10 January 2025 | Weekly news roundup

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan chew through the week's news. [0:57] In 2024, Limit Break released its ERC721C standard for enforcing NFT creator royalties. [4:55] This level of centralization wasn't controversial with NFTs because the issue was existential. [5:44] Feature include the ability to set maximum and minimum prices for NFTs. [6:23] ERC20 tokens are different to NFTs: will people accept such features for ERC20 tokens? [7:30] Another example is tokens that can't be traded outside of the game application. [10:41] Limit Break's DigiDaigaku game will hopefully demonstrate how these features work. [15:00] iCandy has raised $4 million for its forthcoming ZKcandy gaming L2 blockchain. [16:39] Whatever happened to Laguna Game's Crypto Unicorns? [22:44] What is Laguna Labs' new fully onchain game Neo Olympus? [25:52] Fully onchain football simulator Soccerverse has gone live. [30:45] Planet Mojo launched its WorldWide Agents AI agent token. [33:15] What's the point of AI agents? [36:51] What went wrong with Xterio's XTER token airdrop?

Jon Jordan talks to Laguna Labs' CEO Aron Beierschmitt about leaving behind debut game Crypto Unicorns and moving to new project Neo Olympus, which is a fully onchain game using the MUD engine and running on the B3 blockchain, with assets on Ethereum and Base. [2:45] What happened to Crypto Unicorns? [4:02] 2024 was a rough year. We went from +90 people to 10. But the DAO still exists. [5:27] "I accept all the blame for the failure. But I'm optimist about the path forward." [9:08] What was the spark of inspiration for Neo Olympus? [11:10] Why Aron is bullish on fully onchain games. [12:05] "Crypto Unicorns would still be around today if it was fully onchain." [13:15] Why did you choose B3 as the blockchain for Neo Olympus? [14:12] Neo Olympus will be cross-platform: playable from Arbitrum, from Abstract, from Ronin. [15:20] Most of the Neo Olympus' NFTs will be minted on Base. [18:57] The DN404 standard is "memecoins meets NFTs". [25:49] There's no investor or team allocation for the Olympus token. [28:39] "Time-based token vesting is silly." [31:15] What did your investors think about this approach? [34:20] How do you hope to scale Neo Olympus as fully onchain games can be complex? [35:27] Neo Olympus' gameplay is map-based tactics - Fire Emblem with titans. [37:22] We're building the game on Lattice's MUD engine.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan discuss all the news from 2024. [2:16] The success of Pixels was an ongoing trend in 2024; but it wasn't always about DAUWs. [2:35] Heroes of Mavia was the first big game and token launch of 2024 but it didn't scale. [4:10] In 2024, we saw a lot of blockchain games launching through app stores but no big hits. [6:10] Browser vs app stores and PC gaming stores remains a key business decision. [8:44] A lot of meme-y game coins such as MON, PORTAL, CARV, XAI launched in Q1. [11:30] There was a lot of news about chain migration - so many new L2 and L3 chains. [13:00] In Q2, there was a big change in sentiment with game token prices tanking. [14:11] The rise of KOLs, who encouraged retail crypto to invest in new tokens with often bad results. [16:05] The rise of Telegram and TON as a strong marketing channel for blockchain games. [17:46] Another nascent year for Immutable: Guild of Guardians was not a success. [22:17] But in Immutable's defence... 4 million Immutable Passport wallet sign-ups. [28:28] In Q3, the issue of bots became a problem esp. in respect to airdrops and token rewards. [30:09] What are you trying to do with your blockchain game when it comes to giving out value? [32:04] Does it matter if bots or AI agents are paying $10 to play your game? [32:30] The other thing in Q3 was the start of successful games on Ronin - Wild Forest, Lumiterra etc. [34:56] Pretty much every game launched on Ronin has got +100,000 DAUWs in testing. [37:19] Should we view console game Off The Grid as a success? [44:22] Whatever happened to The Sandbox? [45:25] CCP Game's EVE Frontier is now in closed alpha testing. [46:59] What's significant is these projects are very serious about the value of blockchain in games. [49:45] More generally, the US presidential election was the clear pivot point for crypto in 2024. [52:51] Investment into the sector was down on 2023 but around $1 billion.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan discuss the news for the week ending 20th December 2024. [0:31] Pudgy Penguins launches its PENGU token, with a strong community airdrop. [3:22] The launch was very generous with Pudgy NFT holders getting $85,000 of PENGU. [5:34] Surprisingly given the Abstract blockchain is launching, there wasn't a claim+stake option. [11:00] Xterio has announced its AI agent vision for 2025 including Befriend AI chat-to-airdrop. [15:32] Is it a pivot? Maybe but a pivot can be a positive change for a project. [16:35] More generally, the Virtuals AI agent platform is doing very well. [18:28] Planet Mojo has announced its Agents of Poker AI agent game. [19:53] Faraway has announced the first AI agent to be a node validator - J3FF. [26:32] Is the endgame that our AI agents communicate and trade value on their own blockchains? [28:05] Big Time Studios' Open Loot platform has announced a $150 million fund. [33:03] Fableborne's had a successful third test with 149,000 players spending $540,000.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan discuss the news for the week ending 13th December 2024. [0:21] Ronin-based Apeiron is now live via app stores in southeast Asia. [0:50] But what's gone live is the dungeon battler gameplay. The god game meta is still in dev. [4:08] Ubisoft's Captain Laserhawk is going live on 18th December. [5:12] Jon is more excited about it than previous Ubi game Champions Tactics, which was hardcore. [7:18] Crypto Unicorns' dev Laguna Games announces fully onchain game Neo Olympus. [12:26] Fully onchain game Soccerverse is launching on 9th January 2025. [15:31] Treasure has launched its L2 on ZKsync. [20:13] Hytopia has ditched its Minecraft client and is now independent of all legacy code. [22:47] Beam Ventures have announced a $150 million fund based in Abu Dhabi.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the news for the week ending 6th December 2024, including: [0:32] EVE Frontier enters closed alpha on 10th December. [2:51] EVE Frontier is the attempt to build an EVE-style game in a composable blockchain sandbox. [5:55] How will a community grow up in EVE Frontier? [8:19] What does the original EVE Online community think about EVE Frontier? [12:43] Pudgy Penguins announces its PENGU token, what's the background? [19:40] NFL Rivals has surpassed $10 million in lifetime NFT trading volume. [24:15] This is also part of Mythical's attempt to build out a multi-game marketplace for NFTs. [25:43] Sky Mavis has announced free Axie NFTs via its new 30-day adoption program. [30:04] Pixels has announced its second Guild Wars event, which is backed by $4 million of PIXEL. [32:42] Rough House Games is merging with Overworld to form Reach Labs.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the news for the week ending 22nd November 2024, including: [2:05] Limit Break is rolling out its protocol to protect NFT creators royalties to all EVM chains. [3:45] Adding features such as minimum/maximum NFT prices may be controversial. [8:00] But you can also see how this might be good for some assets. [10:09] India-based guild KGeN has raised $10 million taking total funding to $30 million. [14:23] YGG has announced its Onchain Guilds protocol, launching on the Base blockchain. [17:38] And, more generally, the Base blockchain is picking up more gaming projects. [18:52] Parallel announces its Primechain which will be built on the B3 chain. [21:17] Nine Chronicles M has been live for a year: MAUs are up 113%, token price down 68% [25:46] Age of Dino is growing -- apparently without bots, just UA for web2 players !! [28:08] Two new guardians released in Guild of Guardians. [31:48] Open Loot's OL and Super Champs' CHAMP tokens launched this week. [34:42] Fableborne has launched its Season 3 and is talking about its POWER token.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the news for the week ending 15th November 2024, including: [0:31] It's been a year since Pixels went live on Ronin - one of 2024's success stories. [2:10] Why so many games have moved from Polygon. [3:10] Reasons to study Pixels' success. [4:27] Pirate Nation has launched its Season 3 rewards program. [12:16] Off The Grid has launched a competition giving out $3,000 per day. [17:03] Fableborne has moved from Avalanche to Ronin. [21:45] Game7 has already published its 2024 Web3 Gaming report. [32:10] Team Liquid has launched its fan rewards platform MyBlue on the Sui blockchain.

Jon Jordan and BlockchainGamer.biz editor Jenny Jordan talk through the news for the week ending 8th November 2024, including: [7:12] Delabs has announced it will be launching Ragnarok and Boxing Star on Telegram in 2025. [14:40] Nine Chronicles M has been out for almost a year and has seen good growth. [21:30] Hunters On-Chain is giving away $1M of BOOM via its Season 2 through Game7. [26:51] Immutable has integrated its Passport wallet with Telegram. [29:34] Off The Grid is now the most popular blockchain game in terms of daily activity. [36:19] Why Pixels' focus now less on headline user numbers and more on generating revenue. [40:53] Why Wild Forest is one to watch.

Jon Jordan talks to Gunzilla Games' director of web3 Theodore Arganat and Ava Labs head of gaming marketing Andrew 'Coop' Cooper about the launch of Off The Grid, the first blockchain-enable console game. [4:49] Early reaction to Off The Grid's launch. [6:19] It's been interesting you haven't focused much on the crypto aspects of the game... [6:43] "For us, it's about using the best technologies to create the best UX." [10:40] The strategy behind the launch marketing campaign with streamers like Ninja and Shroud. [12:59] Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launch hasn't impacted Off The Grid activity - 3 million tx/day. [14:02] Currently only 20% of Off The Grid's full game has been released. [15:55] Everyone who plays Off The Grid gets a wallet seemlessly created for them in the background. [19:14] What's the roadmap for the campaign mode? [20:44] The background lore of the game from Richard Morgan and Neil Blomkamp. [22:38] What's Avalanche9000? [27:17] Why did Gunzilla choose Avalanche and what are its plans for the Gunz blockchain? [29:47] What's the roadmap for the Gunz blockchain to launch its mainnet? ends