The lines between memes, AI (agents), and games are fading...
GC ALPHA 26
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
FLASH EVENTS
This week doesn’t have many major events to talk about in-depth, so here’s an expanded list of what's currently happening and what's coming up:
Valeria Studios: Land Before the War is now live with $2.5M in rewards
Complete tasks, compete on the leaderboard, collect shards, claim time-limited NFTs, and increase your Shard generation
Maplestory Universe’s “Gear Up NOW!” phase started
New events, in-game rewards, and special benefits from the 2nd Pioneer Test
Additionally, rewards will be carried over to the official launch
Sleepagotchi LITE is now live on Telegram - “a game for sleep”
You need an access code to enter the game; watch their Telegram to snag one
Phase 3 of RavenQuest’s P2A campaign is launching on the 5th of Dec
11M QUEST in prizes - progress from the previous playtests will be wiped
Lumina Hunt Phase 3 is now live
New Guardian event quests, new Arcanas, Luminas, Traps, and Baits
Project O launched its Collectors Campaign
Connect your account to the website and check your Collectors Score
MARKET TALK
MEMES x AI x GAMES
The lines between the memes, AI (agents), and games are fading…
And so, last week was a rollercoaster for Web3 gaming:
Today the Game is a good example of an idea with potential, but poor execution (the full story from Grail). What can we learn from this?
It can take years for projects to build trust with the community, one move to lose its faith, and good crisis management to regain most of the trust
It was mostly insiders and snipers (allegedly) who benefited from the token launch, not the community that has been around for years
Taking away value from holders of Ancient and Mythic Seeds
For this reason, they essentially had to “CTO” (give up all their tokens) LIMBO, and increase the token allocation for the community
VC-backed teams that are in it for the long run, that choose to chase the meta need to tread carefully. They can’t act as risk-free as community-based and non-VC-funded projects
From an outsider's perspective, such a team launching a token on Pump Fun is seen as another payday
Launching assets (NFTs and tokens) takes away value from new launches
The more assets available, the more diluted new launches will be. From the public’s eye, LIMBO is tied very closely to Today, potentially taking away from the actual token launch
Transparency and communication matter, and having a leadership figure (Michael in this example) openly explain what went wrong, acknowledge mistakes, and take criticism on the chin is how to handle situations like this
Overall, it seems like Web3 gaming projects are trying different ways to attract liquidity from the attention going to memecoins and AI Agents
A trend, which slowly seems to be moving towards more utility-based projects (such as games)
GAM3S and AI Arena’s tokens both saw a spike in volume and price recently, after announcing their new initiatives
THE FUTURE OF P2A CAMPAIGNS
The expectations are skewed, the players have been farmed, and so P2A is reaching a boiling point
Making players grind for multiple months on a leaderboard for hours per day, and giving them “peanuts” (per hour) in return doesn’t work anymore
So, we’re now seeing the most successful campaigns, such as Infinigods, Fableborne, and Cambria take a different approach:
Shorter timeframes (only 1 or a couple of weeks) = less grinding
This also creates a sense of urgency and exclusivity, creating multiple bursts of hype, instead of trying to maintain interest over multiple months
Pay to airdrop/pay to increase airdrop = bigger and fairer reward pools
Because P2A campaigns can serve as effective monetization events, they can give up a larger number of tokens
Cambria even goes a step further and largely funded the prize pools with the sales they made during its most recent campaign
Gating rewards to payers leads to a fairer system
Another point is that P2A campaigns are highly saturated
Almost every project that had a playable version of their game released a campaign at this point, but only a handful of them are fun (sticky)
So, naturally, the players started to gravitate toward the most enjoyable games, which also turned into some of the most rewarding
It’s part of the P2A-cycle maturing
ON THE RISE
XAI is releasing something tomorrow, but what is it?
We’re seeing hints about small keys and packages and a recent change to a Pudgy Penguin profile
People are saying: “NFTs are back”
Sales volume is up 26% in the past 7 days and a couple of the major gaming NFT collections saw a bump in their floor price
PlayMini is a new social gaming company developing experiments on Farcaster
They’re working on a title called Creature Arena: "a PVP social arena"