Is this game "the next Big Time"?
GC ALPHA 03
GC Alpha is a new newsletter format exploring P2A events, SocialFi, market narratives, and alpha more in-depth (GC on Monday | Newsletters on Wednesday).
Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets that are spoken of in this newsletter.
(P2A) EVENTS & SOCIALFI
SONIC
The “Solana SVM Chain” we talked about last week when they raised $12M, also launched an incentivized testnet:
During this campaign, you collect “Rings” by interacting with the chain and its Dapps (games), daily check-ins, and referrals
Their initial game partners include Jogo Jogo, Rage Effect, FoMoney, Lumiterra, and Kepler Homes, which will be gradually launched on the platform.
Furthermore, Sonic seems like a platform that can push the overall Solana gaming scene, so I would start following the games that partner with them
GOAT GAMING
Last week GOAT Gaming released more on what they’re building, and a few days ago we got to know more about their P2A campaign as well
Players complete various types of quests: social, MAH, and creator. And it seems like more game-related quests are in the pipeline.
Still need to start playing myself but it’s a great team, with an interesting platform, which raised a good amount of $
In this article, they outline how GOAT will be distributed, it seems like there will be 3 different allocation pools:
GOAT Points ranking (questing, achievements, tournaments, and playing)
Creator Points ranking (both tracked weekly and all-time)
Creators can compete for weekly “Hall of Fame: rewards, with a prize pool of $5000,- every week
Early supporters
Based on historical spending in MAH, in-game action, and NFT holdings
Plus there will be extra benefits for the Genesis Pass and Big Bear holders
ANCIENT8
Last week Ancient8 released the last week of its P2A campaign: the Airdrop Leaderboard. It’s a typical campaign where you:
Complete different types of tasks related to dApps within their ecosystem. E.g. you play Pirate Clash
Referring friends earns you a % of the points they earn
We completed tasks for Phases 1 and 2 when it still seemed largely under-farmed with less than 10K people.
Ancient8 is a gaming chain on Optimism, with Zone9 as one of the larger games on there.
FLASH EVENTS
Saga introduced Vault2 of the Power level over 9000 campaign
Pacmoon partnered with MOCA: create content to earn PAC and MOCA
Registration for Moonray’s P2A campaign is opening today
MARKET TALK
LUMITERRA, THE NEXT WEB3 MMO?
Lumiterra recently had two interesting developments:
Sonic announced Lumiterra to be their flagship game
Lumiterra migrated to the Ronin Network
It’s an MMORPG open-world survival crafting game, where players battle, farm, and explore.
Their YouTube is a growing game library when it comes to crafting specific items, disassembling, daily tasks, etc.
Lumiterra is part of Lumi Finance, a DeFi growth flywheel that helps to increase the liquidity inside the game through prize pools, and P2A rewards.
The native currency of Lumiterra is LUDAMOON ($LUA), which was sold in a pre-sale to players last week
$1M in prizes will be up for grabs during the upcoming closed beta test
The beta will be accessible through obtaining AL in Earn Alliance’s Ronin Week
RON will serve as the primary in-game currency during Lumiterra’s Closed Beta test.
Furthermore, Jihoz had a few interesting things to say about Lumiterra:
They have a passionate Chinese-speaking community, allowing them to continue to diversify their audience
The “gameplay looks interesting and nostalgic, and there’s already something playable”
The next Web3 MMO?
If we take Big Time as an example there are a few things that made it successful:
Guilds, a cult-like community, appeal to an Asian audience, a deep economy, and the game of course
I think Lumiterra ticks many of these boxes, and of course, has the benefit of tapping into the Ronin community and growth initiatives
WHO’S PIVOTING TO TELEGRAM?
A few days ago I put out this Tweet, asking a question: why aren’t more games building “mini-app metagames”? The comments on this Tweet led to a few interesting insights:
Multiple teams are working on TG mini apps as a UA tool, but they’re still in development
Teams from Waifu Tactical Force, PlayEmber, and the Infinigods have thought of/ are working on these apps
Teams experienced in either Discord-native (Tatsumeeko), PWAs, and/or HTML5 will likely move to TG gaming as well
What we have seen so far in terms of gaming in this sector remains quite basic (tap-to-earn), with apps that take only a few weeks to spin up. The good games seem still in development, and I suspect they to released in the next months
AI ARENA TOKEN LAUNCH
AI Arena’s $NRN token launched today and is sitting at ~$7.3M (0,098 x 1B x $0,07453) MC right now ($74.5M FDV)
8% unlock on TGE for players (4% P2A and 4% NRN boxes)
1.8% unlock on TGE for the Foundation
The token got T2 listings (Gate.io, Bybit, Kucoin) and has $7.2M in total volume right now (they only launched this morning)
Overall, it opened lower than I expected to be frank (especially considering their narrative), but there are two important considerations:
There wasn’t much of a token campaign, AI Arena’s P2A campaign was a much larger marketing event
Sentiment isn’t great, even worse than when PIRATE launched on the 13th of June
I believe in what AI Arena and Arena Labs are building. “Pioneering the AI-driven future of online gaming experiences". If you decide to take a position, take note of the unlocks happening in month 12.
ON THE RISE
Power Protocol: Empowering games with web3 live-ops infrastructure (launch partner: Fableborne)
Second World Games, which recently raised $3M and launched Fantasy Troop
Infinigods might have a token-related announcement this week