Original author: Cookie
Blockchain games are a very unique track. Now that it is 2024, if you are a light blockchain game player like me (i.e., you don’t focus on the blockchain game track and spend a lot of time playing blockchain games every day), your impression of blockchain games may be that blockchain games are becoming more and more sophisticated and playable.
In the past, the blockchain game gold-making models we are familiar with are roughly:
- There is an entry cost. For example, Wolf Game and StepN, the earlier you enter, the lower the entry cost, and the later you enter, the higher the entry cost.
- The value of a token is highly dependent on its consumption. Or at least, players care about it.
Based on the above two points, there is the "death spiral" problem that has caused countless discussions.
But in fact, many of the blockchain game projects that made money this year are no longer the same as before.
Pirate Nation: A look at blockchain gaming asset investment ideas
One of the most typical examples is Pirate Nation. Even if you play this game more than a month before the token is issued, you can earn hundreds of U with a single account. Recently, Pirate Nation has also received more attention because of its NFT series and the independent market of Token $PIRATE.
After the TGE sell-off, $PIRATE has been rising steadily over the past month
The floor price of the NFT series has also hit new highs
Why is Pirate Nation successful? There are three main reasons:
-The team has a strong background and is supported by large amounts of financing. The game studio behind it, Proof of Play, announced in September last year that it had completed a $33 million financing led by Greenoaks Capital and a16z Crypto. CEO Amitt Mahajan was once a development engineer at Epic Games, a development director at Zynga, and a co-founder of FarmVille (the prototype of "QQ Farm"), one of Zynga's flagship games.
-The game is updated quickly.
-The regulation of token acquisition is well done.
So, back to the topic of this article, where are the opportunities for light chain gamers to participate? From the above NFT series floor price trend, we can see that Pirate Nation only held TGE in June this year, and its NFT series has been around 0.15 ETH for more than a month even after announcing a large amount of financing. If you bought it at that time and hold it until now, apart from the $PIRATE share you obtained, you will have a return of nearly 10x.
This is the idea of many NFT players who currently invest in blockchain game NFT assets - looking for blockchain game projects with large financing and reliable background teams, and betting on future token expectations. As long as the team updates frequently and does not lie flat, when the token expectations are officially announced, many other investors who do not pay attention to the project itself but only pay attention to market news will come in to "carry the sedan chair".
The current "Play 2 Earn" is more like "Play 2 Airdrop"
Why can Pirate Nation's NFT still increase after TGE? This is another difference between blockchain games now and in the past. In the past, blockchain games usually had a dual-token model, an in-game token with no supply limit, and a governance token. As the number of players skyrocketed, the project side had to keep regulating, and in the end it was out of control. But Pirate Nation's $PIRATE is an in-game token with a supply limit. During TGE, a portion of it was uniformly distributed to players as a reward. Want more? Then keep playing the game.
Moreover, Pirate Nation will also build a series of game infrastructure. Now you can get Proof of Play points by staking $PIRATE. What if a token is issued for the infrastructure in the future? The valuation will definitely be higher than the pure blockchain game project itself. So from this level, we can easily think of Blur and Blast. Although Blur is not a blockchain game, it has the same model - first there is a mature product (NFT market), trading in the market to obtain tokens, and finally issuing a chain (Blast) to keep users in the ecosystem.
Play games, but the token rewards are not settled immediately, but are kept until a certain time point for unified distribution. This routine has almost become a trend now, so the investment strategy has also changed greatly. Compared with Axie's cooperation with the studio, ambush NFT assets in the blockchain game track, and then seriously treat the game as a game itself rather than a gold-making tool, it is a new way for light blockchain game players to gain benefits in this track.
Last year, Parallel's PFP series only required 25 game wins using various races to get it for free, and the floor price later exceeded 1 ETH. This year, The Beacon's first Token reward event was obtained by playing games and participating in social tasks. TGE will have to wait for more than half a year, and they also sold the Token shares in the form of NFTs. To get this part of the subscribed Token shares, you still have to play games. Despite this, with about 20 million Token FDV, 10,000 NFTs that can be obtained later were sold out at a price of 0.115 ETH, and the price of its pet NFTs was also raised by players.
The thinking of light chain game players: the observation angle returns from "game" to Crypto projects
Therefore, the criteria for judging whether blockchain gaming projects can make money have also changed to some extent:
- Playability is of course important, but the quality of the game itself is not the factor that determines whether it can make money. The topic caused by the quality of the game is the key.
-The project party itself cannot indiscriminately issue NFT assets to dilute the value of the token. The clearer and more direct the project party’s positioning of the NFT series and the actions to maintain the empowerment of the series (Token shares) are, the better.
-It would be best if we could calculate the FDV more clearly. Everyone will make their own comparisons. As long as it appears to be very cost-effective when compared with the "PPT project", there will be no shortage of people willing to give it a try.
The most cost-effective operation is when a blockchain game is so popular that we can see a lot of people discussing it on any social media and then we go to make money. At this time, it is difficult for light blockchain game players to have considerable income. We can not play blockchain games, but we must free the idea of observing blockchain game projects from the positioning of "games" and observe from the perspective of Crypto projects - can the financing and team situation of this project attract attention? Can the content (game play) presented by this project attract attention? If this project has a token, does the current valuation have a good enough odds in our opinion?
There are even many blockchain game projects whose token activities can be participated in by completing social media tasks. I have mentioned this kind of project in previous articles (Related reading: 4 projects worth a casual low-intensity rub, 6 projects worth a casual low-intensity rub | E 02), and the Super Champs NFT series mentioned in it has risen by about 50%. (This does not constitute any investment advice, and I will try my best to discover more similar blockchain game projects for you in the future)
In general, the current benefits of blockchain games are to exchange time for space. Compared with Solana meme tokens or Bitcoin ecological infrastructure, the blockchain game track is not at the same level as these top market focuses in terms of attention, but everyone loves tokens, so there will be information gaps in blockchain game assets related to tokens. When they are not paid attention to by the market, look for targets with high probability and relatively cheap to ambush, and after the market reacts, you can sell them or continue to participate in the game. You can attack or defend. Fundamentally, blockchain games are also Crypto projects, so we don’t really need to spend a lot of energy on playing games. Playing games itself is more like investment research on blockchain games, which can help us judge whether the team is reliable and whether it can gain enough market attention in the future.
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