"They are the ones who are having fun. I have nothing."
For most people, this sentence is the most appropriate to describe the 3A blockchain game "Big Time" which has been very popular in recent days.
After the popularity of SocialFi projects such as Friend.Tech and Star Arena, the market is also expecting GameFi to take over and lead the next wave of craze.
Judging from the performance in the secondary market alone, Big time seems to have taken over smoothly: after the token was listed on OKX, the opening price was 0.01, and at one point it reached an astonishing increase of more than 20 times.
But if you take a look around on social media, the soaring prices contrast with the embarrassment experienced by market participants - unable to get in, unable to exit, low liquidity, and high costs.
Can't get in, a large number of players who didn't participate in the early stage are asking for an activation code, and the game's hardware configuration requirements also discourage some low-configuration players;
Unable to get out, players who have been making money found that withdrawals require KYC, a waiting time for review, and strict rules;
Low liquidity. Players who choose to participate in the secondary market face low liquidity, and early order transactions are not smooth;
The cost is high. Later, players who wanted to make gold had to collect all the items needed to make gold in the game, and the cost price continued to rise.
At the same time, when we are more easily attracted by the excitement of price increases, we also ignore the respective interests and games of different market participants behind the scenes --- when blockchain games are really 3A, have the main gameplay, participation threshold, profit distribution and the operating model behind it really undergone qualitative changes?
Eileen Chang once left a famous quote in "Dream of Genius" --- Life is a gorgeous robe, crawling with lice.
Big Time, maybe.
Big production, old taste
It is undeniable that Big Time has improved several levels in production quality and presentation compared to other blockchain games.
If you have watched the game live or played it yourself, you can feel that the whole game is basically the same as the traditional MMORPG in terms of appearance and feel. Smooth graphics, smooth movements, mature career growth design and equipment elements... Everything is moving closer to high-standard games.
From a gameplay perspective, the core loop of the game is to experience the growth of the character: accepting quests -- fighting -- obtaining resources/equipment/experience/skills -- growing and upgrading -- obtaining better resources/equipment/experience/skills -- challenging more difficult quests.
And in this core game loop, the old flavor of blockchain games is still there - you can play for free, but there is a threshold for making gold.
Free players can basically experience the same content during the game, but rarely have access to the gold farming part. Due to the low drop rate of NFT props in normal monster killing and ordinary dungeons in the game, ordinary players need to invest a lot of time to win a smaller drop chance.
At the same time, due to the lack of NFT props investment, free players will not generate Big Time tokens during the entire game behavior.
For paying players, everything points to the familiar old cycle: calculating resource input and planning token output.
According to the official introduction of the game and the information provided by the relevant research report of First Class, if a player wants to make gold, the minimum purchase investment required is:
Space NFT, similar to a personal space, can be used to store NFTs and props related to gold farming;
Time Hourglass, only after equipping this item can Big Time tokens be produced;
Time Crystal, which is consumed before the above-mentioned time hourglass can be made;
The Time Guardian NFT is similar to a gold farming "condition" maker. When the time hourglass runs out, it is recharged with time crystals here.
The above props are all clearly marked with prices and follow market trends, and are designed for repeated consumption and purchase.
For players who go straight for gold, whether it is 3A is no longer important. It is still a calculation problem: racing against time, calculating the optimal input-output ratio, and digging, withdrawing and selling before others.
A carnival for the few, a threshold for the majority
As we all know, Big Time is not a new game. It has been 2 years since its initial release. But why has it attracted so much attention recently?
On October 10, Big Time launched its pre-season event. In addition to earning tokens by making money in the game, participants in the event can also receive future airdrops of tokens. Coupled with the listing of tokens on exchanges, its popularity was naturally pushed up rapidly in the short term.
However, it is not that easy to participate in the game.
The game is not currently open to everyone, and making money requires a certain amount of capital investment and understanding of the rules.
Even if you don’t want to earn gold and just want to experience the game, you still need an invitation code from a few anchors and KOLs. So when the game became popular, a large number of ordinary users were eager for tickets everywhere.
This situation seems more like a marketing strategy. The difficulty in obtaining a code has made the game even more popular, with a strong momentum of hunger marketing.
At the same time, for the few early players who have entered the game, the rewards are considerable. According to Twitter, some KOLs have posted the specific input-output situation of participating in Big Time. Combined with the investment returns calculated by other players, it can basically be recovered within 1-2 days (Note: as of press time, Big Time has modified the in-game drop output mechanism, and the actual recovery time may be longer).
It has to be said that this kind of carnival of investing, getting back the money and then generating profits easily reminds people of the blockchain game craze a year ago. But the difference is that this time the carnival belongs only to a few people, while the threshold belongs to the majority.
In addition to the activation code, if you want to participate in the preseason, you either have to directly invest money to purchase the in-game SPACE NFT and pass, or be an early player of Big Time.
The former means a capital threshold. Under the influence of publicity and token price increase, it is foreseeable that the prices of SPACE and passes will rise.
The latter implies experience and time threshold, and not everyone has had a deep connection with Big Time before.
In addition, what many people don’t realize is that the term 3A actually brings a considerable hardware threshold.
The Big Time official website shows that the minimum configuration for the game is a GTX 1060 graphics card and at least 50G of hard disk space. For players who often play games, this requirement seems not worth mentioning;
But for cryptocurrency users, entry-level gaming graphics cards and the large amount of space they occupy may make the digital nomads' main office laptops seem stretched, and will also magnify their memory cleanliness obsession infinitely - usually they are careful not to connect to the Internet and click randomly, but suddenly they insert a non-open source game client, which is bound to cause paranoid fears.
This hardware configuration requirement actually gives the studio a unique advantage, and their carnival does not come from the joy of the game, but the satisfaction of pure gold farming income.
When a game first creates a threshold for people in the industry, how can we talk about Mass Adoption?
If the main target of the game is not people in the circle, and you can find that there are not many viewers watching the game by clicking on the Twitch live broadcast, then the current momentum of the game's outward expansion is probably not satisfactory.
At this point, we have observed a clear sense of disconnection: the game has become extremely popular, but only a few people can play it; the price of tokens is eye-catching, but the threshold for people in the cryptocurrency circle to make money is high.
The wishful thinking of project owners, market makers and exchanges
Those who want to earn gold can’t get in, and those who have earned gold can’t get out.
Although the current game can achieve a quick return on investment, cashing in the earnings from gold farming requires passing Big Time's KYC audit.
According to feedback from some players, there is currently a 3-5 day review period for KYC, which means that withdrawals need to be postponed (Note: as of press time, the KYC review speed has been increased).
I made money, but not fully earned it.
From an asset perspective, when a large number of gold-farming tokens cannot be withdrawn, the source of mining, withdrawal and sale is restricted, which means that the selling pressure of BIGTIME in the market is reduced in disguise, which is a good strategy for the project party to maintain the stability of token prices.
However, after several days of review, the value of BIGTIME obtained by gold farmers may also face rapid dilution, and the book income may have to be discounted. At the same time, due to the rising price of NFTs required for gold farming, the modification of the explosion rate rules and the participation of more participants, it also means that the input-output ratio of gold farming will decrease.
So would it be better if I just bought BIGTIME tokens instead of farming?
Judging from the price alone, the price of the token increased by as much as 20 times within 2 days of its launch. Short-term quick entry and exit is certainly a good choice.
But the prerequisite is that you have to find trading counterparties and trading channels.
According to the research of on-chain analyst Yu Jin, BIGTIME is currently highly controlled, with market makers holding 90 million circulating tokens. Under the premise that KYC review delays the withdrawal time of gold-making tokens, the actual liquidity of the entire token is very limited. Calculated at the price at the time of publication, the overall circulating market value is around 30 million US dollars (data from calculations on the Coinmarketcap website).
In this case, placing an order to buy coins directly in the initial stage may cause the transaction to not be so smooth due to insufficient liquidity. Concentrated liquidity may mean that market makers have more room to control the market, guiding the rapid rise in prices and stabilizing them.
If you want to buy BIGTIME, you need some tricks.
OKX currently has the largest spot liquidity for tokens. If you search for BIGTIME directly in the Asia region, you will find that there are no results at all and the spot trading entrance is closed.
The way to unlock the entrance is to obtain some BIGTIME from somewhere else and deposit it into the OKX token receiving address.
BIGTIME opened during the mainstream trading hours in Asia, but OKX could not find the trading entrance; BIGTIME was then listed on Coinbase during the mainstream trading hours in the United States (early morning Beijing time), and the price continued to rise.
Players who caught the wave are certainly lucky, but due to time and entry reasons, most players may still miss this wave of rapid rise.
At the same time, when the new coins bring traffic to OKX and Coinbase, Binance will naturally not sit idle.
On the evening of the 12th, Binance also launched BIGTIME's perpetual contract. But it is worth noting that there is currently no spot, only contracts.
This strategy of launching trading products that only list contracts is easily reminiscent of Binance’s previous similar approach to Blur tokens.
At the time, there was also a rumor about a female investor’s opinion on Blur tokens, saying that the fundamentals were not sufficient to support spot trading;
Today’s BIGTIME, with high FDV, low circulation and extreme market control, Binance may have similar considerations of not wanting to list spot products in the short term. We do not know the specific details of the decision.
But if you choose to sign a contract at a close time, one thing is clear:
For players who participate in gold farming but cannot withdraw cash yet, contracts are conducive to short selling, and also help them hedge the risk of falling coin prices when they can withdraw cash and sell.
Where there is demand, there is a market. Instead of doing spot trading, you can earn transaction fees and clearing fees through contract demand and get a share of the popularity of the new currency.
Therefore, in the craze of Big Time’s launch, we can see that project parties, market makers and exchanges each have their own calculations.
The project's KYC rules inadvertently achieved the effect of stabilizing selling pressure. Market makers concentrated their chips to create a pull-up effect and control the market. One exchange took the lead in launching spot trading to gain traffic, and another exchange tried to take advantage of the situation by launching contracts...
When everything seems to be well-planned and carefully implemented, will you be the one who happily makes money in the market?
Tools are just tools
From not fun to fun, from 3A concept to real machine, the GameFi project has indeed changed in quality.
However, its core economic model and trading methods seem to be old routines, and there is no essential difference from the projects a few years ago.
In the traditional market, games are a consumer product with a wide audience, and the game content itself is often the core of everything;
But in a game and competition involving studios, project parties, market makers and exchanges, everything revolves around interests, and the game itself seems to be just a tool for realizing interests.
After quickly obtaining sufficient financial gains through NFT pre-sales in the early stage, from a business perspective, it is not a cost-effective deal to further refine and polish the game;
Profits need to be realized, investments need to be exited, and the bull market needs to be waited for. What would you do if you were in this situation?
Therefore, we cannot look at current blockchain games with an idealistic attitude, nor can we demand all gaming experiences from a player’s perspective.
In a game involving multiple parties, instrumental thinking is still a realistic and reasonable choice --- recognize it, use it, and then it is best to forget it.
And if you still choose to participate without knowing the reason, I hope you are not the tool used to make money.