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TLDR :
ARC Agents introduces AIcons
Playember announces Pudgy Life
2024 Pixel Foundation metrics
🗞️ NEWS
ARC AGENTS INTRODUCES AICONS
Just yesterday, ARC Agents introduced AIcons: “powering the AIXBTs of gaming agents”. So what are AIcons?
A transformation from traditional sponsorships/ads to a new AI-creator model:
“We are transforming creator partnerships into dynamic, AI-driven experiences that are immersive, financially scalable, and built for the future.”
AIcons turn online identities into powerful gaming agents by delivering experiences across games and genres:
Dynamic fan engagement: transform creator IP into gaming interactions
Personalized agents: being unique and representing the creator
Cross-game evolution: seamlessly adapt across games and platforms
“AIcons represent a new era of collaboration between creators, games, and fans”
Furthermore, ARC just announced the first 3 Agents they will be working with:
Agent YP (from YellowPanther), Sploot (from Jonah Blake), and J3FF (representing HVMTL and Faraway)
Overall, this collaboration will tackle a couple of things:
It changes how creators engage with their audience and monetize their brands, essentially becoming a 24/7-working extension of themselves
Engagement becomes multi-layered, they mention personalized quests, unique in-game moments, tournament access (like Proof of Supremacy), and much more
It’s much more than just buying a creator’s skin in Fortnite
It can make IP partnerships much more effective, assumingly leading to more meaningful sponsorship > player conversion
The future of AIcons (i.e. AI idols) is quite interesting, and I would imagine more experimentation will happen this year with stronger IPs
PLAYEMBER ANNOUNCES PUDGY LIFE
Playember announced last week they’re building a Pudgy Penguins-IP game, called Pudgy Life
There isn’t much info available yet, other than that it is a simulation game that will include customizable islands, resource gathering, and collectible stickers
We can expect a casual or hybrid-casual mobile simulation game, considering Playember’s expertise:
John Hook said: “Pudgy Penguins is the most iconic brand in web3 and CEO Luca Netz’s vision of taking the brand into every home in the world is the perfect fit for Playember’s casual mobile gaming experiences.”
PlayEmber has a wide portfolio of games, including ones that make players earn BTC (e.g. Bitcoin Runner, Bitcoin Spin, and Bitcoin Pusher)
Additionally, they published a couple of games that include the Emby IP, including Emby Pinball and Emby Knight
Last October the studio partnered with Pixelmon to launch Monster Tycoon, quite similar to one of their most successful games Raft Life - Build, Farm, Stack
To my understanding, Playember is creating an ecosystem of casual games, with a Web3 progression layer on top. However, their Web3 plans have been vague post-mint IMO
Maybe their Web3 vision will become more defined when Abstract launches
Lastly, it’s notable to see the rapid expansion of Pudgy Penguins-IP games:
Pudgy World: their own Club Penguin-like experience
Vibes: a TCG in development by Orange Cap Games
Pudgy Party: a party game in development by Mythical Games
And now Pudgy Life
2024 PIXEL FOUNDATION METRICS
Luke, Pixel's founder, is very open about his learnings, the Web3 playbook, and the game’s metrics. And so, he reported the 2024 PIXEL foundation metrics yesterday
Highlights include:
Yearly revenue: $20.745M
Best months include:
March: 4.5M PIXEL spent ($3.21M)
February: 4.4M PIXEL spent ($2.53M)
April: 4.7M PIXEL spent ($2.35M)
The most PIXEL was spent (in terms of quantity) in December 10.5M, 2x more PIXEL than in the best grossing month, but less in $ value ($2.32M)
An ARPU of $1.91 per month on average
Notably, it dipped post-launch and went up significantly in Q4. December saw the 2nd highest ARPU at $3.96 (February was $4.25)
Net revenue (PIXEL spent by players - PIXEL rewarded to players):
In February they achieved the best ratio of 0.84, meaning for every 1 PIXEL they distributed they got back 0.84 in spend
Understandably, this ratio significantly dipped post-February, however, gradually increased again from July (assumingly because of the Chapter 2 release), reaching 0.50 in December
The ratio also increased by 80% (0.28 to 0.50) from August to December
Monthly active spenders peaked in November (assumingly because of Guilds V1) and in anticipation of Guild Wars Season 2
From February to December, the game saw an increase of 74% in monthly active spenders, with only a 6.8% decrease in ARPU
Furthermore, Luke mentioned:
They will continue to improve their return on reward spend (RORS) using big data and AI-driven insights to improve the distribution of PIXEL
In Q1 they will focus on core gameplay, content and liveops, data science and P2E-tech, and growing the ecosystem and PIXEL publishing
They will be experimenting with opening up some P2E and smart distribution tech to other teams
Again, Pixels shows they are leading the way regarding token liveops
FLASH NEWS
Ronin partnered with Virtuals and released JAIHOZ, the first Ronin AI Agent
Ronin started “Operation Leviosa”, the road towards open Ronin
Soneium’s mainnet went live and introduced two 2 projects: SNFT and S.BLOX
Primordium released a new strategy game called Primordium Empires
Dark Machine (the mech-based hero shooter) is releasing its token tomorrow
Funtico, the Web3 gaming platform, is releasing its token on Jan 24
Mike from Today shares more about Maestro, their 3D Agent Framework
Play Network partners with Forte to enable stablecoin payments
🆕ALPHA CORNER
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