GameFi and Metaverse least affected by Terra debacle: Report

August 1, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain games and NFT-related Metaverse projects “managed to sidestep the ensuing bear market” by posting transaction count increases of 9.5% and 27% respectively in Q2.

Blockchain gaming and the Metaverse have managed to “sidestep” the “Lehman brothers-like” collapse of Terra in May — though decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) haven’t been so lucky, a report says.

In a July 29 report from decentralized application data aggregator DappRadar, the collapse of Terra in May was similar in scale to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis — causing decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and firms such as Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Celsius and Voyager to cop the brunt of Terra’s destruction.

“It is becoming clear that the Terra debacle has become a Lehman brothers-like event that has sent shockwaves across the entire breadth of the crypto industry and aftershocks that will affect us for many months.”

However, Dappradar noted that blockchain gaming and Metaverse projects showed either minimal drawbacks or even positive signs of growth in the same period.

Weathering the storm

The report compares different metrics to show how the Terra collapse (during mid-Q2) impacted the performance of various sectors in crypto between the first two quarters of this year.

One key metric the report looks at is transaction count (the total number of completed transactions), which essentially shows user engagement. DeFi and NFTs saw the biggest drops with 14.8% and 12.2% apiece, while blockchain games and NFT-related Metaverse projects “managed to sidestep the ensuing bear market” by posting increases of 9.51% and 27% each.

The report also added that while the average amount of activity from unique active wallets (UAWs) in NFTs dropped by a hefty 24% in Q2, blockchain gaming saw a drop of just 7%, suggesting that users continue to interact with gaming dApps “at a more or less the same rate as before the Terra incident.”

The trading volume for Metaverse-related NFT projects was also described as a “beacon of hope,” as volumes increased by a whopping 97% since in Q2, despite the overall NFT sector posting a 32.66% drop in Q2.

In a separate DappRadar report from July, the firm suggested that the blockchain gaming may have been able to hold up better than other crypto sectors last quarter due to the non-speculative aspects of the games themselves.

“This bullish activity indicates that engagement with the virtual worlds is not predicated on their profitability to the end-user. It shows virtual worlds are intrinsically fun to the end-user as the communities remain active despite the devaluation of native tokens,” the report read.

DappRadar also said there was sustained institutional investment in both blockchain gaming and the Metaverse, highlighting that many top companies see the potential for strong economic growth in both sectors moving forward.

The report went on to emphasize that amount of investment into blockchain gaming and Metaverse projects remained consistent during Q2 despite the Terra carnage:

“Despite a financial blow and undermined trust in the industry, investors remain bullish as the number of investments into blockchain games and metaverse projects has remained constant quarter-over-quarter, with $2.5 billion invested in both Q1 and Q2.”

Minecraft ban ‘hypocritical’ and NFTs are inclusive: Animoca’s Yat Siu

July 23, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Animoca Brands

“They did not cite evidence, they didn’t even correctly point out what NFTs are, nor did they talk to NFT Worlds,” noted Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu.

Yat Siu, the co-founder of crypto/NFT venture fund giant Animoca Brands, labeled the recent Minecraft NFT ban as “hypocritical” and emphasized that nonfungible tokens (NFT) can be inclusive, despite arguments to the contrary.

As previously reported, Minecraft developers Mojang Studios announced a ban on all NFT integrations in the game on July 20. The firm stated that NFTs were against its values, as they foster price speculation, scarcity, exclusion and potential rug pulls.

Speaking with Cointelegraph, Siu expressed his frustration at Mojang Studios given the context in which NFTs were being integrated with Minecraft before the ban.

Projects such as NFT Worlds were utilizing Minecraft’s open source servers to host a metaverse platform that had crypto and NFT ecosystems built around it. The project appeared to be relatively popular, given that it has generated more than $80 million worth of NFT trading volume and claims to have around 100,000 players.

The Animoca Brands co-founder noted that he found it hypocritical that Minecraft would exclude a small portion of the user base, considering that the company’s stated that it values “inclusion” and suggested NFT integrations in games drive exclusion.

“The general perspective is that this is hypocritical, NFTs have not hurt anyone at Minecraft, it's very clearly a minority. This was not a decision of actual evidence of harm, this was a preference decision, purely based on an opinion.”

“They did not cite evidence, they didn’t even correctly point out what NFTs are, nor did they talk to NFT Worlds,” he added.

While Siu acknowledges many in the traditional gaming community want nothing to do with NFTs, generally out of fear of games becoming over-monetized and “even less fair.” In this instance, users had the choice to play in NFT-affiliated servers or not, and there were no NFT integrations forced on regular Minecraft users.

Siu stressed that excluding minority views means “you actually hurt the whole community, and you stifle its growth.”

In terms of NFTs being inclusive, Siu argues that NFT tech or the digital property itself doesn’t foster inclusion or exclusion, and instead, it's all about how the tech is deployed to drive community value.

He noted that in the right contexts, NFTs in games or the Metaverse can offer users a redistribution of the platform's economy and power. In Siu’s point of view, NFTs enable users to own a tokenized stake in their favorite platforms which can then be utilized how users see fit, as opposed to the Web2 model in which users are not offered ownership over their content and data.

“What NFTs do is redistribute the economics of the players who add value to the game which then also has the same effect of decentralizing and redistributing the power dynamics inside games. [Therefore] allowing for more freedoms and power to the community instead of just a community.”

“Property rights and freedoms are intertwined, the next natural evolution is digital property rights to either enhance or actually produce true digital freedom,” he added.

34% of gamers want to use crypto in the Metaverse, despite the backlash

July 15, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

According to Globant, 34% of gamers are interested in conducting crypto transactions in the Metaverse, while 16% have purchased NFTs in the past.

Despite a backlash from a vocal part of the gaming community, a new survey has revealed one-third of gamers have expressed interest in using crypto in the Metaverse.

And more gamers than not believe the Metaverse will have a positive impact on gaming.

The survey was published on July 13 by institutional software developer Globant. It was conducted by YouGov and polled 1,000 adult PC, console and/or mobile gamers last month, with 34% of respondents indicating an interest in conducting crypto transactions in Metaverse.

The concept of play-to-earn (P2E) in the Metaverse is also relatively well received by gamers, with 40% of respondents stating that they are “interested in pursuing a mix of both the ‘playing’ and ‘earning’ aspects of the Metaverse.” While 11% indicated they are more interested in earning, and 49% stated they are only interested in playing.

More than half (53%) of respondents also stated that they would happily work in virtual game worlds if they were able to earn digital currency from their labor.

In terms of NFTs, 16% of gamers stated that they have purchased at least one in the past, however it was unclear whether they were gaming related NFTs.

More than half (52%) of gamers believe the Metaverse will change the video game industry and “a plurality of 41% think that the Metaverse will have a positive impact on the industry (vs. 25% who disagree).”

Notably however, despite 40% of respondents associating blockchain tech with Metaverse, only one blockchain-native platform made the list of the most recognized Metaverse brands.

The most recognized is Meta at 73%, followed by Fortnite creators Epic Games at 27%, Roblox at 21%, Ethereum-based The Sandbox at 15%, and Pokemon Go developers Niantic at 10%.

Some die-hard gamers have voiced distaste for crypto and NFTs on numerous occasions, often in response to major companies and brands announcing such integrations into their product lines.

They criticize the environmental impact of the technology, suggest that it negatively impacts the gaming experience, but the core rationale appears to be a belief companies are just looking for cash grabs in a similar vein to the controversial in-game microtransactions.

Recently video game developer Mark Venturelli launched an attack on NFTs during Brazil’s International Games Festival in a presentation titled “Why NFTs are a nightmare.”

Venturelli argued that the introduction of speculative economic activity via NFTs will end up ruining the experience for people who just want to play games for fun, as “organized groups” will take over as they work to profit at scale.

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P2E game Nyan Heroes aims to save 1 billion sheltered cats

January 7, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain gaming

“We need to realize that building a game is not only about the game play, but about the economic system and how sustainable everything is,” said co-founder Wendy Huang.

Cat themed play-to-earn (P2E) NFT game Nyan Heroes is aiming to save 1 billion cats from euthanization in animal shelters across the U.S.

Nyan Heroes is an upcoming NFT battle royal shooter style game built on the Solana blockchain that will enable players to compete with each other using NFTs depicting animated cats that are used to pilot mech-robot NFTs in the game.

The U.S. based project has been in development since October and the game is set for release in Q4 2022. Its first NFT drop is currently available for hodling and trading on marketplaces such as Fractal.

According to data from Solana Art, Nyan Heroes is the fourth-highest NFT project on Solana in terms of seven day volume and market cap, at $279,000 and $18.2 million, respectively.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Nyan Heroes co-founder and Australian Wendy Huang outlined the firm’s charitable vision moving forward, along with providing a rundown of the upcoming game.

Huang has been involved with crypto since 2016 and has also built a successful career as a content creator ranging from vlogs to DIY videos, pranks and music and has amassed almost 14 million subscribers on YouTube.

Save the cats

Huang stated that her, and fellow co-founder Max Fu’s, love for cats was a key driver behind tying animal-focused charity work to Nyan Heroes. She said they have an ambitious goal of “saving 1 billion cats” from euthanization in animal shelters via charitable donations generated from portions of the project’s NFT sales.

Nyan Heroes revealed their first efforts in this area on Dec. 24, when it announced a $250,000 donation from the proceeds of its first NFT drop to the non-profit Best Friends Society. ‘That was one of the proudest moments I've had in this project,” she said.

Crypto saves lives!

Thank you @nyanheroes for your amazing donation of @ethereum for the animals! Their fundraiser raised $250,000 to help cats just like Pumpkin ^ac pic.twitter.com/MTCKEYUTtp
— Best Friends (@bestfriends) January 3, 2022

Best Friends Society provides a “no-kill” sanctuary for orphaned animals and also prevents cat and dog deaths in shelters across the U.S. through its charity work. The group estimates that its “no kill” movement has helped reduce the number of cat and dog deaths in animal shelters from 17 million yearly to around 347,000.

Huang revealed that the game project will be launching a DAO that will give its members voting rights on where Nyan Heroes donations will be allocated in the future.

“We'll be creating a young hero DAO. And part of that DAOs responsibilities will be deciding where to donate funds to, to which animal shelter and to what causes in that particular realm.” she said.

Nyan Heroes

Huang highlighted that a major sticking point for P2E blockchain games is sustainability over a long period of time. She said many P2E games are reliant on a continual stream of new users to remain profitable and suffer from players continually cashing out and taking value out of the game.

“We don't know how many players will be coming into the economy. So we need to realize that building a game is not only about the game play, but about the economic system and how sustainable everything is,” she said.

Huang said Nyan Heroes sustainability model is built off several factors such as introducing an in-game stablecoin to reduce volatility of the its assets, staking rewards on NFTs and a triple A gaming experience similar to Fortnite which has “historically attracted players” who want to spend money on the game:

“The way we address it is to come up with a better game where users will actually want to play the game and inject value into the system to balance out the players that come into the ecosystem to take value out."

“We keep the in-game token stable so that the value of your in-game items isn't going to crash and burn. And we feel like that's what players need to want to stay with a game. You don't want your in-game items to be worth $1,000 one day and then $10 dollars the next,” she added.

Proudly introducing our new expanded team! With decades of experience in AAA studios like Riot Games, EA, Ubisoft and Respawn, our team is ready to take NH to new heights in 2022!

This is only just the beginning, you are here early.

The amazing team:https://t.co/0cmPgsaigh pic.twitter.com/3R3l18E3gO
— Nyan Heroes (@nyanheroes) December 29, 2021

Gamer-hate: Ubisoft’s new NFT project vid gets 96% dislike ratio

December 10, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The top comment on Ubisoft’s YouTube video introducing its NFTs has more likes than the actual video, and slams the firm for “milking” money from its customers.

French gaming giant Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s new nonfungbile token (NFT) project Quartz is facing strong pushback from the gaming community.

Ubisoft unveiled the Beta launch of Quartz via a brief YouTube video on Dec. 8 that has 214,721 views at the time of writing. The project aims to combine NFTs and blockchain technology with existing Triple-A game titles, and announced Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint as its first game to officially integrate NFTs.

The video introduces Quartz as a platform that enables gamers to “collect the first playable and energy-efficient Ubisoft NFTs” that are dubbed as “Digits.”

YouTube recently changed its policy to hide the number of dislikes a video on the platform gets, however the number can still be accessed by Google Chrome extensions. Upon using an extension, the video currently shows 1,400 likes and 37,000 dislikes which equates to a dislike ratio of roughly 96%.

One of the top comments on the video from user “OperatorDrewski” currently has 2,600 likes with zero dislikes, and blasts Ubisoft’s NFT project as a quick cash grab as opposed to improving the overall gaming experience:

“To me, this is a blatant signal that you're just milking the Ghost Recon franchise for literally every cent while putting in minimal effort into the actual game itself. Not playing a GR game in the future if there's this level of degeneracy in the team.”

“You took a solid franchise and absolutely made it a laughing stock,” they added.

This opinion appears to be shared by a significant number of the community, with users on Twitter also lashing out at the firm in response to its latest announcement as they threatened to uninstall the firm’s games and boycott Ubisoft completely.

Because of my personal view of NFTs and not because of the environmemt entirely, I will now proceed to uninstall anything related to you right now and cease further purchases of your games.

That is all. For people that dislike Current Ubi's marketing, just stop buying.
— Skyeeeely - Lazy VStreamer Cat (@Sukaaaily) December 7, 2021

A Dec. 8 post over on the r/gaming page on Reddit shows a concerted effort to boycott the new NFT project. The post titled “do not support "Quartz", the new NFT Ubisoft marketplace” from “u/WolverineKuzuri93” currently has 2,500 comments and an upvote ratio of 93% at more than 13,400 upvotes.

The Redditor highlights similar issues to the top commenter on YouTube, noting that:

“We have to stand against this practice. [...] This is just another way to nickel and dime players with cosmetics rather than focusing on making quality products with depth. We have to let companies know this is anti-consumer.”

“I'm not entirely against the concept of using an NFT style system for digital games. For example, actually owning your digital copy rather than just a license so you can sell it to another user's account. That's actually the future of digital gaming. What I'm against is how Ubisoft are doing it with in-game items,” they added.

Gamer backlash to NFTs

This is not the first time a major firm has been flamed for looking at, or launching into the world of NFTs. Cointelegraph reported last month that community messaging app Discord was forced to walk back its Ethereum-based NFT integration plans, after the gamer community bombarded CEO Jason Citron.

Citron initially teased his firm’s plans via a screenshot of a beta feature showing Ethereum NFT wallet support, however he was promptly hounded with thousands of comments calling on him to abandon the plans along with users threatening to cancel their paid Nitro subscriptions.

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Unlike the case of Ubisoft, where the community appears to be peeved by what they assert is a cash grab, the crypto-skeptics on Discord believe NFTs are a Ponzi scheme and damage the environment due to the energy required to mine cryptocurrencies.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Ubisoft representatives for comment, and will update the story if they respond.

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