The Pain Points, Opportunities and Freshest Cases of the Chain Game Track: How to Web3 Casual Icebreaker Games?

Original title: "The Pain Points, Opportunities and Freshest Cases of the Chain Game Track - The first article How about casual ice-breaking games WEB3?" "

Original author: W Labs Guadain Laboratory

Preface to this series of long articles:

W Labs Guadain Laboratory started writing the first series of "Chain Game Economic Model Revealed" in April 2022. Up to now, more than 30 articles with more than 100,000 words have been completed. This is a group of senior leek game players who are turning their saliva into arrows and their pens into spears, trying their best to express their analysis and judgment on chain games in the atmosphere of "iron-headed leek rush". In the big environment where chain games are still full of controversy Now, we sometimes feel like Don Quixote, holding a lance and rushing towards the seemingly huge windmill.

Fortunately, some friends feel good after reading our articles, but feel that the dozens of cases we used before are too old, and many projects are silent , Some still alive, such as Starsharks, etc. are not very popular. In this new series we launched, in addition to talking about the pain points and opportunities in the chain game track, we will use a large number of fresh and hot cases, even some projects that are still in internal testing, to show the development of the chain game industry new direction.

The first text begins:

Some time ago, there was a WeChat mini-game "Sheep a "Sheep" is popular all over the country. It is said that during the peak period, the daily income is 5 million RMB, and the source of income is not from players, but most of it is advertising income. I have to say that the economic model of this popular game is very healthy. In the beginning, players with krypton gold will not be allowed to buy items to destroy the fairness and balance of the game. "NND, the last game is cleared, and I will take a screenshot of Moments to show off" ambition.

Speaking of exchanges with some OGs in the game industry, the level of casual games in China is definitely the top in the world, with a market of 35 billion yuan a year. See how many casual games are in the forefront of the IOS download version in September 2022:

So far, casual games have been involved There are very few WEB3, and some have tried similar to Xiaoxiaole, but unfortunately they all disappeared as soon as they debuted. Let alone the peak, there are no traces of climbing. There are several reasons:

The casual games of WEB2 are already fun enough, mowing parkour and fishing, the fragmented time is filled; almost all the users of WEB3 games are heavy krypton players, entering the game The threshold for playing gold is basically a few hundred RMB. Psychologically, there will be a feeling of "such a simple casual game is worth my money, and MMORPG games are worth buying NFT"; the essence of casual games is social. For example, a sheep is a sheep, from the promotion method to the player's mentality, the entire game is built and operated according to a social product. But so far, the casual games of WEB3 are still aimed at making gold, and they have gone astray.

Does that mean casual games are not suitable for WEB3? No, there is a sub-category that is very suitable for WEB3 scenarios, and it can even be said to be hard and rigid, and it is casual ice-breaking games. We have been exposed to some metaverse projects. In addition to creating a series of heavy games as the main course, we also need to create some interesting small games on the login platform (CityHall, etc.) to break the ice. Everyone comes from the Internet, and they don’t know anyone. They must meet their social needs in the first stage as soon as possible: My name is WILL, your name is JILL, can we CHILL together.

Everyone has experienced team building in the real world, from serious self-introduction, to playing "throwing the handkerchief", and then playing "Werewolf Killing", The means of breaking the ice are getting more and more advanced. Through body movements, verbal communication and teamwork, the mutual recognition process that originally took N hours was completed within 15 minutes.

But how to quickly break the ice in the world of WEB3? The difficulty of this problem is no worse than developing a serious game. Some metaverse project teams we encountered were scratching their heads about this problem. In the end, they could only find an online venue to organize everyone to play Texas Hold'em.

In fact, the Discord community can be regarded as a primary metaverse version, everyone from all corners of the world does not know anyone, except for the top social cows who can go to the wedding in an instant In the state of hosting, most of the friends are still shy. There are already some game bots on Discord, which engage in some guessing games, but they are very boring and have no interactivity. They can only compete to see who wins first.

One of our topics is to find casual ice-breaking games that can be transferred to WEB3. Think about it, if this game is done well, from Discord server to Sandbox and other metaverse scenes, and then NFT communities such as BAYC are using this product to break the ice, and then it becomes an entrance for WEB3 traffic, similar to the little fox wallet, one can imagine how much potential it can have.

Spacekill, a WEB3 game recently tested in internal testing, should be the only WEB3 game we have seen so far that is closer to casual ice-breaking, so I will take it As a case study, the gameplay is basically the same as the werewolf killing game "among us" in mobile games and end games, and it is a very thorough imitation of the gameplay. Speaking of Among Us, I have to say that this is a magical work. A cute version of the werewolf killing game developed by a small team of three people in 2018 has not been popular. There are hundreds of users. By 2020, Xiao The team couldn't hold on any longer and was going to develop a new game, but it suddenly became popular. It should be because everyone is staying at home during the epidemic. More and more Youtubers play with the community. At the peak, the income of a month It is 25 million US dollars, and by 2022, the total downloads will exceed 700 million.

The explosion of Among Us shows three things:

First, the epidemic that started in 2020 has caused many online social projects to skyrocket, such as Zoom, such as Among Us, but you have to prepare in advance; second, after the game is played, social interaction is king, and King of Glory also illustrates this point , can it be cut directly from social networking? Third, social games have to be prepared for a long-term change from quantitative to qualitative, unless you have a super promotion team like "Sheep a Sheep" behind the scenes.

Back to SpaceKill, when our team had the first meeting to study this blockchain game and opened its website, a young lady couldn’t help exclaiming: I like this game, the villain is very cute!

This chain game production team still inherits the cartoon style of the original Among Us, and at the same time adds the image of the minion, which is really very good in Attract young people at first glance.

The gameplay is no different from Among Us, one of the 6 crew members (Crew, good guy) is an imposter (Imposter, werewolf), good guy or Complete all the tasks to force the werewolf to death, or go to a meeting to vote to kill the werewolf, and the werewolf should sneak up on the good guys on the map as soon as possible and knock them out with a stick. If three good guys are knocked out, the werewolf wins. Some common rules, such as werewolves have a cooldown for beating people, and good people can go to the monitoring room to check a few scenes on the map, etc., are designed in these games. For specific gameplay and skills, there are detailed strategies in the Guatian community WGGDAO. It is not expanded here. Generally speaking, the game is very complete, and the details are handled well during the internal testing stage. For example, after being killed unjustly, the ghost who becomes helpless can float around to help teammates with tasks, haha.

Based on the Among Us gameplay, SpaceKill has added WEB3 factors:

A, dual Token system + dual-type NFT, the overall economic model is nothing new, similar to StepN's dual Token Under pressure, sub-coins are mainly consumed and produced, and the parent coin can be produced when the NFT level is high; the main NFT is the soul, configured with attributes, quality, star rating, and can be reproduced; the auxiliary NFT is a prop.

B, built-in trading market;

C, WEB2 users have no entry barriers, But gold cannot be played, only soul NFT can be played. This is also the best way to attract WEB2 gamers as W Labs has been emphasizing.

D,   Embedded wallet (not experienced yet). This is really rare. In my impression, only chain games with big production + long-term projects will develop a wallet in the game themselves, such as Skyweaver, the king of card chain games. This is the point that impressed me the most after reading the white paper. I feel that the game will be much higher if it is forced.

In the future, we will publish a "one-page knowledge" about Spacekill. Those who want to know more details can pay attention to it. Then comes our favorite part of spraying.

First: After the internal test of the whole game, the smoothness is really good, the gameplay is no different from Among Us, **But, I can only be unfamiliar People match, but what the hell is it that friends can't open a room? ! The biggest selling point of this kind of ice-breaking casual game is team ice-breaking and socializing. Why didn’t there be a room opening function in the first place? ! **If I want to socialize with strangers, why don't I go to Momo and Tantan? (This point was communicated with the MOD in the game community after the article was written, saying that this function is available, but it has not been released, which is okay)

Second: Good guy The small tasks that need to be completed are too mentally handicapped, can you choose some fun ones? For example, finding faults together is better than the current ones;

Third: Zicoin has been listed on Dex, and the trend is as follows, which feels bad. Guage is a pity for the project side, why should a good social WEB3 game take the route of gold-making games. To put it bluntly, the point of making money in this type of game is to try to become the ice-breaking entrance of all communities and metaverse scenes. You are the traffic entrance, and the advertising fees and pumping fees you can earn in the future are estimated to be N times the current currency issuance. .

So it is still recommended that chain game project parties think more before project approval: Gamefi (Play to Earn mode) is just a chain game One direction of swimming, not all blockchain games are suitable for adoption Token In gold mode. If it is a social project of Tugou, it is understandable that Zicoin is so early, but SpaceKill has a built-in wallet, and the completion of the game itself is very smooth. It seems to be a long-term project, but why is Zicoin listed so early.

Fourth: The most fun thing about killing humans is language communication. At the current closed beta stage, everyone is voting without brains, and there is very little voice communication. In the future, can we design a matching room that can be selected according to the language?

There are some other spray points, such as the robot needs to be optimized, otherwise it will affect the game experience too much, everyone has to wait for the robot to complete the vote, and the wait is very anxious; for example How to prevent team partnerships from colluding and cheating to make money; for example, can the Discord account be directly DID-logged in; for example, can the number of people be relaxed, similar to 4-9 people in Among Us?

A few days ago, I brought some interested melon friends to play SpaceKill for one night in the Guatian community. Fortunately, there are not many people playing now, everyone It can also be automatically matched in a room, and when voting, the voice is bluffing together. At the same time, Discord also AMA voice chat, which is really interesting. This is the charm of social ice-breaking games.

Let’s summarize the casual ice-breaking chain games, especially in the WEB3 scene, where homeless people mainly face the computer or mobile screen. Games especially have room for demand. This is the pain point and opportunity. It depends on who can get out first. And one last nagging sentence: I personally think that the single Token or double Token The model is really not suitable for this type of project. The economic model of the project must be customized according to the characteristics of each type of project. It is a pity that it is a good product and production.

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