Chain game evolution Web3 version CSGO strikes

In the past few years, game developers have been hoping to use the value circulation network of Web3 to transform the economic system of traditional games, hand over the control of virtual assets to users, and let assets circulate freely in the market.

In the history of Web3 game development, there have been two explosive models, CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity, but their vitality is not tenacious. The lack of playability and the flaws in the design of the economic system only made them experience a short-term popularity.

Now, Matr1x Fire, a CSGO-like FPS shooting game, is here. In addition to the Web3 "standard configuration" of economic system on-chain, Matr1x Fire pays more attention to playability.

During the test phase from August 8th to August 28th, some players expressed their approval for its playability, and regarded it as another ray of light for breaking the circle of Web3 games. With much anticipation, whether Matr1x Fire’s economic system design is sustainable has become the key to its success or failure.

A playable shooting game appears in the Web3 world

From August 8th to August 28th, every night from 6:00 to 11:00, a small group of gamers gathered in Matr1x Fire, a shooting game similar to CSGO. They manipulated virtual characters dressed in cyberpunk and used various guns Play online battles.

This game is not much different from traditional FPS games, but in the eyes of players, this is a pioneering test, and they are likely to witness the moment when Web3 games rise again.

The biggest difference between Matr1x Fire and games like CSGO is that it is built on the value network of Web3. All game coins, guns, and props in the game are game data that cannot be modified at will in the background, and belong to digital assets that are confirmed and cannot be tampered with after being uploaded to the chain.

Matr1x explains the necessity of doing this like this: The Internet has created great history in the past few decades, but users gradually find themselves living in a "digital black hole", and the game props, social media, etc. they create do not belong to themselves. In the technology cycle of Metaverse and Web3, this will change forever. "In the new platform, we will return the personal digital sovereignty of digital assets such as game props to users, share the generated income with the community, and create our own metaverse and Web3 world with all participants."

This design brings a new game economic cycle system, that is, the characters, guns and other props purchased by users can be freely circulated through the blockchain network, and the game will no longer be a bottomless pit that can only be recharged and cannot be returned.

In fact, this is also the idea that Web3 game makers have always advocated. If only this is achieved, Matr1x is nothing special. After all, putting the economic system on the chain is not a big innovation.

But the main point of Matr1x is that it wants to make Web3 games never fun to achieve an important transition to greatly improve playability. To this end, Matr1x has done a lot of preliminary homework.

Matr1x Fire game screen

According to public information, Matr1x team members have an average of more than 8 years of game development experience, and most of the team members are senior game players, which allows them to establish a mature understanding of whether the game is fun. In February this year, Matr1x completed a $10 million Series A round of financing, with participation from Hana Financial Investment, Hashkey Capital, Amber Group, and SevenX Ventures.

Before the game started testing, Matr1x has announced a coherent storyline, covering continuous plots such as Cyber Earth, Mars immigration, and interstellar expeditions. According to reports, the development team has built a novel with a length of several million words, which is currently being serialized.

In terms of game development, Matr1x will create three mobile games with a unified world view, namely Matr1x Fire, which is currently being tested, and Matr1x War and Matr1x Evolution. Compared with CSGO which only supports PC and console, Matr1x Fire is a mobile game that can run on both Apple and Android to reach more players.

FPS mobile games are more difficult than general game development, and need to take into account multiple elements such as map terrain, vertical space, choke points, bullet hit and kill time, bullet flight trajectory and bullet speed, front sight, maneuverability, and shooting feedback. From the test feedback, Matr1x Fire has been well received.

The test player "Orange" said that the special effects of the game are cool, catching up with the art effects of some current web2 gun battle head games; the game mode is a bit of a renaissance, and it feels like returning to the middle school era, a bit nostalgic, simple and fun. But the project side hopes to keep up with the new trend and develop more new models.

Whether it can explode or not depends on whether the economic system is sustainable

According to the statistics of data companies, in the past few years, shooting games have played an important role in the mobile game category, and they are the sixth largest game type in the US iOS market, creating about 6% of the market revenue.

Although there have been no new hit shooters on the market for some time, the success of Call of Duty Mobile has spurred many AAA developers to turn to mobile platforms. At present, a number of leading developers are launching potential competitors, including mobile game versions of "Fearless Contract", "Apex Heroes", "Battlefield" and "Final Fantasy 7: First Soldier".

Choosing the category of shooting games should be a choice made by Matr1x after serious consideration of "playability". After all, if you choose a popular category for development, you don’t need to do too much pre-marketing and education, and more players will flood in and get started quickly.

On social media, Matr1x Fire is hailed by some players as the "God's Gun", hoping that it can break through the shackles of Web3 game development.

Looking back, Web3 games have experienced two major upsurges. In 2017, CryptoKitties developed based on the Ethereum blockchain triggered the popularity of the first wave of chain games. Its gameplay is very simple. Players buy and sell cats and breed cats for trading. It is an electronic pet in encrypted currency; in 2021, Axie Infinity broke out. Players control elves to fight in the game, and they can also breed and trade them as pets. This is the Web3 version of Pokémon.

However, the lack of playability was the unification of the ills of early chain games. The more accurate definition of the above chain games is "gold game", because the economic value in the game can be transferred, and the first goal of a large number of players is to make money, not to Enjoy the game. However, as the tokens in the Axie Infinity system continue to increase and decrease, players are rapidly losing, and Axie has failed to shoulder the glory of the rise of Web3 games.

When Matr1x brought the FPS mobile game masterpiece, the attention of the Web3 world was once again attracted. If it is based on the main demand of Web3 gamers for "making gold", whether Matr1x's economic system is sustainable becomes an important factor in determining its success.

Currently, test players participating in the Matr1x game can play the game by receiving a free experience pass or paying for a higher-level pass NFT. More than 30 different weapons and props in the game have corresponding skin NFTs, and all skins are divided into different levels; in addition, the characters, avatars and trophies in the game are all presented in the form of NFT.

In-game gun display

In addition to props, there are two types of tokens in the game, namely FIRE and MAX. The former is a token dropped in the game, which can be used to upgrade characters, open boxes, etc.; the latter is a governance token, and holders can Vote in the community and participate in the co-creation of content and gameplay.

Compared with Axie, Matr1x Fire does not have a breeding system and will not continuously generate "mining machines". The game token FIRE has many consumption mechanisms, and the total amount of MAX is limited to 1 billion pieces, which will never be issued again. To make the economic system sustainable, Matr1x needs to reasonably design the relationship between FIRE's output and consumption, and provide enough usage scenarios for MAX. At the same time, for rare items NFT, Matr1x must also set a reasonable explosion rate, so as to avoid excessive circulation, resulting in a sharp drop in the market value of rare items.

The Matr1x Fire economic system, which is still in the beta stage, has not yet officially operated. The development team needs to carefully consider many factors to prevent the game from falling into a death spiral like Axie.

It is expected that Matr1x Fire will be officially launched soon. The marketing warm-up of Matr1x is also going on. One of the highlights is that Matr1x intends to hold e-sports events around Matr1x Fire to expand its influence and attract more players from the Web2 world.

For the Web3 world, Matr1x Fire bears expectations, takes playability as the top priority, and breaks through the situation of chain games being "boring enough to play gold". The attempt to break the circle has already begun, let's see how it attracts a wider range of gamers.