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Gotta catch them all: Pokemon takes NFT company to court
Top web3 games for 2023, influencer tie-ups, plus more top stories
š® Metaproof Gaming
Hey frens, this is Sophia from š® Metaproof Gaming, the weekly newsletter where we update you on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the gaming industry.
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š² By the numbers
Gaming soars to the cloud in new NASDAQ insights: 62M (37% of gamers) are excited to live out gaming experiences in the metaverse; Roblox saw 57.8M members on its platform - a 23% jump from 2021; and nearly 30% of gamers will buy a VR/AR headset in the next 12 months. (Source)
The Sandbox has sold more than $1.66M worth of virtual land across the map of its metaverse in the past few weeks. LAND in The Sandbox is transparently represented on public blockchains by NFTs, which can uniquely identify digital ownership. (Source)
Esports funding is on the downtrend: out of 695 private gaming investments in the first nine months of 2022, 33 deals worth $310M involved esports, down from 138 esports deals (worth $2.1B) in 2021. (Source)
India is rapidly developing into a gaming hub and in 2023 experts are eyeing it as the largest consumer of mobile games with 15B downloads, according to game developer Krafton CEO Sean Hyunil Sohn, who committed to accelerated focus on the metaverse and web3 next year. (Source)
š« News & trends
Pokemon Company International has taken an Australian company to court, alleging it has advertised an unlicensed āmetaverseā P2E Ethereum game dubbed as Pokeworld.
The company, called Pokemon Pty Ltd, is said to claim on its website that itās worked on a host of official Pokemon games in the past while having an official partnership with Pokemon Company International.
Documents from the Federal Court of Australia show, however, that the Pokemon IP holders are seeking to restrain Pokemon Pty Ltd from representation or in turn holding any license, partnership, or rights to sell Pokemon NFTs, as well as calling to halt the launch of the game.
Several titles have made their mark this year in gaming amid a wealth of things happening in the industry, including the pandemic era looking to be in the rear view mirror, crypto crashing, and new business practices like subscriptions heading for maturity. Sorare is one such influential game, one that dictates the direction of blockchain gaming in 2023 and beyond. A sports game where players can buy, sell, and trade digital player card NFTs to build a fantasy team, Sorare started out with soccer and recently had NBA and MLB support. Drawing similarities with NBA Top Shot, it appeals to more fans, offers a better onramp for new users, and looks to have greater staying power due to the added gameplay.
Metaverse Game Studiosā developers, who are behind video games like Far Cry and Diablo Immortal, are using blockchain technology to build a new web3 MMORPG. They have announced a partnership with web3 development platform ImmutableX to continue building Angelic, powered by Unreal Engine 5 and hyped up as a dark science fiction-themed narrative strategy RPG that features turn-based combat. Angelic is free-to-play, multiplayer, and deemed āchain-agnostic,ā which means digital assets will be hosted off-chain while being interoperable with other blockchain networks. Catering to both web2 and web3 users, Angelic also plays up a ācollaborate-to-earnā offering that will foster user ownership of in-game assets and participation in its future development.
Battle Infinity, a gaming platform featuring various P2E battle games, is touted as the worldās first fantasy sports ecosystem based on NFT. This new Axie Infinity gaming format marries the metaverse concept with potential to earn money, including several features that allow users to buy virtual property plots and promote them on billboards (its currency is built into the game). Said to stand up āto the giants of the fantasy sports industry,ā Battle Infinity tries to attract players via rich experiences in the virtual Battle Arena world, as well as six unique products that form the unified ecosystem.
Web3 gaming provides fair virtual markets for the gaming sector in recent history, where players can access and fully own in-game digital assets. In 2023, here are three web3 games to explore:
Illuvium, a decentralized RPG and collection game on The ImmutableX L2 network. Itās set in the aftermath of a spaceship crash on an alien world, and players must navigate the uncharted land, seize creatures, and find obelisks. To boot, thereās the chance to earn tokens, NFTs, goods, and more as a new quest every day reveals a different featured partner.
BigTime, a free-to-play, multiplayer action RPG that combines fast-paced combat with adventures in both futuristic and ancient civilizations. The game offers the TIME token as its main cryptocurrency, and occasionally players can produce these tokens by owning a Time Warden NFT or a SPACE NFT.
The Harvest Game, a new take on the classic MOBA shooting genre incorporating a trading-card game to create NFTs. Itās a multiplayer game where you go on team expeditions, with each hero coming from a different civilization. In-game tokens $HAR and $EOL will be available soon.
In 2023, game studios are expected to integrate NFTs into their existing games. Web2 game studios are likely to push deeper into web3 and enter whatās known as āstage 4ā of web3 gaming adoption, where elements like NFTs and crypto payments are injected directly into web2 games and not via standalone subsidiaries. The change in terminology from āNFTsā to ādigital collectiblesā is also seen to help traditional game studios make the change with less gamer backlash. Gaming interoperability is also likely to emerge (in unexpected ways), showcasing how adding programmable digital items to games improves gameplay.
UK-based sports apparel designer JD Sports has jumped on the metaverse train by launching a metaverse-based experience featuring a neon-fueled arcade game in a shopping center. It has teamed up with athletes and creators like heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua, British rapper Kano, and YouTube influencers KSI, Tobi Brown, and Chunkz for the King of the Game metaverse experience. The game will allow fans to build custom avatars and sink their teeth into mini-games within the arcade, as well as engage in activities such as virtual table football, pinball, claw machines, and other arcade classics. Users can also collect JD coins to stand a chance of being featured in a national leaderboard.
In a deal that first marks the presence of Argentine soccer in the metaverse, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) has partnered with metaverse platform Upland to offer exclusive collectibles, including in-game video. The official licensing agreement is bound to see the AFA expand its fan engagement for Argentinaās Professional Football League (LPF), with the goal of connecting fans with players and offering exclusive in-game video footage ownership. Upland, unlike other blockchain-based metaverse platforms like Sandbox or Decentraland, has real-world geography, where users face an actual map of the world on their screens and the platform links to real cities and countries where users can buy or mint virtual property with fiat or crypto. Running on the EOS mainnet, the platform will allow fansā properties to be customized with club-specific outdoor decor.
Web3 gaming is known for its best qualities: transparency and ownership, hyper-personalization, and cross-gaming compatibility, to name a few. Going into the future, certain web3 gaming concepts are bound to elevate the industry by building a hyper-intelligent ecosystem. The metaverse, for one, is increasingly being integrated into the end stage of the game development process. The sole issue was maintaining a network where information was shareable and multidimensional, making the developersā work easy, according to HackerNoon. Combining web3 with the metaverse for an elevated game experience, however, will include establishing a virtual decentralized financial system, enhancing operational efficiencies involved.
FaZe Banks, founder of the FaZe Clan, remains a major proponent of NFTs as his professional esports and entertainment organization steadily works on a roster of web3 offerings. He talks about showcasing a new initiative called FaZe Forever, where his movement seeks to leverage its standing at the forefront of gaming and entertainment to re-envision the convergence of gaming and web3. This will be done not by taking money from the FaZe and gaming community, but instead through a free-mint digital cartridge acting as an entry into the ecosystem for the over 90,125 users who have already minted.
Web3 entertainment firm Creta has unveiled the gameplay of its upcoming blockchain game Kingdom Under Fire: The Rise and announced progress of its web3 products, including a one-stop shop for gaming, the metaverse, and blockchain gaming community service Super Club. Creta announced the news at Creta Summit 2022 in Tokyo, Japan, before a crowd of video game and blockchain aficionados; it stirred excitement with gameplay footage of the upcoming game, a sneak peek into the NFT avatars system, and more. The metaverse layer will provide social and economic benefits for users craving both fun and NFT utilization, while the Super Club will incite community-building behavior among players looking to relax and share gameplay experiences.
In October, Meta announced Horizon Worlds as an improvement to its metaverse, releasing a clip of Mark Zuckerbergās avatar on it happily lifting each leg and then jumping. The tech giant spared no expense to morph into a metaverse company, spending $36B to manifest an immersive, globally accessible virtual reality world running permanently alongside the one we have. Despite the audacity, Zuckerbergās vision may not be āsomething people automatically want.ā The most successful current metaverses today, for instance, are gaming platforms Roblox and Epic Gamesā Fortnite, and while people spend excessive amounts of time playing them, there might not be any great clamoring for a new or more intense version of them.
Indian gaming firms are ramping up adoption of web3 gaming in the country through a commonly sought-out solution these days: engaging with influencers. Gaming firm Trinity Gaming, for instance, inked a deal with UAEās EmChain to āfacilitate business worth $10Mā in the web3 and blockchain-based gaming sector, seeking to jointly train, mentor, and provider revenue streams to creators in the space. Like Trinity, web3 gaming platform IndiGG is actively building this ecosystem in the country, working to develop tools and services for creators and developers. When a new game is launched, IndiGG will buy its NFTs and lease them out to its community of gamers, encouraging playing the game and earning rewards.
Video games are a growing trend in African nations, where over the past five years alone players have doubled, with South Africa leading the way. Today around 180M Africans play games, with about 60M paying for them. In the cryptocurrency space, some 5.9M gamers have been documented to own crypto in Africa and the Middle East, with the figures expected to grow exponentially by 2050. Crypto gaming communities mostly come in the form of guilds, such as MetaVerse Magna (MVM) as the first of its kind and the most popular DAO in the continent. Games like Axie Infinity, Thetan Arena, and Call of Duty: Mobile are made available on their platform. Its founders believe the metaverse experience is a way to pluck people out of poverty.
JM2 Clover Gaming is launching a casino experience using advanced XR and blockchain technologies for āimmersive, secure and interactiveā metaverse gaming. The companyās Cloverland platform will be unveiled at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas from January 5 to 8, marking a step for the growing online casino marketplace entering a dedicated metaverse. The platform is said to use advanced 3D imagery for a realistic gaming experience thatās easy to use and secure at the same time.
šø Finance buzz
NFT-friendly Japanese gaming giant Square Enix pours 7B yen ($52.7M) into game developer Gumi to create āhigh-qualityā mobile games, blockchain games and a metaverse initiative. The partnership will also help Gumi tap certain IP from Square Enix, also teasing that the duo could be teaming up for a game-NFT-focused marketplace. (Source)
What funding winter? Web3 gaming firms in India raised $620.5M in 2022 across 32 deals in 2022, a nearly sixfold jump from the $115.3M raised across 39 deals last year, according to data from venture investment research firm Tracxn. (Source)
š£ļø Quote of the week
The Metaverse is like a community nation-state. What gives it value is its community and the network effects embedded in these communities. In order for it to have meaning and value, it needs to have ownership, which then gives rise to all these other rights and freedoms and makes the community powerful.
All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.
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If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.
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