Gm players.

We're so back. It's been a while since our last weekly, but I hope you all enjoyed our thoughts and predictions for 2024 from last week. Since then, as I write, we've had the Bitcoin ETF approvals, the market rip, and the subsequent fall - Bitcoin is quickly approaching $40k. Regardless, this is going to be a big year for gaming, with the topic making lots of appearances throughout the many 2024 crypto trend reports.

The market might be red, and games might be delayed, but we'll still be here to help you through! You know the drill, here's today's slate:

• Play-To-Airdrop Deployed: Are we even creating web3 gaming if we haven’t talked about play-to-airdrop yet? Aperion, Nifty Island, Nyan Heroes, and Saga are ready to deploy capital. Steady lads.

• Change Log: Updates, patches, and new features from games we’ve covered.

• Release Radar: Upcoming games, playtests, and drops.

• On-Chain Activity: New on-chain game announcements and network migrations.

• Other News: The other things that happened in web3 gaming this week.

• Bonus Loot: Cool media we’ve been digesting this week.

Play-To-Airdrop Deployed

Admittedly, we’ve been a bit hesitant to write something about Play-to-Airdrop (P2A) as its: (1) a fairly new strategy with an unknown success rate, (2) a pretty straight forward concept, and (3) there’s far from a shortage of content on the topic.

Still, there were enough P2A announcements that simply not bringing it up would be missing out on important stories this week. Plus—like drinking beer and ketamine therapy—all the cool kids are doing it, so we might as well give it a try.

For those outside of web3 gaming Twitter, P2A is a user acquisition campaign that rewards players based on their in-game activity. While rewarding early users isn’t new to gaming, or anywhere in web3, P2A has continued to gain momentum as an alternative marketing strategy for web3 games.

The P2A playbook has recently been championed by Pixels, which has been holding a P2A event for its native token PIXEL since it launched on Ronin. Though Pixels isn’t the first to use this strategy, their success has become a target for others to replicate: Pixels has gained over 300k unique users and almost 180k DAUs since the start of 2024.

To be fair to everyone else, Pixels has much more going on than just a P2A campaign. Support from Ronin and the Mocaverse has undoubtedly helped the project gain notoriety and a dedicated player base. Still, the general consensus among threadoors and CT is: P2A = free internet money, free internet money = good. Math checks out over here.

This week, we saw several projects announce or outline details for P2A campaigns (details included for those looking for farm/play fun games):

• Aperion (ANIMA)

• Nifty Island (ISLAND)

• Nyan Heroes (NYN)

• Saga (SAGA)

One notable outlier in the list of P2A opportunities is Saga. In addition to a traditional airdrop, the protocol is hosting the Three Kingdoms Tournament for gamers to earn additional SAGA by playing five games during the airdrop period. Saga Advent, the season one predecessor to Three Kingdoms, brought in over 3k players across 13 events.

We’re particularly excited about this format, as it aligns with Saga’s positioning as a scalability program for web3 gaming while supporting games within the ecosystem. We felt similarly about Coinbase’s On-Chain Summer event but see Saga’s efforts to promote game tournaments and actual gameplay as a more well-rounded approach to web3 gaming adoption.

Whether you’re interested in Saga, the five games it supports, or the other games launching P2A campaigns, they’re all worth checking out. You may just find a web3 game you enjoy or at least get some free internet money out of the experience.

Change Log

Updates, patches, and new features from games we’ve covered.

• Chain of Alliance is updating its UI and reworking combat features ahead of Alpha 4.0.

• Forgotten Playland confirmed two new upcoming minigames.

• LOTM squashed bugs and added a Shattered Combo meter depletion timer.

• Rumble Arcade kicked of its Explosive Festival with events going on now through January 28.

• Zerpmon’s latest patch included new stages, ascension levels, game dynamics, and battle types.

Release Radar

Upcoming games, playtests, and drops.

• Axie Infinity: Origins (Season 7): Live

• Devmon Callisto (Mobile Alpha): Live

• Nifty Islands (Open Beta): Live

• SkyArk (Drop, SkyArk Genesis): January 19

• BloodLoop (Drop, S.E.M. Capsules): January 22

• Axie Infinity: Homeland (Beta): January 24

• Dookey Dash Unclogged: Q1 2024

On-Chain Activity

New on-chain game announcements and network migrations.

• Animalia (BNB → Arbitrum)

• ArmourX (Beam)

• Crypto Unicorns (Polygon → XAI)

• Devmon Callisto (Beam)

• Hytopia (Polygon → Hytopia Chain via Arbitrum Anytrust)

• Orivium (XAI)

Other News

• Angry Dynomites Lab, Transak, and Eden Arcade joined the Blockchain Gaming Alliance (BGA).

• The .SWOOSH team posted an update for 2024, which included a commitment to ‘go deeper’ into gaming with Nike In-Game Wearables.

• GameStop has announced it will be shutting down its NFT marketplace in February.

• Binance incubated SkyArk Studios raised $15M in a funding round led by Binance Labs.

• a16z incubated Talofa Games raised $6.3M in a seed funding round led by Chamaeleon.

• The WEMIX Foundation launched una Wallet: an omnichain, MPC-powered wallet for secure multi-chain game assets and token storage.

• Ubisoft joined the WEMIX Node Council Partners (NCP) as Wonder 26.

• Yield Guild Games (YGG) partnered with Wemade and Netmarble-backed gaming launchpad Iskra.

Bonus Loot

Cool media we’ve been digesting this week.

• 🎧️ Interview with Nouns CounterStrike Coaches Semphis & adreN (Listen)

• 📘 From Players to Gods: Games & Autonomous Worlds, Archetype (Read)

• 📘 The State of Web3 Gaming, Game7 (Read)

• 📘 The State of Web3 Gaming in Q4 2023, Merit Circle (Read)

• 📺️ 30 Years After DOOM - What’s Next for FPS? w/ John Romero, A16Z Games (Watch)