Research Unlock: Off The Grid is Taking Gaming by Storm

Off the Grid, a battle royale shooter developed by Gunzilla Games, has been making waves in the gaming industry, becoming the most popular free-to-download game in the Epic Games store just three days after its early access release.

Source: Epic Games

Off the Grid is one of the latest gaming titles that aims to merge mainstream gaming with blockchain-based assets, offering decentralized ownership models for in-game assets. Yet what sets them apart is how they have done something most other similar games have failed to do, garnering a real and substantial player base.

This research piece offers an in-depth analysis of what Off the Grid is, its gameplay mechanics, how it integrates with its blockchain and the potential risks and challenges the project faces.

Gameplay 

Off the Grid is a cyberpunk-themed battle royale game. The contextual premise of the game is set in a dystopian world where corporations and augmented humans wage war against one another.

Off the Grid, at its core, follows a well-established formula for battle royale games, where players are dropped into a large map, form teams and fight to be the last team standing.

This is a simple and fairly generic plotline and gameplay mechanic for a game of this genre.

However, Off the Grid introduces several mechanics that set it apart from similar battle royale games, with its only playable game mode at the time of writing called “Extraction Royale” requiring players to collect “loot” or items in addition to eliminating their enemies. 

These “loot” items, which can contain a variety of items like cosmetic skins, weapons or skill upgrades, are what is stored on the blockchain in the form of NFTs.

Blockchain Integration

The way in which the blockchain is integrated into Off the Grid is relatively straightforward.

The core gameplay runs on a traditional game engine, similar to how most web2 games are built, without relying on blockchain technology. Instead, blockchain is employed exclusively for the game's NFT marketplace.

Diving deeper, Off the Grid uses a custom Avalanche L1 by Gunzilla Games, to manage its crypto and NFT elements. 

Avalanche L1s, previously called subnets , is a customized blockchain network that operates within the larger Avalanche network, allowing projects to define their own rules and economic models while maintaining interoperability with other Avalanche L1s.

As players progress through matches, the loot they collect is stored on the blockchain, allowing them to trade or sell these items as NFTs.

Note that, at the time of writing, while Off the Grid’s NFT marketplace has not launched on mainnet, it is live on testnet. Players’ in-game items collected during this testnet phase would be transferred to mainnet upon launch.

Engaging with it would be entirely optional, as players who prefer to focus solely on the gameplay can do so without any interaction with the NFT or blockchain aspects.

This optional integration of NFTs aims to prevent the game from becoming overly commercialized, a common issue in many blockchain-based titles that often alienates players.

By keeping the NFT system separate from the core gameplay, Off the Grid remains, first and foremost, a game designed for entertainment rather than financial speculation.

This separation is likely one of the reasons for the game's early success.

On the other hand, it would be difficult to classify Off the Grid as a full-fledged “crypto game,” since its gameplay does not depend on blockchain technology or decentralized systems. The blockchain components are supplemental rather than central to the game's design.

Nevertheless, Off the Grid will need to approach it carefully as there is a risk that the financial aspects could overshadow the core gameplay, turning the game into a speculative environment where the value of in-game items fluctuates based on market sentiment and conditions rather than their utility.

This could lead to the creation of a two-tiered player base, with one focused on financial profit and another on gaming enjoyment. Many blockchain games have struggled with this dynamic, often failing to strike the right balance and losing players as a result.

Metrics

Transaction Count

Off the Grid has had a notable effect in the number of transactions in the GUNZ L1 subnet, as increased gameplay and loot items being “dropped” leads to increased transactions being conducted in the GUNZ L1.

In the three weeks leading up to the game's early access launch on October 8, 2024, the GUNZ averaged around 1.4M transactions per day.

However, in the two weeks following the launch, that number more than doubled, averaging over 3.1M daily transactions.

On the day of the launch, the GUNZ Avalanche L1 processed approximately 622K transactions, which is a 350% increase from the previous day.

Over the next seven days, transaction volume grew by an additional 40% each day, eventually peaking at 4.5M transactions on October 15. Since then, the GUNZ L1 has consistently averaged more than 3.4M transactions per day.

Source: Flipside (@Ali3N), The Block Pro Research

Active Addresses

Active addresses on the GUNZ L1 saw similar explosive growth after the game's early access release.

Prior to October 8, the network averaged around 112K active addresses per day. But in the week following the launch, this figure skyrocketed to over 506K active addresses, while peaking at 846K on October 10.

However, as the second week progressed, the number of active addresses dropped significantly, hitting a low of 247K on October 19.

Interestingly, as the weekend approached, this figure rebounded sharply, increasing by 34% each day, culminating in a near all-time high of 765K active addresses on October 23. 

This fluctuation in active addresses could suggest a recurring trend where an increased number of players engage more with the game during the weekend compared to the rest of the week.

Source: Flipside (@Ali3N), The Block Pro Research

Fees Generated

The fees generated by the GUNZ L1 has seen a pattern more closely resembling its transaction count, where it generated an average of just 4.8 GUNZ per day prior to early access launch, to over 40 GUNZ per day afterwards.

Source: Flipside (@Ali3N), The Block Pro Research

Stream Viewers

In addition to the technical metrics of the GUNZ L1, a more visible indicator of Off the Grid’s popularity lies in the number of viewers it has attracted on streaming platforms such as Twitch

On the first day of early access, the game garnered an average of 11K viewers. However, by the second day, this figure dropped to around 7.9K viewers.

Interestingly, viewer numbers increased by 275% on the third day, hitting an average of nearly 30K viewers, and maintaining that level into the following day.

This spike suggests that early curiosity and streamer interest played a significant role in boosting the game’s initial popularity, indicating notable initial traction with influencers and their audiences.

However, since then, viewer attention to the game has deteriorated rapidly.

By October 13, the number of viewers had plummeted by 67%, marking a sharp decline in viewer engagement. Over the next week, this figure continued to fall gradually, with viewership decreasing by around 10% per day.

As of October 23, 2024, Off the Grid had an average of just 565 viewers on Twitch.