FC Talk EP01 Highlights Review｜New Stuff: Is World PVP the new Alpha? How to find Web3 Games

Highlight

• On-chain real money PVP is a highly competitive game that requires a high degree of on-chain and a profitable mechanism, so there must be a reasonable asset issuance and trading environment;

• Gamified gaming products are becoming increasingly popular, but a truly blockbuster product is still needed to lead the market;

• The best money-making strategy for Web3 games is high turnover. The higher the frequency of fund turnover, the higher the profit can be obtained.

• The breakthrough of the full-chain game needs to start with the issuance and trading of assets, and a Uniswap will emerge;

• A more feasible and universal innovation idea is: instead of trying to make an invention from 0 to 1 that requires almost genius, it is better to reselect the toolbox available to you from past paradigms.

• New things worth noting: Real money PVP on the chain (World PVP; Fantasy.top), Friend.tech V2, Farcaster, mini-programs on TG (eg: catizen)

Core features, success factors and trading strategies of PVP games

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

World PVP itself is a full-chain game. The most likely breakthrough point for full-chain games is the game mechanism around assets, and World PVP does a good job in this regard, with both group strategy and some randomness and periodicity. In addition, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that another hit application appeared on Base. If I want to bet on a Layer 2 that can produce a hit application in this cycle, I am actually willing to go all in Base. This piece of soil keeps giving birth to new things. When we look at this new thing, we should also think about why it always appears on this piece of soil, and whether the temperature, humidity and participants of this piece of soil are more suitable for cultivating new things.

Yinghao (SevenX game investor, Twitter @linsajiao)

I define World PVP as real money PVP on the chain. This type of game has six characteristics:

• There is a high degree of on-chain to ensure the safety of users’ or players’ funds and earnings;

• Real money makes players feel that they can make money. Even if they lose this time, they may still make money next time as long as they don’t leave the table.

• Non-zero-sum game, there must be moderate positive externalities to attract continuous inflow of external funds;

• The diversity of users, the capital attributes and profit goals of different users will bring about the diversity of strategies, making the entire game richer and more interesting;

• Three-dimensional game strategy, different lines of game mechanisms with interrelated links should be mixed together to give players room for continuous exploration (whether they can make money, or how much money they can make at what time) and game play;

• Sustainability: Continuous new users, new assets, and new markets will first lead to positive internalities and then positive externalities.

World PVP has two implications for game developers: one is the social attribute. The main UI of World PVP is a chat board, where players can discuss with each other, formulate strategies, and influence each other. Once the social feeling is created, the entire game will become different, and the stickiness of the game will increase a lot; the other is the Meme attribute. For products in the cryptocurrency circle, whether it is a C-end product or a public chain, Meme is a tool to bring in volume and break the circle.

Saku (MATR1X CEO, Twitter @saku_web3)

Rather than defining a category, World PVP is a game mechanism or a gaming mechanism. What is important here is that it needs to be complex enough, with a certain degree of complexity and diversity, so that the ecosystem inside it can be sustainable.

For a real money/gambling game, my trading strategy is to look at the deposit. The frequency and amount of players deposits have a diagonal line. When the diagonal line has a turning point, it may be the time when the mechanism of the game has a problem. In fact, all PVP games have a concept of a pot. When the pot has a turning point, it may be time to leave. In other words, it is easiest to make money when trading when you are in a good mood, but this is just a pure game logic.

Money-making strategies in the WEB3 game track

Saku (MATR1X CEO, Twitter @saku_web3)

The most profitable strategy is actually to improve the efficiency of capital utilization (turnover rate), that is, to quickly manufacture mining machines and continuously run ROI. The higher the frequency of capital rolling, the better. The second is the pot logic, that is, when the capital inflow has been on an upward trend, it is the most profitable time. Once an inflection point appears, you should consider exiting. The last method is to hoard scarce assets. As the entire market appreciates, the assets in your hands will also appreciate. In contrast, the first two methods are the two easiest strategies to make money under the current situation of Web3 games based on gold farming logic.

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

Let me share a case. In 2021, when Axie Infinity was at its peak, a friend’s gold-making studio used AI to simulate real people to continuously optimize strategies, and finally made considerable profits.

Yinghao (SevenX game investor, Twitter @linsajiao)

There are two categories. The first category is a combination of Play to Earn + scale, and the second category is on-chain real money PVP products and some asset transmitter mode (Pump.fun) products, that is, using gamified game methods to achieve wealth effects, from earthen dogs to golden dogs, and then from golden dogs to Memes. In a time window of a small part of the current bull market, the magnitude of the financial effect achieved by the second category may be even greater than that of the first category, and it is expected to become the next hot spot in the Web3 game industry. At the same time, as more and more projects join this field, market competition will become more intense.

FC (Founding Partner of SevenX, Twitter @FC_0X 0)

I will provide a secondary perspective from a friend who bought BigTime tokens at 1/10 of the current price. The first is to have a real experience, which can help you get a perceptual understanding of whether a game is fun and whether it is likely to be accepted by more people; the second is to make a horizontal comparison, that is, to see more comparisons of key indicators between games, so that you know whether what you bought is expensive or cheap; the third is the roadmap and economic model of the entire team.

Exploring the distribution of benefits in Web3 game design

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

In fact, the development of Cellula has exceeded my imagination, because on the first day, people used AI tools such as ChatGPT and MyShell to write strategies, perform simulations and calculations to find mining machines with higher computing power or cost-effectiveness. At the same time, players also began to pay attention to the growth of the computing power curve and formulate corresponding strategies according to different mining cycles. In the game, some players are able to get a higher ROI (return on investment) by carefully thinking about the underlying mechanism of the game and making smarter choices. In general, the design rules of this game itself can constantly motivate players to explore and practice better strategies. Later, we hope to introduce more externalities to the entire system and introduce more external applications and protocols for joint mining.

Saku (MATR1X CEO, Twitter @saku_web3)

The system of MATR1X starts from the so-called Web2.5, builds the underlying data and technology, and finally takes the path of the whole chain. In this path, there is one thing that is relatively important, that is, the standardization of assets. In fact, the assets in this industry are very messy now, with various types of assets and protocol standards. So our approach is to encourage those who can provide liquidity and develop assets to participate in this system through a slightly centralized application scenario, put the assets on various chains, and finally collect these assets and standardize them. So in our design, we actually hope that users will use assets and data to mine. We have been trying to motivate those who hold assets for a long time, create assets, and then spread them.

Mass Adoption for Web3 Games

Saku (MATR1X CEO, Twitter @saku_web3)

To attract non-Crypto users, the game quality and experience must be the same as Web2 games, while adding Web3 elements. However, it is difficult to achieve this because few teams are willing to spend a lot of money to do this. I think there still needs to be a real hit that proves to the market that this thing can work and the path is effective, in order to drive the market to explode.

Opportunities and challenges of full-chain games

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

If we use DeFi as an analogy, I think the full-chain game is still in the darkness before the dawn of Uniswap. That is, everyone is still doing DEX with various order stories, but it does not essentially solve everyones most fundamental needs, that is, everyone can issue assets, everyone can trade assets, and everyone can provide liquidity. We are also looking forward to the moment of Uniswap for full-chain games. We must start with the issuance and trading of assets. There is no other way. But as more and more people are trying, we may be very close to a breakthrough.

Another point is that the real Alpha should be counterintuitive, or strange, that is, you will find it interesting, but at first glance you feel that it is not feasible. At this time, you should be very careful and re-examine the product. The four cycles have repeatedly confirmed that the narrative that triggers a bull market starts in a corner that no one pays attention to.

Combinatorial innovation is also disruptive

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

Many innovative things have actually existed in traditional markets or games for many years, but they have changed to new forms or carriers. So what we can do is not to simply look back or look for a sword in a boat, but to highly extract and crush it, and then reorganize it, which can greatly increase the success rate of creating new things. For example, CryptoKitties, its contract is a complete replication of the genetics process, but it is just expressed in a different form, including AMM. For example, we also encountered bottlenecks when designing Cellulas chaotic system, but in the end we found that instead of trying to make a genius invention from 0 to 1, it is better to re-select which toolboxes are available to you in the past paradigms.

To sum up, if a paradigm is very new and it is proven to work and even has the ability to cross cycles, then you should deeply disassemble and analyze it, abstract it to a high degree, and make combinatorial innovations, which can also be disruptive.

Paths and methodologies for discovering new things

Yinghao (SevenX game investor, Twitter @linsajiao)

In this ever-changing market, the most effective way is to stand in the users perspective. Whether the user approves is the standard for testing whether the C-end product is established and whether it can be quickly fomo within the time window. Therefore, we will join various groups (Degen player groups, gold farming studio groups, communities that capture Alpha through on-chain data changes, etc.) and obtain information from them.

The new thing I discovered recently is the real money PVP on the chain. The boundaries it defines are actually quite broad. In addition to the World PVP we are talking about today, there is also a card-based gaming product - fantasy.top. Another is the V2 version of Friend.tech. They will make the issuance of assets more diversified in the ecosystem and provide an open trading environment to carry out the logic of speculating on assets. Finally, there is Farcaster, which provides a good environment without the need to deploy assets, allowing developers to create their own applications more conveniently. At present, some MEME tokens have been used in this ecosystem, such as for rewards, payments, and as settlement tokens within applications.

Saku (MATR1X CEO, Twitter @saku_web3)

TG bot on Telegram has some interesting applications that are gradually becoming popular. It feels like all the virality and marketing of WeChat mini-games have been moved to TG bot. By using TG bot, the threshold for users to participate in the blockchain can be lowered. MATR1X is also trying to build some small programs on the platform to help them share some of the transaction and query links.

There are two main channels for discovering new things. One is to capture changes in on-chain data, and the other is to join communities that discuss new things.

Eric (Cellula core contributor, Twitter @de 2 epblue)

Pay attention to the Base ecosystem. In fact, there are some other social applications on Base that have already come out with some representatives. We are watching whether World PVP will lead another small wave of games on the Base ecosystem. One way to track is to follow several people in the Base ecosystem on Twitter, they will share new things that appear in the community.