Crypto Gaming Roundup #13

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Apr 21, 2022

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We are a bit late with this week’s crypto round-up due to some travel. Hope you enjoy it despite the delay.

Vulcan Forged Land Staking goes live

VulcanVerse land staking program launched last week, with over $6m locked and staked in VulcanVerse land after the first 12 hours. VulcanVerse has 9918 plots that can be levelled up and developed, allowing owners to earn more from land staking. The total staking pool is 10 million $PYR ($130m at the time of writing) and will be paid out linearly over the next four years.

A land plot can be upgraded up to level 7, with level 2 being a requirement that enables owners to stake $PYR in their land and earn staking rewards. Upgrading to level 2 requires 10,000 XP and a level 2 avatar. Further, both $PYR and $LAVA are needed to sow and upgrade the land, plus players need to earn daily XP by playing the game to be eligible for daily rewards. Having Gods linked to your land will offer additional boosts to the staking income.

Big Time Early Access

Big Time Gold Pass holders can now redeem them for Early Access to the game. If you own one, fill out this form. Early Access has no rental functionality or ability to share in-game items, with these features coming later on.

Sega’s “Super Game” May Include NFTs

Sega talked about its "Super Game" project last year, and we are getting more details that it will include multiple games and might even incorporate NFTs. According to the company, they "have defined 'SuperGame' as the development of AAA titles that cross over SEGA's comprehensive range of technologies, and we will aim to achieve this in our five-year plan."

With "Super Game", Sega will bring in the cloud gaming aspect in partnership with Microsoft, as well as NFTs. In January, Sega registered a "Sega NFT" trademark, which was recently linked to the "Super Game" initiative for the first time.

Animoca and Grease Monkey Games partner with Formula DRIFT

Animoca and Grease Monkey Games, in partnership with Formula DRIFT, will release a blockchain version of a popular motorsport game, Torque Drift. The trailer for Torque Drift 2 will premiere on 7 May, and the game will feature fully playable NFTs and leverage open trading and play-to-earn elements. Torque Drift 2 will be integrated into the REVV Motorsport ecosystem. The timing on that is pretty good as REVV's F1 Delta Time shut down earlier this year following the expiration of its F1 license.

Genesis Avatars by NFT Worlds

NFT Worlds community is getting ready for the Genesis Avatar mint, with the allowlist mint on 30 April and the public sale 24 hours later. According to the team, the primary pieces of the Roadmap 1.0 are finished, and the team is ready to focus on player growth and the quality of the content.

Enter the NFT Worlds Genesis Avatars collection; 15,000 NFT avatars playable within the NFT Worlds ecosystem. The Genesis Avatars will have some meaningful perks and utility associated with them:

They will receive a 25% share of all $WRLD spent on the marketplace, with distributions relative to an avatar's scarcity.
They will offer exclusive access to wearables and other drops.
There will be a world explicitly developed for the Genesis Avatars, and they will get exclusive access to future features, like vanity titles.

Overall, it sounds like a lot of utility within the virtual world project that's been doing quite well recently, based on the data from WeMeta. The mint will use the Dutch auction format, starting at 1 ETH and finishing at 0.4 ETH.

Thetan Arena to hold its first eSports Tournament

"Rise of Helios", the first eSports tournament for Thetan Arena, will have a $20,000 BUSD prize purse and be held separately across South America and South-East Asia. Each region will feature up to 512 teams with 4 players per team and 1 tournament life.

"The matches will follow the Best of Five format - teams who win a total of 3 individual games will advance to the next stage."

Genies, a Metaverse avatar company, raised $150m

We wouldn't think much of this announcement if it wasn't for the "Flow: The Normie Blockchain" piece by Packy McCormick a bit over a month ago. We won't recite the article, but Packy highlights Genies many times as a project that fits with the Flow strategy of bringing younger users to its platform, therefore playing the long game when it comes to adoption. He has the entire section on Genies which you should probably check out.

So, naturally, we were curious to see Genies raise $150m at a $1bn valuation from the likes of Silver Lake, Bond, Tamarack Global, and NEA. The Genies team has partnerships with Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group to be their "official avatar and digital goods non-fungible token (NFT) provider." They also began to roll out mass consumer avatar creations tools and have launched a marketplace on Flow called The Warehouse.