Last week, a third-person battle royale game called (Off the Grid) (OTG) became one of the focuses of the entire gaming community. In the trial live broadcasts of multiple top gaming anchors, the 3A-quality OTG was also appreciated by many mainstream players for its cyberpunk aesthetics, cool action design and excellent game graphics - although most of them were unaware that this game was actually a Web3 game.
OTG was developed by crypto game developer Gunzilla Games and is currently available in early access versions on the Epic Game Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox. After being promoted by many game anchors, OTG quickly became popular and has topped the list of free games on the Epic Games Store since last week. It has also received at least hundreds of thousands of live broadcast views on the Twitch streaming platform alone.
The total financing scale is over 100 million yuan, and the development took nearly 5 years
Video game developer Gunzilla Games was founded in November 2020 by Alexander Zoll and Vlad Korolev with the goal of creating a new generation of AAA shooters.
At the beginning of its establishment, Gunzilla Games announced that it had received US$25 million in financing. The initial funds came from Game Groove, a venture capital fund founded by Korolev and Zoll in 2019, focusing on technology and gaming.
Alexander Zoll was the CEO of Crytek Kyiv Studio and is known for leading the development of the well-known online shooting game (Warface). Vlad Korolev is a serial fintech entrepreneur and game enthusiast who founded a free video game website on his own in the 8th grade.
Shortly after Gunzilla Games was launched, the two founders assembled a luxurious team - Oscar-nominated screenwriter and (District 9) director Neill Blomkamp joined Gunzilla as Chief Vision Officer, responsible for narrative and visual arts; British science fiction novelist and (Altered Carbon) author Richard K. Morgan served as screenwriter; Timur Davidenko, who was the technical director of the game engine CryEngine and participated in the development of (Far Cry) and (Crysis), served as Chief Technology Officer.
Most of the other members of the Gunzilla development team also come from various well-known studios and publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts (EA), Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, etc., and have participated in the development of famous series of games such as (Assassin's Creed), (Watch Dogs), (Total War) or (Need for Speed).
In May 2022, Gunzilla Games announced that it will launch a new AAA battle royale third-person shooter game Off The Grid (OTG), and said that the game will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and is expected to be available in 2023.
Three months later, Gunzilla Games announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$46 million. The lead investor was Republic Capital, which focuses on blockchain and cryptocurrency, and the participating investors included Griffin Gaming Partners, Animoca Brands, Jump Crypto, Raptor Group, CoinFund, Shima Capital, Blizzard and many other crypto VCs.
While disclosing the huge amount of financing, Gunzilla Games officially announced its entry into the blockchain game field, stating that it will allow players to obtain "full ownership" of game assets and realize "in-game item transactions" by building a digital economic platform "GunZ" that integrates NFT technology.
However, Gunzilla is not focused on creating a pure NFT game. It promises that OTG players can skip related functions and enjoy the full version of the game for free. It also guarantees that it will not sell NFTs or other hidden consumption directly to the player community.
In March of this year, Gunzilla Games completed another large round of financing, with a total of US$30 million in funds, led by CoinFund and Avalanche's Blizzard Fund, and a US$10 million strategic token financing with the participation of Republic Capital and Morningstar Ventures.
Building the Next Generation of AAA Battle Royale Games with Avalanche
"We drew inspiration from games like PUBG, Apex Legends, The Division, and Uncharted to create a game that includes all our favorite elements," said Vlad Korolev in a previous interview.
Currently, Off The Grid has opened an early access version on PC, and it is called a public beta version on PS5 and Xbox. However, the actual functions open in the game are the same, and only the Extraction Royale mode is available.
OTG inherits the mechanics of classic battle royale games such as Call of Duty and Apex Legends, but its cyberpunk-style equipment and props give players a richer experience. In addition to firearms, players can also use jetpacks to achieve more maneuverable and flexible movement, as well as replace and use mechanical prosthetics with different capabilities in the game. Gunzilla said that excluding skins, it is expected to launch more than 260 unique weapon combinations in the future.
Like 3A games that pursue exquisite graphics (Black Myth: Wukong), Gunzilla also used Unreal Engine 5 during the game development process. By introducing its Nanite technology, OTG was able to render high-quality graphics and textures with extremely high levels of detail.
Using a combination of tools like World Partition and Geometry Collections, Gunzilla was able to create a large, detailed open world with incredibly realistic environments, characters, and objects without sacrificing performance or using excessive amounts of memory.
Its level of detail (LOD) model allows OTG to optimize game performance by reducing the detail level of objects that are farther away from the player or less important, while the lighting and shadow effects provided by Lumen technology make the game world more realistic and immersive.
“As we searched for the best partner to build our blockchain platform and ecosystem, Avalanche was the only company that would allow us to build a layer 1 solution for gaming where we could have zero transaction fees, secure and verified source code, an environmentally friendly protocol, and the ability to pay for gas fees with our native token.”
In April 2023, Gunzilla Games announced the launch of GUNZ, a blockchain-based digital economic platform built entirely on Avalanche Subnet. GUNZ is committed to becoming one of the first player-friendly crypto economies in 3A games, aiming to empower players by granting them full ownership of in-game items in the form of NFTs. The platform will also be integrated into OTG first.
Web3 games are going mainstream? It’s still a little hard to do...
In the second and third quarters of this year, various point-to-earn games on the TON ecosystem really attracted a lot of attention. They relied on the expectation of airdrop rewards to attract tens of millions of players in the short term. However, as the airdrop was launched and was massively criticized by the community, it is obvious that these games, which are in a mess, are unlikely to become a hope for large-scale adoption.
At this time, the "semi-finished products" launched by OTG, which have been brewing for many years and are of high quality, can become popular games in the Epic Store, once again allowing Web3 game enthusiasts to see the dawn of "hope".
According to AVASCAN data, as of October 15, the transaction volume on GUNZ has exceeded 50 million, with more than 5.6 million independent wallets. In addition, according to SullyGnome data, the game has been watched for more than 2 million hours in the first week.
From being a mediocre name to gaining unprecedented popularity among mainstream players, in addition to the excellent quality of the game itself, another major factor is the great success of Gunzilla Games in marketing and promotion. It sponsored many well-known game anchors such as Ninja, Timthetatman and Ludwig Ahgren to broadcast live trials, which attracted a lot of attention and then attracted more anchors or bloggers to participate.
Dr.Disrespect, a top FPS anchor who has collaborated with OTG and has been the subject of controversy recently, said he liked the game and brought at least hundreds of thousands of viewers to OTG during the live broadcast alone.
But it should be pointed out that just like these top game anchors only talk about the game itself and avoid mentioning Web3 games such as NFT or cryptocurrency, OTG’s official game page also does not have any promotion related to NFT, GUNZ or blockchain technology.
The word "NFT" can only be found in the FAQ, but it is still emphasized here: "Off The Grid is not an NFT game. This is a battle royale game with optional NFT elements. If you want to try NFT, you can. If you don't want to, you don't have to. Players can decide how to play the game by themselves, and they can play the game without using NFTs."
To sum up: I may not be a blockchain game, but most mainstream game players, while generous with their praise, don’t know that OTG can also be considered an NFT game.
The high popularity of Off The Grid has also attracted many anchors and bloggers who did not accept sponsorship. YouTube gaming blogger Tomographic is one of them. In his trial video, he gave a detailed introduction to Off The Grid's NFT before the game.
In the comment section of the video, the tone of the highly praised comments suddenly changed, and they all became such as "This game does look interesting, but when NFT came into the topic, my interest dropped sharply."
Tomographic said that most players do not realize that (Off the Grid) is leading the trend of Web3, they just simply enjoy the game itself. "I am not stopping you from enjoying the game or going to war with cryptocurrency. It's just something I am not interested in, and I don't want to promote it on my channel. The volatility of cryptocurrency is disturbing, but OTG is indeed the largest blockchain game example we have ever seen, and I think it is worth talking about." He added.
In addition to the dispute between NFT and cryptocurrency, the early access version of (Off the Grid) also has problems with gameplay. According to the configuration parameters listed by Epic, the devices used by PC players usually need to meet at least Intel I7 12700 and RTX 4070 to achieve better gaming effects. The recommended minimum configuration RTX 3060 cannot take into account both the picture quality and smooth gaming experience.
For most players, regardless of encryption or not, Gunzilla is most concerned about the game's own problems, such as insufficient game optimization, too high hardware configuration requirements, and shooting sound effects.
However, with version updates and continuous game optimization, the complete version of (Off the Grid) may eventually face the controversy brought about by NFT and cryptocurrency elements. From the very beginning, Gunzilla has also taken the countermeasure of allowing players not to choose NFT integration in order to maximize the favor of mainstream players.
Therefore, it is difficult to predict whether Off the Grid can maintain its traffic after gaining great attention. Even if it can be "successful" in the future, how much of it is related to Web3 is even more unknown. What will be the future of Off the Grid? Will it always be the representative of Web3 games? We will wait and see, and PANews will continue to pay attention.
For more information about Off the Grid, read:
Off The Grid plans to infiltrate console gaming with Web3-powered battle royale game
Gunzilla Games to Integrate GUNZ Blockchain into OpenSea NFT Marketplace
#OffTheGrid #GUNZ #GunzillaGames #链游市场
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