. The project itself will also consider imitating the model of Steam and Half-Life back then, and gradually leaning towards the route of Web3 game publishing platform after making Matr1x a hit.

To sum up, we believe that Matr1x has the potential to become the head of the Web3 game track in the future, and in the next round of bull market, it will play a role in promoting Web3 breakthrough and Mass Adoption, and become the next Axie/StepN level phenomenal Gamefi work.