The future of TCG: GameFi or the whole chain?

1. What is TCG

First, what is TCG? The full name of TCG is Trading Card Game, which is a trading card game. As the name suggests, this type of game is based on collecting cards. Players need to purchase randomly packed supplement packs to collect cards, and then use different cards flexibly according to their own strategies to construct a deck that complies with the rules and play the game. .

Since everyone’s deck is different, the order in which the cards are drawn in each game is also different, and endless variations arise from this. Whether in the process of preparing or playing the game, players need to constantly use their brains to think. Generally speaking, these cards have a certain value, and players can trade and exchange their own cards.

Magic: The Gathering

Cards in Splinterlands

Cards in Skyweaver

1.1 Common characteristics of TCG

Splinterlands cards describe the name of the card, the mana required to use the card, the character’s physical strength/speed/toughness and life, rarity, the card’s level, the card’s experience value, and the card’s special abilities.

a. Each card will have text describing the rules, describing the conditions and effects of using these cards.

b. Players are required to have a deck. Players need to select a certain number of cards from thousands of cards and cooperate with each other to win the game. This provides a lot of openness and diversity to the game. In order to lower the entry barrier for newcomers, most TCGs will provide pre-assembled decks, but players need to use their own understanding to improve the strength of the deck to achieve victory.

c. The use of any card requires certain conditions, such as the magic value required to use the card in Splinterlands mentioned above.

d. The basic rule of the game is to use your own resources rationally to produce certain effects and achieve the winning conditions required by the game.

e. No matter what kind of game and what the rules are, it is played in rounds, and the rounds follow a certain structure.

1.2 Round structure

• Round start/reset phase - Let all cards become the state of the new round. Most TCGs have the same design. Of course, some of them will have unique and unique designs.
• Card Drawing - Draw cards from the deck into your hand. The newly drawn cards may mean new effects.
• Use - Take advantage of the effects written on the cards and use the cards in your hand reasonably to affect the game.
• Conflict/Combat - Use available resources to fight. Generally speaking, winning in conflict is the main means of winning the game.
• End of Round - Generally speaking, at this stage, the effects of the cards used this round will end, and players will be asked to discard excess cards in their hands to control the number of cards in their hands to a certain number.

1.3 Issuance and operation

Players need to purchase cards from the game publisher to play the game. This is primarily done by purchasing “booster packs,” which contain a set number of random cards. Most games will have a “starter pack”, which contains a complete starter deck designed to allow novice players to understand the rules.

Cards have different effects in the game and are divided into strong and weak. Therefore, in order to prevent the proliferation of powerful cards, basically all game publishers will use rarity to control the proportion of cards of various strengths. Three-stage division is a more common way, that is, divided into “common cards”, “uncommon cards” and “rare cards”. Taking Magic: The Gathering as an example, a booster pack contains 15 cards, of which there is only one rare card, three uncommon cards, and the others are common cards.

In order to make the cards have a certain added value, game publishers will print special cards. The more traditional method is “flash cards”. These specially printed cards are very beautiful and have strong collection value.

Take Yu-Gi-Oh! (a card game based on the Japanese anime of the same name) as an example. It has audiences all over the world, has been translated into multiple languages, and has spawned a huge card trading and collection market, with more than 22 billion Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Cards are circulating in the market, and many cards are worth thousands of dollars, with the most collectible cards even reaching $9 million.

Below I will take Splinterlands and Skyweaver, two projects with different design emphasis, as examples to analyze the reasons behind the different development situations of the two projects and talk about the present and future of on-chain TCG.

2. Splinterlands and Skyweaver

2.1 Basic information

2.2 Development status

Since various data analysis platforms lack Skyweaver data after 2022, we look at the game data in mid-2022, which is the closest time point. We can see that the number of users and transactions of Splinterlands far exceeds that of Skyweaver, and is in a relatively stable situation. . Since July 2021, with the popularity of TCG games, Splinterlands has ushered in unprecedented growth and gradually entered a stable period. However, Skyweaver has experienced two or three years of testing and still has not broken through Ice Age.

It can be seen that as of April 12, 2022, Splinterlands has ranked first for many times with more than 350,000 daily active users, leaving the second, third and even Axie Infinity far behind. It can be said that it has been in the limelight for a while. , the well-deserved king of chain games.

In a similar environment, why do two TCGs with similar core gameplay have such completely different developments?

2.3 Core differences between Splinterlands and Skyweaver

2.3.1 Tokens

Splinterlands issued its own token after financing in July 2021, establishing a dual-currency model of $DEC and $SPS.

$DEC is an in-game currency with a current market price of $0.00076335. It is mainly used to purchase various card packs, land, props, improve personal rankings, etc. in the game. It can be obtained through various tasks and official activities in the game, or through transactions. Purchase on the platform. $DEC can be withdrawn and traded, and can also be used to purchase props and rental cards, which can be used to increase the battle rate and obtain more battle rewards and rare cards. Scarce cards can be traded in the NFT trading market for profit.

$SPS is a governance token with a current market price of $0.01717423. It is mainly used for community governance voting, game rewards, obtaining staking rewards, etc. Holders stake $SPS to participate in voting and can decide any adjustments to the project, including Splinterlands-sponsored tournament schedules, settings and prizes, updates to card balances, mission, season and leaderboard rewards, battle settings (time limits, mana caps) , rulesets, inactive shards, etc.), and the $DEC inflation pool.

Skyweaver does not issue coins and uses the stable currency USDC as the in-game currency.

2.3.2 Play-to-Earn

In Splinterlands, players can play for just $10. Compared with games of the same type, Play-to-Earn has a relatively low threshold for playing, and the ways to earn money are simple and diverse.

• Daily tasks: Daily tasks are refreshed every 24 hours based on the time when they are first completed. Daily tasks of different levels reward different numbers of boxes. The boxes may contain $DEC, and there is also a probability of cards of various levels being released.
• Battle winning reward: The winner of each battle will receive a $DEC token reward. The current market price is 0.00076335U. As the player level increases, the single DEC reward will also increase.
• Opening a card pack: Opening a card pack is similar to a blind box. Each card pack has cards with different values. What you can get depends on luck. However, according to historical earnings, the average earnings value of a card pack is greater than the sales amount. The potions that you have a chance to get in daily tasks can increase the probability of getting legendary and gold cards from the card pack.
• Guild rewards: You can get some exclusive rewards by participating in a guild, but guild construction and combat have certain level requirements for members.
• Card trading: Different cards have different supply and demand, and the trading value of each card is also different.
• Card rental: Cards can be rented out for a short period of time, and the lessee can use the cards to improve the game winning rate.
• Tournament bonus: The registration fees paid by all players to participate in the tournament form a bonus pool, and different bonuses will be obtained according to the final results.
• Season rewards: Season rewards will also increase with different levels. In addition to points, season rewards also take into account the corresponding value of the card held, which is measured by power value in the game. In order to earn stable season rewards, many people may consider holding high-value cards in their hands, a bit like the model of staking card NFTs to earn income.
• Airdrop: Distributed based on players’ game contributions (mainly the weight of in-game assets on the chain) and the amount of pledged SPS.

Skyweaver’s Play-to-Earn gameplay is different, mainly divided into a free-to-play ranking mode and a paid conquest mode. The income from the game is mainly two types of NFT, gold card and silver card.

• Silver Card NFT: You can obtain weekly leaderboard rewards through ranking mode (the higher you rank, the more silver cards you win), or by winning Conquest Mode matches. Silver cards are tradeable versions of base cards and can be used to pay for Conquest Mode tickets.
• Gold Card NFT: Loot edition card, created and obtained by winning all three games in Conquest mode, limited supply. Each week there will be a selection of 8 different Gold Cards, once the week is over these 8 Gold Cards cannot be won again, after that you can only obtain them from other players on the store.

2.3.3 Others

Splinterlands

In addition to making cards NFT, elements such as land auctions, NFT card transactions, and card synthesis have also been added to increase the liquidity of cards and land. Players can trade or sell game assets to other players. The greater imagination space of Splinterlands also lies in the land-based metaverse world, which supports players to create guilds, build castles, and create a broader metaverse space. Splinterlands has a clear roadmap that presents various future plans to players.

Skyweaver

Unlike Splinterlands, Skyweaver does not have a particularly clear roadmap, and the game is poorly balanced compared to Splinterlands. In the middle of this year, the project owner Horizon directly stated that the current focus is to help more games, applications and brands enter web3. The team stated that they will announce more partnerships, ranging from games to map technology to loyalty. rewards programs, to the token experiences that different companies and brands are creating. This may indicate that Horizon will not put too much effort into Skyweaver in the future, causing players to generally lose confidence in the project.

2.4 Reasons for development differences

Both games are popular in the GameFi craze, and playability and economic benefits are two ends of the same scale.

Splinterlands has more diverse ways to earn money. It is a relatively efficient gold farming mode with certain playability, and is closer to the design of early GameFi. The dual-token model of the game is also designed more to serve the economic attributes, and the SPS airdrop And open governance rights have brought low-cost tap water marketing to the community and extremely sticky early participants, making Splinterlands’ popularity advance and become a smash hit. The roadmap announced by Splinterlands is not only clear, but also has a metaverse world based on land, which is close to the popular narrative at the time, bringing higher discussion and participation.

The gameplay of Skyweaver is relatively monotonous. It does not provide any special means to attract traffic during the cold start stage. The small number of players leads to a longer matching time of the game, which reduces the efficiency of earning revenue. There is no NFT market for cards. The behavior of pulling the market, when the playability is not enough to cover the inefficient gold farming mode, the high learning cost and time cost of the TCG game itself, boosted by market sentiment, wear away the players’ patience. At the same time, , the Skyweaver project team did not provide a clear enough and imaginative roadmap, which further led to the community’s voice being negative and users continuing to lose.

The reasons behind the development differences between Splinterlands and Skyweaver can be summarized into four aspects:

• Economic incentives: Value capture and economic subsidies are very important. In this environment, to obtain more traffic and users and attract more people’s attention, economic incentives are necessary, but the trade-off with playability needs to be considered. ;
• Community culture and creator economy: Player feedback on the game, the culture and atmosphere within the community, and UGC content are very important to the operation and development of the game. Highly sticky early participants have a profound impact on the project;
• Operational issues: A clear roadmap and a long-term community atmosphere can bring higher user retention and activity, reduce user churn, and not only be in line with current hot topics, but at least be clear, reasonable, planned, and implemented step by step;
• Industrialization of games: Whether the learning cost and time cost of the game are reasonably estimated and measured is related to how to balance rewards and costs. This requires systematic, precipitated industrial design and experienced game planners.

3. Propositions that need to be considered in Web3 TCG game design

3.1 How to reasonably regulate the economic sustainability of NFT?

The mentality of most game NFT holders in Web3 Game is similar to that of NFT investors. They hope that the scarcity of game NFT will maintain the original price or even bring higher value. Game NFTs can be used as scarcity rewards, assume the functions of value carriers and investment means, and circulate in the market, but this needs to be based on the premise that the game is fun, and what is essentially required is the richness of game development. The mutual violation between the two may lead to confrontation between the community and developers and cause governance issues. If the community can adopt a long-term and rich mentality and continue to build, ecological prosperity will bring about a benign value flywheel.

Taking LOOT as an example, the development of LOOT derivatives and related protocols initially caused the price of LOOT NFT to drop to half of its original value, but later captured a value that far exceeded expectations. Before independent development and construction in the community, game developers can control the inflation rate of NFT through appropriate mechanisms to ensure the balance and consistency of the interests of early participants and latecomers, and also allow developers to adjust their development and construction routes .

For now. Seasons, or limited-time open game cycles, are one of the relatively feasible sustainability mechanisms. Dark Forest and Dookey Dash are also open for a limited time to control the scale of reward acquisition, that is, the inflation rate of NFT. In Web2, this mechanism is reflected in the seasonal iteration of “retreating from the environment” through different gameplay and deck strength, combined with the world view and background story. For new players, they can pay a reasonable learning cost to participate in the game, while for old players, new season compensation will be given to retain them. Only when the interests of early participants and new participants are harmonized can the company grow stronger.

Another healthy economic design that has been implemented in practice is to control the supply through the release and burning of tokens and NFTs. The season reward mechanism provided by Splinterlands and the Skyweaver mechanism of burning silver cards in exchange for conquest mode passes actually bring about a reasonable economic cycle on a small scale.

3.2 How to balance the two ends of Play-to-Earn?

Web3 Game has also used GameFi and P2E to attract a lot of market attention and user adoption. However, there are many GameFi gameplays that are not essentially different from DeFi Mining. By purchasing NFT as a production tool, you can gain continuous Earning. In other words, most of the early GameFi were fun money-making mechanisms with Fi as the core, rather than Game-based games. Of course, there is no gameplay on the Web3 game track that can achieve Mass Adoption and is based on the unique experience of Web3. If we judge it purely by traditional “fun” games, the gameplay and development of many games require a long period of precipitation. .

From the perspective of playability, TCG has both vertical and horizontal expansion methods. Take Hearthstone as an example. Seasonal iterations bring vertical differences in card mechanism design, races and characteristics. The expansion of gameplay brings horizontal differences in ladder, arena, war chess and other gameplay methods, which can provide different types of players. Offering a different but rich playability experience.

From the perspective of Fi, due to the plate-type fund pool provided by GameFi in the early days, users have become accustomed to the efficient gold farming model with super simple gameplay to obtain higher returns. As a game with high learning costs, TCG needs to think about how to balance the difficulty of gameplay. and the income obtained:

In terms of the difficulty of Play, more things to consider are the cost of learning, matchmaking time, and the cost of building a deck;

If Earn obtains a card NFT, then the value needs to be divided into two parts: the use value of building the card, and the collection value depending on the rarity. However, in the current NFT market, the judgment of collection value is difficult to define, which greatly reduces the willingness to collect. As for the value of use, game developers need to weigh the cost of acquisition and game balance.

If Earn rewards the native token of the game, developers need to design the economic model, value capture and utility of the token. The current solution given by GameFi is to adopt a multi-token model.

Judging from the success of Splinterlands, Fi can be considered from two aspects: opening card packs (primary market), card leasing and buying and selling (secondary market). Game NFT is more determined by utility and community culture, and the former is more decisive and linked to the playability of the game. The act of opening a card pack can be regarded as the acquisition of basic game tools, such as the provision of card packs and potion props in Splinterlands. Such randomness can enhance players’ sense of value for the rare cards opened in the card pack. The methods of leasing and buying and selling are diverse, but what remains the same is that cards are regarded as the basic production tool for economic rewards.

Of course, in the comparison between Splinterlands and Skyweaver, we can find that in the current Web3 game ecosystem, multiple Earn channels and strong Fi attributes are still indispensable for users to participate in the game and revitalize the game ecosystem.

3.3 How to balance free players and paid players?

For games, in the Web3 world where traffic is scarce, free players need to be taken into consideration. They can bring activity to the early ecology of the game. This requires game developers to pay attention to two points:

1. The cultural considerations of the game should avoid being too niche. Although this is conducive to attracting long-termists and sticky users with the same interests and hobbies, quickly building a community and giving it cultural attributes and strong social relationships, it is not conducive to triggering explosive points and bringing about A large amount of market attention has been received, which has reduced the fault tolerance space for the subsequent expansion and operation of the game;
2. Game projects need to be cautious about issuing coins. Some projects, without the ability to run Ponzi, use coin issuance as a marketing tool to cause a collapse, causing the game to get into trouble prematurely.

From the perspective of game attributes, TCG can be regarded as a relatively “krypton-friendly” game. Compared with the cost of money, the cost lies more in time. It takes time to unlock free basic cards, and time to learn and think about how to form a powerful deck to win more rewards. As users participate for longer periods of time, through the exchange and trading of card NFTs, the deck iterations gradually form a “perpetual motion machine”, and decks that can be played P2E can be played in every season. At the same time, in this process, players Your game understanding is also constantly improving, and the possibility of obtaining higher rewards is gradually increasing. In other words, potential, ongoing, and long-term rewards can be effectively used to motivate players to invest more time, and it is even possible to convert free users into lightly paying users.

Of course, as mentioned above, many players still have heavy speculative attributes. Some players do not participate in the game, but rather hold card NFTs as investments or to speculate on cards; some players try to monopolize a certain card NFT to obtain higher profits; The impetuous atmosphere during the popularity of Meme coins was often transmitted to the gaming community, and everyone seemed to want to make quick money. Therefore, for the Web3 game ecology, users are a double-edged sword, which depends on the developer’s mechanism design and the culture and atmosphere of the community.

3.4 Do we need a full-chain TCG?

GameFi’s TCG, whether it is buying game NFT to enter the game, or earning card NFT through the P2E mechanism, is similar to the behavior of TCG purchasing card packs to draw cards, and the game’s NFT transaction is similar to the TCG card trading market in Web2 The collection levels of so-called common cards, uncommon cards, rare cards and foil cards are similar, and they also fit in well with the rarity mechanism of the NFT market. Take Yu-Gi-Oh!, which has a well-developed trading and collection market, as an example. Currently, there are more than 22 billion cards circulating in the market. Many cards are worth thousands of dollars. Among them, the card with the highest collection value even reaches 9 million U.S. dollars (the price is so The reason why it is high is because this is the championship prize of the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game. Here I have to mention the huge potential that Web3’s ability to trace ownership history may bring to the card collection market). Web3’s more open and transparent NFT market, collection of secondary transaction fees, etc., give TCG’s card market greater space for design, nesting, and development. GameFi + TCG allows developers to endow games with “Fi” without deviating from the focus of “Game”. It is a solution that can be considered before thinking clearly about the native experience and operation methods of Web3 games. Although the market’s criticism and reflection on GameFi is increasing, I still think that a game like TCG is more suitable to be a GameFi game.

Recently, there have been more and more discussions on full-chain games, and many opinions seem to believe that full-chain games are the only solution to on-chain games. In August, Norswap stated in a tweet that 0xFable wanted to build a highly scalable full-chain TCG, and Parallel, a card game supported by Paradigm and Base to develop an on-chain world, also began public testing and was put into operation. However, a question worth discussing is, do we really need a full-chain TCG?

First, when we analyze it from the perspective of a full-chain game, we inevitably have to consider the “impossible triangle” of decentralization, security and scalability. Limited by the performance and storage limitations of the blockchain, the high-frequency interaction of the game, that is, the immediacy, will be greatly affected. However, with the optimization of tickrate by the full-chain game engine, the development of technologies such as Ephemeral Chain, App-specific Precompile, Battle Rollup, and Synchronization synchronization mechanism, high-frequency interactions between players can be achieved in the future, and the chain will be The user experience of online games has been pushed to new heights. Whether it is traditional MMORPG, SLG, or a more open sandbox world with customizable rules, it is worth looking forward to. I am optimistic about the future development of full-chain games.

However, if the performance issues are resolved, there are many more playable gameplays that could be moved onto the chain. Taking Dark Forest as an example, all interactions are completed on the chain. zkp’s technology can help Dark Forest achieve a higher information game, improve the playability of the game, and make up for the game’s shortcomings in high-frequency interaction. If the performance problem is solved and the game experience is optimized, the unique Web3 experience will definitely attract a large number of participants and fans. After all, TCG is a small circle game, and it does not have the best playability experience in the Web2 world. Such a game has to compete with other gameplays, and it can seek a place for TCG in the small size of Web3 itself. It’s a long road. It is difficult for us to think about the significance of moving the entire game to the chain for a card game. In particular, card games require a lot of interaction, which undoubtedly increases the cost of players. This part is difficult to use playability to made up for.

Of course, there are other influencing factors in the game track, such as marketing, world view design, and UGC coordination. In the Web3 world where community culture is particularly important, some full-chain TCGs may usher in temporary popularity, but games The mode is relatively fixed, and the overall process cannot be adjusted too much after the game is launched, otherwise it will increase the learning cost of players and lead to the loss of users. If you want to develop a full-chain TCG, you can’t just have a TCG, but you need a land and open world similar to Splinterlands, or a Parallel-style game matrix with the same worldview.

In addition to GameFi and full-chain games, are there other possibilities for TCG? some. The core gameplay of the game is designed and put on the chain, and other imaginative spaces are left to the free play of ecological participants. Similar to playing cards, only the color, size, material, etc. are designed, and the specific gameplay is developed and designed by the players themselves. Taking Magic: The Gathering as an example, since the rules do not prohibit it, in early competitions, cards were torn up to maximize the effect of the cards (taking advantage of the physical properties of the cards), which is the famous Chaos Orb incident. This move As a result, the game later added a “cards must be intact” rule. Players have unlimited imagination, and the combination with UGC and creator economy gives the on-chain TCG greater freedom and design space. We can have countless rooms and countless ways to play under the same card system. My ideal development trend of Web3 Game, in addition to the ownership of game assets, should also bring about the unity of players and creators, and the co-construction, co-prosperity and common prosperity of games.

Quoting the views of Yuga Labs new CEO Daniel Alegre, he believes that the advantage of Web3 lies in low marketing cost promotion through close community tap water, and giving players real ownership. In his eyes, the game experience and the application of Web3 have a lot to do with it. Strong similarities - Putting creators and communities at the forefront creates a strong connection between content and entertainment and users.

4. Summary

When Web3 is combined with games, I find it difficult to find a suitable angle of observation and thinking. Naturally, we will bring in various roles, investors, players, creators, developers… But aside from various identities, we must remember that the core priority of the game is entertainment.

It is not only game creators who contribute to GameFi’s booming situation, but also game participants. In reviewing and reflecting on GameFi, we must also think that at the beginning, we hoped that Web3 would bring us the ownership of game assets, a better virtual experience, and an unprecedented gaming experience. However, gradually, obtaining assets in Web3 game projects has become the only purpose for many users to participate in the game.

As a player, I not only want to see that you can make money by walking, sleeping, and raising electronic pets. What I want to see more is the resonance of the game with me, the emphasis on the visual performance quality of the game screen, and the story of the game. The richness of the plot means that I fully experience every battle, every story, and every world as my character. This is the only way to create a dynamic and creative crypto game ecosystem that can attract players for a long time.

Disclaimer：

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