In the interest of providing as much fun, utility and rewarding features as possible to our community, the intersection of gaming and finance is the greatest opportunity for Myōbu to move forward, in our view.
Seeing the astronomical rise of play-to-earn, our beloved fox sees an opportunity to pounce. With the constantly replenishing fox hole fund, we can fund the development of a game.
Smart contract games were our first test of on-chain entertainment. The Fountain of Fortune creates a way for our holders to enjoy a good old fashioned lottery, with a chance to win more $ETH.
That was part one.
But we have much, much bigger plans than that. And $MYOBU V2, with updated and improved tokenomics, is an enabler for these plans…
The GameFi Revolution
Gaming is currently a multi-hundred-billion dollar market, and it’s growing rapidly.
However, a distinct opportunity exists to disrupt this massive market, and expand it into a whole new paradigm.
See, for most of its history gaming was pay-to-play. You put a quarter in the machine at the arcade. You buy the N64 cartridge. You pay to download the game. (And all it’s expansion packs too)
This market has been slowly chipped away by the rise of free-to-play games. Mostly led by the success of smartphones, and the app store, the core expectation of the gaming market has shifted dramatically.
While consoles and PC games still manage to get away with selling their games, the most popular games have seen their success due to low barriers to entry, and paid for by advertising.
Now though, a new giant stands poised in the shadows, about to storm onto the gaming scene and turn the entire model on its head.
This, of course, is play-to-earn or GameFi. Imagine getting paid to have fun. GameFi has gained significant traction in the last 12 months, with the collective market capitalization of top on-chain games approaching rougly $15 billion during summer 2021.
This is actually one of the most revolutionary concepts in human history. Because for most humans throughout most of history, work was associated with something you didn’t want to do, and you only did because you were getting paid.
So the concept of having the opportunity to earn a living, or even just another stream of income, by doing something you enjoy, is completely disruptive to the very core of economic activity.
In other words, it is one of the greatest opportunities you will ever have a chance to be a part of in your entire life.
This is why we are setting our sights on the lofty goal of carving out a piece of this paradigm shift, for our loyal holders.
So what exactly makes a game successful?
3 Key Features Of A Successful Game
There are 3 main features that all successful mass multi-player online games share:
1. Social Design
2. Progression
3. Randomness
Let’s dive into these one-by-one.
First, social design: To succeed, a game must be designed to facilitate players forming tribes, communities, friendships, rivalries and incentivized partnerships. Looking at a successful game like World of Warcraft (WoW), it’s obvious how much of a role different guilds and connections played in its success. A game must integrate this social interaction in a way that it is not only a part of it, but essential to winning. You have to co-operate and interact in order to truly experience the full depth of the game.
Second, progression: There are two ways to progress in successful games. First, your character gains experience points, and levels up to become more powerful with stronger abilities. Second, your items and access must also level up through varying degrees of specialization and power. These two different means of progressing offer multiple ways to grow through the game, and create a rewarding experience.
Third, randomness: Imagine how boring a perfectly predictable game would be. If you knew exactly what enemies you would face, and exactly what they would drop, it wouldn’t be fun for long. There must be a baseline of predictability, but also elements of randomness in terms of what items you get, what enemies you face, environmental elements etc.
With these three keys, a game can truly create a rewarding and enjoyable experience for all players to enjoy.
However, play-to-earn requires a deeper level of thought than just creating a game that’s fun and rewarding. It has to also have an economy that makes sense and creates continued incentives to continue playing.
The Secret Sauce Of A Thriving Virtual Economy
Real world economies are not designed, but evolve based on natural forces of supply and demand. In fact, pretty much any time a centralized body interferes and attempts to artificially stimulate and prop up economic sectors, it ends in amplified bubbles, crashes and disasters.
The challenge of creating a virtual economy is to design a system which can satisfy the economic factors required to mimic natural market cycles.
The core elements of creating such a system are as follows:
1. Scarcity / Rivalry
2. Ownership Continuity
3. Interconnectivity
4. Secondary markets
5. Value-added by users
Let’s dive into these one-by-one:
First, scarcity/rivalry: This is a simple concept, items and resources are limited to ownership by one or a small number of persons within the virtual world’s game mechanics. If everyone can get a level 99 mega-magic sword at level 1, then it’s not worth very much, and won’t be very valuable.
Second, ownership continuity: Resources and items must persist across user sessions. If you own a level 99 mega-magic sword, it better be in your inventory the next time you log in. Optimally the resource or item exists for public view even when the owner is not logged into the virtual world.
Third, interconnectivity: Resources must respond to the actions and decisions of players in game. The value of a resource must fluctuate according to a person’s ability to use it for creating or experiencing some effect.
Fourth, secondary markets. To have “real value” in-game items must be trade-able or transferrable to real-world assets. Think of WoW gold being sold on Ebay. The blockchain makes this type of transferability much easier, and allows the seamless merging of real world and in-game economies.
Finally, value-added by users: This is the ability to take resources or items and customize or improve them. This is necessary for economic activity, arbitrage and incentivizing the accumulation of in-game resources.t
This Is The Foundation For A Fun & Rewarding Game
Myobu’s vision has always been to provide celestial blessings to the community. And what better way to do that than by creating a play-to-earn way to have fun and receive rewards for doing it?
The challenge with this is to do it right.
Which is why articles like this are necessary, to do the research and make sure the entire community sees the vision so we can all come together and create something wonderful.
Jumping in and creating concept art, or making NFTs without attention to detail is building a castle on quicksand.
We need a solid foundation for this project to succeed. With the continually replenishing development fund being supported by $MYOBU sales volume, we can ensure the development of a long-lasting and thriving ecosystem.
And with the right intention, support and dedication we can do it right and create something unique, special and revolutionary.
It will take time to do it right. But we have plans and people to get it done.
We think the results of a methodical and detail-oriented approach, will be rewarding for many members of our loyal community. So load up on $MYOBU now, while you still can, and then watch this fox head straight to the top!
