New opportunities and challenges for the chain game track: Where is the spring of SLG chain games?

Original title: " "Pain Points, Opportunities and Freshest Cases of the Chain Game Track" Part 2 Where is the spring of SLG chain games - an attempt at a new economic model "

Original author: W Labs Guadain Laboratory

After the release of the first casual ice-breaking game in this long article series, the response rate is higher than It is expected to be enthusiastic. It can be seen that after 10 months of the chain game bear market, players see that a project is no longer the beginning and ask: how to make money the fastest? Instead, think and judge whether the value is worthy of deep intervention. And we took a fresh and hot case for in-depth analysis, which is more profound than the superficial examples of the project in the previous series. In the second part of this series, we will talk about how SLG games in WEB3 can break the game.

When the W Labs team first started discussing SLG games, I was a little confused. Some friends said that the English of SLG is Simulation Game, huh? Isn't it "Save&Load Game"? I have been an old fan of SLG games for more than 20 years, from the earliest war chess games "Flame Dragon Knights", "Angel Empire" and "Three Kingdoms Heroes", to the current "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition", isn't it? The definition I have always understood is wrong? Google it, and sure enough, SLG is said to be a Simulation Game, a simulation strategy game.

Okay, let’s not get entangled in the definition of the text, anyway, it involves a turn-based system, and the management and development should be considered SLG games, except for what I just said Speaking of several early representatives of war chess, the more well-known ones include "Heroes of Might and Magic", "Horse Riding and Blade", "Civilization", "Clash of Clans COC", and similar "Awakening of Nations" and "Kingdom Era". "This type.

The biggest features of SLG games are: high strategy, deep learning depth, high fan retention, and the longest life cycle. A few years after a high-quality SLG game is produced, there are still many that can still make money. The most famous one is "Clash of Clans COC" produced by the Finnish company SuperCell. Together with its sibling card game Clash Royale, it has grossed more than $10 billion.

Eternal COC

But this biggest feature has also become the biggest pain point for this type of game to enter WEB3. At present, Gamefi players are used to playing gold and fast in and fast out. ten years? If it can last for ten months, it is a phenomenal Gamefi, right? Just like we used the SLG chain game "League of Kingdom" as an example in the long article series "The Exploration of Traditional Games Entering Chain Game GameFi", the early stage of SLG is originally slow-paced, and the current Gamefi players The general consensus is that the life cycle of chain games is only a few months, so the game has not started to enjoy, and the currency price has almost returned to zero:

"Traditional Game Marching Chain GameFi's Path of Discovery"

Is the problem with the SLG game itself? Obviously not, it’s what we’ve been talking about before: Gamefi’s Play to Earn economic model has deviated the entire chain game track, and after it’s deviated, everyone seems to think that the Gamefi model represents chain games. In the first article of this series, we also expressed a kind of helplessness: Why should an ice-breaking leisure chain game join in the fun and design a gold model? Wouldn't it be nice to design models in the direction of metaverse scene port games? In the future, it is possible to collect tolls from millions of WEB3 users. Isn't it more exciting than earning a few hundred gold players' small money now?

As a fan of SLG games for many years, let me briefly talk about where SLG makes players addicted:

The first strategy: the formation of troops from God's perspective allows players to enjoy the thrill of a strategic layout. If RTS (Real Time Strategy, such as Red Alert and StarCraft) games are more about gradually accumulating advantages than micromanagement, SLG games are a test of your sense of control. I still remember when I first became obsessed with COC ten years ago, the whole group was discussing how to use walls, buildings, bombs and springboards to make the opponent fall into the trap. When the big fat attacking from the opposite side is killed by bombs, and when the mage is continuously bounced by the bullets, you can giggle happily.

Second Tactics: If the team is well matched, it is not impossible to defeat the strong with the weak. This kind of cool feeling that the prostitute players have a small probability of defeating the heavy krypton players will really make you unable to help but spread the word all over the world after the game. For example, "Three Kingdoms Strategy Edition", the SLG masterpiece that was the pinnacle of its debut, has dominated the top ten domestic game revenue for five consecutive years. The card even prostitutes for nothing, and the other party pays 100,000 krypton, isn't it more enjoyable? Anyway, I can't help but share this kind of battle report with the small alliance group.

SLG games are so attractive, in 2021 when chain games are booming, they will inevitably be favored by many teams.

Here are two cases for in-depth analysis: Heroes of Mavia (HOM) and Galaxy Blitz (GB), why take them out? Because these are the two products that both claim to be COCs on the chain game end, and both have received good financing.

(1) Heroes of Mavia

Let’s talk about HOM first, it will be announced in January 2022 According to the news, Binance led the investment of 5.5 million US dollars, and Animoca+YGG+Delphi Labs followed suit. What are you waiting for for such a king-level project? I remember that when the Guatian Community was just established, Gua Ge led dozens of people to form three teams to go to Ganbai. Really, all kinds of talents are available. In addition, it was announced in February that the second round was led by Crypto.com, and another $2.5 million was raised, and the popularity exploded again. After the liver is over, get the white, NFT mint, the highest increase is more than 3 times, and then various news let you pledge NFT, pledge, and then the news is getting less and less, and a little picture and video will be released every month, Discord The community has grown from hundreds of posts per day to no more than 5 posts per day.

So this game, a typical Vietnamese team style, with CX as the top priority. There is no news. I heard that some engineers are in Ukraine, so the development progress is affected. It feels like a test of our IQ.

Let’s put a screenshot of the video they pinned to the top of Twitter in October. I feel that the style is really like COC, and the project team seems to be implying that “we Still working."

（two )Galaxy Blitz

Focus on Galaxy Blitz (GB), this project Guadain community WGGDAO has participated in two internal tests, so there are many slots.

It was also announced in January 2022 that it received US$10 million in financing. The financing institutions include: Conflux Foundation, Tomochain, Ascendex, Gate Labs, Lbank, Bitmart & Amplio Capital, The Moon Carl, DCI Capital, OIG Investment Group, Criterion Ventures, MH Ventures, BlueWheel Capital, Digital Strategies, SMO Capital, Gains Associates, DuckDao, NFTb Labs, Synapse Network , Starter Labs , Enjin Starter. The investment lineup is not as luxurious as HOM, especially the latter ones are relatively unfamiliar. We googled and found that they are mainly Web3 investment institutions from Europe. For example, OIG is a PE from Northern Europe, and MH Ventures is a partner of BNB Chain European Accelerator.

The news announced by the project party said that they were directly poached from SuperCell, a COC company, and it is a space COC style game. In fact, this year, when everyone hears about space-based chain games, everyone gets a headache, and the development progress is always skipping. Our Guatian community dubbed the three most popular space-related MMORPG games last year as "Three Donkey Carts in Space", and invited one of them. Come to space for a talk show conference, while hahaha while spraying, the process is shown in the following picture:

< img src="https://image.blockbeats.cn/upload/2022-11-03/877655de77617163f8abe4f9c655bfd773e627ef.png?x-oss-process=image/quality,q_50/format,webp">

However, the GB Chinese community found us last month, expressing that the game has started internal testing, because the project team has been watching the link of W Labs You Wenwen thought we were real Gamers, so we were the first batch to invite our team to enter the closed beta.

Next, let’s talk about the feelings of the internal test:

A, which belongs to the degree of completion It's a high imitation COC game. PVE, PVP, and guild battles have all come out. When playing, there are sporadic bugs that will get stuck, but after all, it is the first internal test, and it should be able to debug in the future.

B. The screen and UI design give people the first impression that it is a bit like StarCraft, which is different from the current SLG that mostly adopts kawaii-style cartoons. GB Adopting a hard-core realistic style of painting, it is indeed close to the theme of space. The details of the defensive weapons and various buildings are exquisite, full of cyberpunk and sci-fi, but it is a bit dizzy after watching it for a long time.

C. Currently, I don’t feel any special skills in the placement of defensive buildings. I just surrounded the main base There is a circle of weapons, and a circle of buildings outside. The formation of troops needs to be further optimized.

D. There are nearly 20 kinds of offensive arms to choose from, such as assault, meat shield, melee, long-range, magic, air force and other types. Test which combination is the most optimal. At present, I have been upgrading my motorcycle soldiers, and then rushing with soldiers sea tactics, a bit like the dogs running in packs in StarCraft. Therefore, the fun of matching arms has not yet been realized.

E. Through the communication with the ambassador of GB China, the project party thinks that the COK model (that is, games such as League of Kingdoms and Meta Apes) is more difficult to carry out Blockchain transformation, but the flexibility of the COC type is high enough. In the early stage, even a relatively simple personal PVP can attract a large number of Web2 users, and at the same time, it can use Axie's anti-gold mode to attract Web3 users. At present, the project is undergoing the second internal test, focusing on the guild battle. The more interesting idea set by the project party is to hope that the remaining Web2 users will join the guild mainly led by Web3 users, and then participate in the guild organized by the guild. In the fierce interstellar territory offensive and defensive battle. In this process, the guilds that occupy the interstellar land will get a lot of loot, and both Web3 users and Web2 users can share the fruits of victory, thereby attracting and converting a large number of Web2 users, and realizing the circle-breaking attributes of Web3 games. If this model works, it will be a classic case of solving the "WEB2 to WEB3" problem, and the results need to be verified.

Recently, there have been a lot of actions by the project party. The information we tracked during the internal testing process is: it will be the first batch on Aptos Games; I went to Binance to open an AMA with thousands of people, etc. I feel that the project party is conducting diversion activities in conjunction with the game public beta.

Talk about the popularity of project promotion we observed. GB has 210,000 fans on Twitter. According to the information released by the project team on October 28th, there were more than 13,000 registered users in the second internal test, and the second retention rate reached a terrifying 73% (the average SLG retention rate for WEB2 games is 40%)...these To be honest, we are a little shocked by the data. Could it be that the project party is pushing it wildly in Europe and the United States?

In our In my impression, good SLG games have always been very popular in Europe and the United States. Even if it is a stand-alone game, this has also allowed domestic game manufacturers such as Lilith, Youta, and Sanqi to earn tens of billions of dollars. During the internal test, I chatted with some English players in the game, many of them were COC players. For example, most of them still called DAO (the guild in GB) Clan (the tribe in COC).

An embarrassing chat with the Association of American Universities, the new ID has reached number 14048

However, as Players, I still care about the essential strategic playability of SLG games. Judging from the current two internal tests, I feel that there is still a lot of room for improvement in GB's offensive and defensive strategies and skills. Feedback is constantly being tweaked, such as the range and breadth of weapons, etc. Well, anyway, GB is the first chain game COC game we can play, and we look forward to its continuous evolution.

Let’s sum it up, high-quality SLG will be the most profitable type of chain games in the future, because its long-tail effect can be too long and too long. Games can last for years. Based on this, it is not recommended to directly apply the typical gold-making model to this type of chain game. The death spiral of skyrocketing and then plummeting is contrary to the characteristics of SLG games themselves. The SLG chain game team needs to spend more time on the strategy and diversity of offense and defense.

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