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The emergence of Forte has lowered the threshold of blockchain games and allowed more people to participate in blockchain games.
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Author | Eric edits | Zi
First image source: Cointelegraph
If you want to take stock of the annual hot words in the science and technology industry in 2021, the metacosm must be selected.
When everyone is talking about this new thing in a hot way, they can't always avoid the name Roblox.
In March 2021, Roblox, a sandbox game platform with the concept of meta-universe in the United States, was listed, with a market value of more than $40 billion at one time, which suddenly made the entire capital circle play a chicken blood. Because a year ago, its valuation was only $4 billion, a tenfold increase.
Roblox's model is that it does not create games by itself, but provides a platform and tools for developing games, allowing players to make their own games. With the accumulation of creations and the influx of players, the entire platform will continue to expand in a circular manner, forming an economic system. The platform gets a share in it and makes a profit.
In the blockchain world, there is also a platform similar to Roblox, which is Forte.
In simple terms, Forte doesn't make games, but rather creates a platform where game developers can integrate blockchain technology into their existing game products. Of course, they also create new games from scratch on the platform.
In addition, the platform also supports the NFT of in-game props (non-homogeneous tokens, that is, the only cryptocurrency token of digital assets, which can be bought and sold), thus creating a community economic system.
In half a year, Forte has completed two rounds of financing — $185 million in May 2021 and $725 million in November, and capital is in favor of it.
In my opinion, Forte's impact is not only in the capital market, but will drive a wave of "blockchain game" boom, affecting the current blockchain industry at a deeper level.
01
Forte is Roblox in chain games
Forte was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in San Francisco. One of its founders is Kevin Chou (Kevin Chow), a serial entrepreneur in the gaming space, and Josh Williams.
Kevin Chou
Kevin Chou once founded Kabam, a multiplayer social game development company, and is the founder of esports company Gen.G. After years of deep experience in the game industry, he founded Forte with his own ideas:
Extend the life of your gaming products.
Kevin Believes that in many online games, players do not have ownership of game account assets, more like a lease relationship. Props that players spend money to buy are difficult to trade twice. When abandoned by the player, these items are worthless.
To solve this problem, Forte's idea is to integrate blockchain technology into the game to create a community economy.
On the Forte platform, game companies can use the blockchain technology provided by the platform to launch corresponding NFTs for their own game props, and players can buy these NFTs.
As of May 2021, 25 game developers with more than 8 million players have used Forte's technology; more than 5 million NFTs are recorded on the blockchain and used in games.
Once the item NFT appreciates, players can sell their own NFTs to make a profit. Game companies can get a certain fee in the transaction and realize profit.
In this trading process, there is a user experience problem, and Forte solves it very well.
Friends who have had crypto transactions may know that the operation experience of crypto wallets is not good, not to mention that hackers can easily steal your assets, if you lose the password of the wallet, the assets there are almost equivalent to disappearing.
In addition, when game developers use digital wallets to make transactions, they must also know who the other party is and always guard against money laundering.
Josh Williams, CEO of Forte
These uncomfortable trading experiences, Forte have technically mitigated.
More importantly, it also solves the liquidity problem of trading.
On Forte, sellers of game props don't have to bother to find buyers, because NFTs can be sold directly to the platform for monetization. The platform can buy low and sell high to achieve profit, which is also Forte's main profit model.
Typical two-way dealer.
Kevin believes that Forte creates two aspects of value. On the one hand, it gives players greater freedom of the right to dispose of game assets. On the other hand, it provides game developers with a better business model, that is, to transform game products from a centralized entertainment platform into an open economic platform.
He said this will be the future direction of the game.
Right now, Forte is in full swing. As of November 2021, Forte has more than 40 game developer partners and more than 15 million partner gamers.
The capital that joins is also a well-known institution. The November round of funding was led by Sea and Kora Management, the parent company of Garena, the developer of the shooter mobile game "Free Fire", other investments including Animoca Brands, Warner Music Group, etc., and other investment companies such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Tiger Global also participated in the round.
02
Speed up the chain, Forte pushes
The author believes that forte's momentum will not only promote the game industry, but also have a profound impact on the blockchain industry.
The medium in the middle is the blockchain game. Blockchain games are very different from traditional games in that their game assets can be freely bought and sold on the secondary market.
Therefore, developers of blockchain games can make money based on the circulation of NFTs such as game props without selling members, etc., and gamers can also truly own their own assets.
When developers and players are involved in a system that can be circulated and traded, in fact, a community economy has begun to form. If mechanisms that reward creativity and collaboration are added, the community economy expands further.
This is actually moving towards the ultimate value of blockchain: the systematic integration of technology, economy, and community.
In plain language, it is through the network of technology that everyone in the community can create value, and in turn, absorb value.
Many people in the chain circle have heard of the world's first chain game Cryptokitties, which was popular at the beginning, when it was still the 1.0 era dominated by collectible games.
Cryptokitties
Up to now, the chain game has developed to the 3.0 era with P2E as the core, namely:
Play to earn, play games to make money.
Specifically, the game assets are tokenized through the intervention of the NFT, so that the game virtual assets can be directly given real value attributes. At the same time, NFTs can promote the marketization of game assets by trading on the chain. Players can make a profit by trading turnover.
Let the P2E chain swim up, when Axie Infinity.
This is a game of the NFT+ metaverse on Ethereum.
Based on the NFT mode, Axie Infinity created a Pokémon game world. The fantasy sprites in the game are called "Axie", and each Axe is unique and verifiable by blockchain.
Each Axie is bound to an NFT that contains data such as the game's character attributes, appearance, and ownership.
Any gamer can participate in the gameplay to earn NFTs for consumption or trading.
In August 2021, Axie Infinity generated more than $334 million in a single month, which has surpassed the $231 million generated by the domestic popular mobile game "Glory of Kings" in July last year.
In the months that followed, Axie Infinity continued to climax. As of December 16, 2021, its total trading volume has exceeded $3.79 billion, the number of traders has exceeded 1.13 million people, and its revenue in the third quarter of 2021 exceeded $780 million, an increase of 48 times from the previous quarter, and its single-day revenue even reached $40 million.
It has become the largest game on Ethereum and has also pushed blockchain games into the mass domain.
This exhilarates the entire blockchain industry. Because this means that Axie Infinity's role as a bellwether will stimulate the birth and rise of more blockchain games.
Like a number of blockchain game manufacturers have emerged as unicorns. For example, MusicalGames is valued at $1.25 billion, AnimocaBrands is valued at $2.2 billion, and SkyMavis is valued at $3 billion.
They will provide more new community economies for the blockchain industry.
The emergence of Forte has lowered the threshold of blockchain games and allowed more people to participate in blockchain games. Invisibly promoting the development of the blockchain industry.
It plays the role of a pusher.
Silicon Rabbit Racing has dissected this game in detail as early as last August, extended reading: "Single-day income super king glory, this boring game of "playing and earning" is strong out of the circle."
03
The industry is hot
Driven by Forte and Axie Infinity, the entire blockchain game industry has actually warmed up.
According to DappRadar data, as of December 15, 2021, a total of 1,201 game Dapps have been deployed on the network; the number of game players has grown from 80,000 in early April to more than 3 million in December; and the daily trading volume has increased from about $500,000 in early April to an average level of about $22 million.
Behind this, there is also a lot of support from venture capital. According to incomplete statistics, from September to December 2021, blockchain game financing has exceeded 2.1 billion US dollars, and many well-known venture capital bureaus such as SoftBank, Sequoia China, LD Capital, Hillhouse and so on have been raised.
When various categories of blockchain games are emerging, P2E games are undoubtedly the protagonists of them. P2E projects such as Axie Infinity and Splinterlands have emerged.
In addition, traditional game manufacturers like Ubisoft have also tried to do NFT-based blockchain games.
Gamevil's first NFT game, Hi Ella, will be released in Q1 2021; NCsoft announced that it will launch P2E NFT games in 2022, and said that all games will join the P2E mode in the future.
And game giants like EA, while not yet in action, have also said that "NFTs and blockchain are the future of the industry."
Of course, whether blockchain games can continue to be hot, in addition to relying on forte and the entire blockchain environment, it also depends on the prosperity of the game market.
After all, it's a game after all.
Currently, the global gaming market is worth $180 billion and is the fastest growing form of entertainment in the world. On a horizontal basis, the global film industry is worth $100 billion, and the annual revenue of all sports in North America combined is $73 billion.
Forte CEO Josh Williams is very bullish on the prospects of blockchain gaming, saying:
"As we become more connected to our players, the gaming industry is evolving all the time. We believe we are at the forefront of the new wave of technology and blockchain gaming will be bigger than all the changes we've seen before. ”
reference:
1. The version number is not yet known, and domestic game teams have turned to blockchain games? 2. Forte raised $725 million for its blockchain game platform, and the revolution in the game industry has just begun 3. Chain games raised more than $1.4 billion in two months, Jack Ma and Sequoia China entered the game 4.Blockchain games: Is it difficult to continue or the future has come?
Interaction at the end of the article: Are you optimistic about blockchain games? Are you involved? Share it with us in the comments section