Mystery Society suspends development
GAMING CHRONICLES 108
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TLDR :
Mystery Society suspends development
Acid Labs raises $8M
Infinity Grounds raises $2M
🗞️ NEWS
MYSTERY SOCIETY SUSPENDS DEVELOPMENT
This week, the harsh realities of game development struck once more with the announcement that The Mystery Society is suspending development
“…unfortunately, the state of web3 gaming is just too challenged right now and despite all our efforts, we have been unable to secure the funds to keep building.”
First Midnight Society and now Mystery Society (RIP to the societies)
The team is considering a couple of options right now, including:
A relaunch without the Web3 element on Steam
Shifting the game to a publisher in Web2 or Web3
Furthermore, Chris Heatherly, the founder reported that some inbound partners might be interested in picking up the game and continuing it
Additionally, a Ronin takeover might be on the table. Who knows?
History has shown that the above scenarios are often unlikely to happen
Post-mortem, Chris, has also been sharing some interesting insights:
“…if I could have done anything differently, I would have focused on web2 growth. We found that it was far cheaper, more scalable, and brought real spenders. Most of the web3 marketing we did was ROI negative.”
They experimented a lot with (Web2) Twitch streamers in the GTM-strategy of the game. Fitting of the social deduction genre
Considering the game’s light blockchain integration (largely based on cosmetics), I am also not surprised their marketing efforts in Web3 weren’t that effective
We can also expect some hot takes on the funding environment soon…
Lastly, it’s important to note that this wasn’t just a random team. This team worked at Disney, Universal, and worked on Club Penguin
Inspired by Cluedo and Among Us, the game had potential in my eyes with a unique team and providing more depth to the genre
ACID LABS RAISES $8M
“Telegram games are dead?” Well not quite..
And so Acid Labs raised $8M in funding to create Web3 games on social messaging platforms. The round was led by A16Z Speedrun and NFX
The studio released its “breakout hit” Boinkers.io, with 11.5M monthly players on Telegram
It’s a title that started as a “shitcoin parody game”, with simple tap mechanics and social casino elements such as spinning the wheel
So, why are VCs interested? Well, the app hit #1 in “Top Grossing” on the Telegram charts ($42.8K per day)
Usually, these numbers get extremely inflated pre-TGE, and as incentives slow down post-TGE, they take a nosedive. There’s no denying it’s a farmer’s game
On the contrary, Catizen remains to be #2 on the Top Grossing chart. Even though its token is down 88% post-token launch
Additionally, venture capitalists continue to bet on the strong network effects that chat super apps bring and its natural fit for the game experience to be played with friends (from Josh Lu, partner at A16Z Games)
Acid Labs has more games on the way, and they can leverage the success of Boinkers to bootstrap their other games
Telegram games are largely a scheme of selling your game’s audience to the next game, to the next game, and so on
Whilst I still see potential in the future of Telegram games, I have indeed become more critical of the model being used
INFINITY GROUND RAISES $2M
Infinity Ground (IG) announced they raised $2M in seed funding, backed by Animoca, MarbleX, MH Ventures, and others
The company wants to “Enable everyone to create interactive entertainment 10x faster and easier with AI x Web3”
They created a tool where you can describe your creative idea (meme, story, video, or mini-game), and it generates digital assets
So far, their website features 3 AI-generated games: Cat Academia, Trump the BulletVerse, and The Traders. All very simple, but interesting nonetheless
Similarly, we’re seeing a bunch of people churn out game concepts using the newest version of Grok
To explain more about what they’re building, IG’s mission is to enable everyone to become a creator, allowing one person to lead a project
Using their “Agentic IDE” (Intelligent Development Environment) you will be able to build DeFi, social, or game apps, without coding experience and build prototypes using natural language, called “Text to App”
As these apps and tools develop I believe they will start to play a more important role in bringing more (and silly) hypotheses to life, bringing more apps to chains, and so bootstrapping chains with products
FLASH NEWS
Wildcard migrated its NFTs + announced the WC token “100% community owned”
Pudgy Penguins released a new social game called Icebreakers
Avax announces Warp will be building an Avalanche L1, the Warpchain
My Pet Hooligan announced that “Hooligan Hideouts” are coming
Lightning Forge Games introduces its first game titles (Grand Tactics and Satrn)
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