Ubisoft will launch chain games. How is the chain game of traditional game companies doing?

Golden Financial Reporter Jessy

Recently, the famous 3A game company Ubisoft announced that it will launch the chain game Champions Tactics on the Oasys blockchain. According to the game's teaser trailer, which has only been released so far. It is understood that this is a player-to-player (PvP) tactical role-playing game (RPG). The Oasys chain carried by the game is a game-focused blockchain launched by the well-known Japanese game companies Bandai Namco and Sega.

For large traditional game companies, they can obtain steadily rising revenue through their unique and mature IP, and entering the Web3 is actually a matter that requires internal changes and great courage and determination. However, it is not new for traditional game companies to enter the blockchain game. For traditional game companies, entering the blockchain game field can provide a new growth engine for their business.

Jinse Finance combed and found that this year, mainstream traditional game manufacturers will release a series of chain games. Before that, these game manufacturers have also made many attempts in the field of chain games. They either introduce NFT into games, or invest in chain game companies. Or authorize the development and use of chain games with their own well-known IP.

Chain games have gone through the early NFT mode of card collection, "play to earn" mode, what will be the new paradigm? And after the traditional game giants entered the blockchain game, how did they do? Can their entry change the current gameplay and pattern of blockchain games?

How traditional game manufacturers invest in chain game infrastructure construction

The cornerstone of chain game development is the underlying public chain. Due to its highly interactive features, chain games have high requirements for the storage and computing speed of the blockchain. At the same time, which public chain is selected to carry the game will also consider the user traffic, support, etc. of the public chain.

First of all, on the infrastructure of the public chain, traditional game companies have entered the market. The famous game company Bandai Namco and Sega will launch the game-focused blockchain Oasys in February 2022. This chain is compatible with Ethereum EVM . The early node operators of Oasys all came from traditional game companies, such as the French game group Ubisoft, the Korean video game companies Netmarble, Wemade and Com2 uS, and the Philippine chain game association Yield Guild Games, etc.

However, judging from the total number of game projects: currently the top three blockchain games are Binance Chain, Ethereum and Polygon. The blockchain games on these three public chains accounted for 76.2% of the total. Native chain games still choose traditional public chains. This game public chain jointly developed by traditional game companies currently has 11 chain game projects running on it. According to DappRadar data, as of now, there are a total of 2,270 blockchain games.

In addition, Sony's application for NFT patents allows NFT to interact with NFT assets between different games and game devices (such as PS4, PS5, mobile phones, and computers); Smoother use of wallets and more.

**What about the chain games of traditional game manufacturers? **

Ubisoft

A well-known French 3A game manufacturer, Ubisoft, which launched the blockchain game Champions Tactics on the Oasys blockchain, has previously supported a blockchain game company’s blockchain game NIne Chronicles (role-playing games), and also participated in the investment Game companies, such as participating in the $65 million financing of Animoca Brands, a blockchain game company.

Ubisoft is also the first major game company in the world involved in NFT. In 2021, Ubisoft also added NFT content to its own game "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint", which is part of their NFT plan called Quartz. According to the announcement, Ubisoft launched Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that allows users to acquire NFTs of items that can be used in games, such as weapons, clothing or vehicles. Ubisoft Quartz calls these NFTs "Digits" and has chosen to base these NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. Ubisoft also promised in the announcement that it will introduce the plan to other games. It took four years to build the Quartz platform, but Ubisoft is actually very cautious in the process of launching NFT. Other games under it are not There is no similar practice.

In the game "Ghost Recon Breakpoint", at first, the "wolf" skin of the M4A1 tactical rifle, the helmet and a pair of pants were provided to the initial players for free. Later, these NFTs can only be given away after certain achievements in the game. For example, the rifle requires the player to reach XP level 5 in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, while the pants require the player to play at least 100 hours, and the helmet requires the player to play at least 600 hours.

These NFTs can be resold, but the NFT resale market volume for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint seems to be only $400, with only 15 NFTs sold. At present, Ubisoft has ended the update of the game content of "Ghost Recon Breakpoint".

It can be said that the NFTization of in-game assets has failed in Ubisoft’s practice. When Ubisoft launched the plan, it was questioned by many players. The equipped NFT will not affect its gaming experience.

BANDAI NAMCO

One of the initiators of the Oasys blockchain, the Japanese game giant, on March 29, 2022, Bandai Namco held the third Gundam Conference and announced that it will start the development of the Gundam Metaverse. Among them, we will build the foundation of the metaverse space step by step, first create virtual communities for each category, and connect them with Bandai Namco ID, and then connect these communities called space colony satellites to form a Gundam Metaverse Cosmic space SIDE-G. In the future, the metaverse of SIDE-G, which mainly consists of various categories such as animation, gunpla, games, and music, will gradually unfold in the virtual space.

At present, on the official website of Gundam Metaverse, what can be seen is still only related promotional content, and there is no more progress. According to the past business actions of Bandai Namco, we can see that it has been active in the metaverse world that carries its own games, and has opened VR experience venues in many places around the world.

Sega

One of the co-sponsors of Oasys, a famous Japanese game company. In October 2022, Sega partnered with Japanese blockchain game company Double Jump Tokyo to release its first blockchain game. This game is based on Sega's classic game "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" as the prototype, and it is an online arcade battle exchange card game with the background of the Three Kingdoms era.

This is an NFT chain game. It is understood that Sega just lent this IP to Double Jump Tokyo for development. The specific game will be released at the end of this year, only on the PC side.

Previously, Sega was also actively exploring the NFT field, and it was still cooperating with Double Jump Tokyo. It is understood that Sega also invested in the company. Sega has also entered the NFT field. In May of this year, Sega launched the first NFT through the NFT market Oasy on the Oasys network, with the theme of its classic IP "Virtual Warrior".

Netmarble

Netmarble is the largest mobile game company in Korea that has developed games such as "Marvel Future Fight" and "Lineage 2: Revolution". Tencent is its third largest shareholder and was established in 2000. In January 2022, the company announced that it will adopt a dual-track strategy to attack blockchain games. At the same time, it will issue its own cryptocurrency for transactions in games. Its subsidiary Netmarble F&C will focus on producing blockchain-related content, including games, metaverse characters, virtual humans, and webcomics.

In 2022, Netmarble launched three blockchain games utilizing its IP, namely the battle royale mobile game "A3: Still Alive", the fantasy adventure role-playing mobile game "Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds" and the battle gameplay Fighting action game "King of Fighters: Arena".

Take "A3: Still Alive" as an example, the unique currency INETRIUM in the game, the currency refined by players in the game can be directly exchanged into the virtual currency MBX. When it was first launched, each MBX rose to a maximum of 68,000 won (about 360 yuan), and fell all the way to the current price of 1,440 won (about 7.7 yuan).

In fact, joining the chain game did not save Netmarble's decline. The net loss in the first half of 2022 was 172.3 billion won (about 900 million yuan), and the net loss in the second half of the year reached 277.5 billion won (about 1.5 billion yuan).

This year, Netmarble launched "Meta World: My City", which uses the "Let's Get Rich" IP with a cumulative global download of 150 million. Combining the board game with the real estate metaverse, players can trade land and buildings as NFTs and earn in-game tokens from real estate investments.

In terms of actual game experience, "Meta World: My City" is more like a "Monopoly" game in the cloak of the metaverse. On the one hand, players roll dice on various city maps and experience confrontation with other players in the virtual world . On the other hand, they enjoy expanding land, building landmarks, and creating a foundational metaverse content in the virtual world.

However, in addition to making personalized character models, "Meta World: My City" lacks richer and deeper virtual universe elements, as if it bears the title of "Metaverse".

Currently, on Google Play, the game has more than 1 million downloads and a score of 3.7.

Square Enix

A famous Japanese game company, the best-selling games are "Final Fantasy" and "Dragon Quest". There are many actions in the blockchain field, such as becoming a node operator of Oasys, investing in Zebedee, a protocol that focuses on integrating Bitcoin and game ecology, and selling NFT versions of physical "Final Fantasy 7" game character dolls and so on. As early as May 2020, in the mid-term business strategy announced by Square Enix, blockchain games have been identified as a new investment area for the company.

The chain game currently being developed by the company is "Symbiogenesis". The game is hosted on Polygon and is available in both web and mobile versions. According to the official news, it will be an NFT game based on 10,000 NFTs and has its own metaverse. The gameplay of the game is roughly that players hold NFT characters and complete character tasks, treasure hunting tasks, final world tasks, etc. However, there is still very little information disclosed about the game so far, and it is still unknown when it will be launched.

We are tall

Founded in 2000, Wemade is the first traditional game company in South Korea to deploy blockchain games. It owns the popular game IP "Legend of Blood".

In 2021, due to the success of its blockchain game "Mir 4 Global (Legend 4)" based on the blockchain project "Wemix", the company's revenue will increase significantly, and the market value will exceed US$5 billion that year.

"Mir 4 Global" has a strong "play to earn" feature, and has won the favor of users in the Philippines, Thailand and other Asian countries. The game contributed to Wemade's growth with a record 1.4 million concurrent users and 6.2 million monthly active users. Specifically, the game has a built-in native token Draco, which can be bought and sold in its built-in trading market through "play to earn", and game character NFT.

Wemade can be said to be the first traditional game company to enjoy the dividends of blockchain games. During the four years from 2017 to 2020, Wemade's annual income fluctuated around 100 billion won, and its net income was negative for three consecutive years. However, after entering the chain game market, 2021 will usher in an explosion, with annual revenue of 334.98 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 164%, and annual net income of 306.69 billion won, a year-on-year increase of 4515%. After the global release of Mir4, the stock price of Wemade rose from 30,000 won to 230,000 won, and its market value also jumped into the first echelon of Korean games. The price of the game’s token Draco once touched $8 in the fourth quarter of 2021, but if the price of Draco falls below $1 in 2022, for users, the income from gold mining will drop sharply, and the number of Draco’s active addresses will also show a cliff-like decline.

In terms of revenue, Mir 4 Global is far from reaching the level of Axie and Stepn in the field of chain games, and the research and development costs of these two are much lower than MIR4; compared with traditional games, the same Korean MMORPG game, NCSoft The launch of "Paradise W" exceeded 100 million US dollars in revenue within eight days of its launch, and "Ninokuni" launched by Netmarble also completed 100 million US dollars in revenue in 11 days. And Mir 4 Global is also behind them.

Generally speaking, from the perspective of game revenue, Mir 4 Global is the first chain game in Korea. Although the game quality is far superior to that of the same period, the actual revenue performance is hard to say. The token economy in the chain game also makes the game The life cycle is greatly shortened.

Domestic game maker

As early as 2016, Ali launched blockchain game products, including the well-known "Ant Forest".

However, the first outbreak of chain games in China was in 2018, when major domestic game manufacturers launched chain games. At that time, the domestic chain game market was very single, mainly collecting and trading games, similar to CryptoKitties. Baidu has developed Letz Gou, Blockmao developed by 360, Baolima developed by Chenxin Technology, and Yunyu developed by Geek.com. Linekong Interactive and Netease have professional game team backgrounds and have also developed blockchain games such as Dongle and Lucky Cat.

In 2021 and 2022, Baidu launched the social game "Xi Rang", and ByteDance acquired PICO, a leading domestic VR industry manufacturer, at a high price of 9 billion yuan; The integrated platform game "Restart World" also developed a Metaverse social product Pixsoul internally. Tencent's Tianmei Studio announced a new project - a metaverse game "Z PLAN". NetEase also implanted blockchain technology in its popular game IPs "Naishuihan" and "A Chinese Ghost Story", and tried to establish a unified industry virtual asset management standard for games through a digital asset called "Fuxi Tongbao" to change the future chain. The game's division of labor and cooperation mode revitalizes the asset storage of game users.

But the good times didn't last long. In May of this year, the person in charge of Baidu Xiyang left. According to insiders of Tencent Games to Jinse Finance, Tencent’s chain game-related business has been suspended.

Due to policy reasons, chain games are still relatively risky for major domestic companies. Although Metaverse is the direction of future development, the road ahead is long and difficult, and the development of technology has not yet reached the stage where users can achieve a better experience and bring profits to the company.

Summarize:

At present, the development of chain games still has great limitations. The purpose of chain game players is clear, and the way to make money by playing games is as long as they can make money, as long as they can play games, other things are not important, and this part of players is also very limited. In fact, the development of chain games urgently needs fresh blood and gameplay brought by Web2.0 game manufacturers.

For a good game, the game experience must come first, and the economic model embedded in it should be considered second.

Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Square Enix and other major 3A manufacturers have struggled in recent years and encountered bottlenecks. For traditional game manufacturers, chain games can undoubtedly bring new vitality to the big players.

Exquisite production, vivid game plots and good game experience can be combined with the chaining of assets and a good economic model. This is definitely the direction of chain game development, and it should also be a high ground for traditional game manufacturers to compete for.