From Monkey to Game and Fi Talk

Monkey

In the history of video games, monkeys appear from time to time🐒 Which one do you think of? Is it Donkey Kong? Monkey Island? Or Super Monkey Ball?

In the game you think of, does the monkey play a supporting role or a protagonist? Monkeys rarely seem to be the protagonists of games.

On the contrary, its close relative “ape” has become popular in the new world of NFT, that is, the famous Bored Apes.

Even the Boring Ape team has brought out the game, “But you have to buy an expensive NFT to play it”, which fully reflects its sense of a noble club.

Game

For me, the game is naturally to pursue “fun”. But what kind of game experience is called “fun”?

For example, I played “Elden Ring” a while ago, it was really “self-abuse”-the rebirth after death was endless, and even the plot was unclear-even so, I still broke the level and finished watching 19 The plot analysis film of “Environmental Science” in the first episode, I only played it four times before I was crazy enough.

I don’t think I will dare to play “Sekiro” (soul game produced by the same company) in the short term.

Tower Defense

The first big non-RPG game I played was probably Warcraft III. The most powerful thing is not only the game itself, but also many game modes with custom maps, such as DotA, which later developed into the popular “League of Legends” all over the world

Tower defense is another customization mode that I like to play, and it became my first impression of this type of game. Later, there was a very creative “Plants vs. Zombies”, which was even more pleasing.

Lesson Mobile Games

The earliest mobile games did not rely on tuition fees as the main business model. For example, “Angry Birds” and “Doodle Jump”, which were smash hits in the early years, were priced at US$0.99.

“Temple Run” was a successful case after switching to the free-to-play mode in the early days. Later, many games developed a dual-token economic model, and “Les Gold Mobile Games” gradually became the mainstream——

In the past, spending money was to play games, but now spending money has become a kind of game. However, I really don’t like the rise of consumerism.

For example, I once resisted not registering a Steam account for a long time, lest I also become the kind of person who “bought a lot of games at a special price, but never opened them to play”.

The only mobile game I have paid for so far is “Glory Days”, because I respect it for carrying the culture of an era.

However, we cannot ignore the current economic situation: according to court investigations, the game category on the App Store actually accounts for 98% of in-app purchase (IAP) revenue! The annual fee for all Apple developers is a uniform price, so it can be said that it is essentially game revenue, which subsidizes us other types of app developers. (Source: North American Intellectual Property News Issue 294, but the URL only has HTTP unencrypted connections)

GameFi

The blockchain game circle seems to like to discuss economic models, among which “Play-To-Earn” is certainly not a new concept, and virtual treasures have been traded in online games as early as.

It’s just that in summary, I’m really not interested in this “game” mode. (Tianyin: Like being abused?)

Moreover, if “players” come to make money, they will leave because it is no longer easy to make money.

Defend the Kingdom (DTK)

I have this opportunity to play this game “DTK by Kingdomverse”, a “tower defense mobile game” with a monkey as the “protagonist”. It seems that the degree of completion is quite good, so I downloaded it and tried it.

Different types of monkeys correspond to different attack modes, which is very easy to understand.

The characteristic of this tower defense mobile game is “random”. The type of monkey placed down cannot be selected, and the position cannot be selected. Players can only manually combine monkeys of the same star level to upgrade the star level, but after that, they may be randomly changed into Other types of monkeys. The controllable strategy has been greatly reduced, how can this be played?

Even so, sometimes you will encounter some master players who can accumulate many monkeys of the same type, or you will see the “cool monkeys” that you have never seen before and have more powerful firepower from time to time…

So I began to understand that this game is a “casual game”, and it does not have to be regarded as a serious tower defense strategy game, but more like a card game.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that it took many days to realize that this game has no in-app purchases at all! This can completely bypass the revenue taking mechanism of the App Store, but the possible price is that in the game, it is completely impossible to see how to get a cooler monkey.

Play-to-Own (P2O)

Here’s what I saw on game developer Kingdomverse’s Discord community:

Kingdomverse is a PLAY-TO-OWN (P2O) mobile game metaverse made of multiple different casual mobile games.

We choose P2O instead of P2E because we vision it as the future of web3 gaming 🎮 P2O priority is good, fun, entertaining gameplay that draws players in. Meanwhile, users also have the option to retain the financial value of their time and effort through NFT ownership.

FUN is always the core value of gaming, it’s always PLAY first, and then earning or owning if you’d like to. With the P2O model, players will have the option to turn their in-game assets – such as leveled-up characters and rare characters in the form of NFTs and trade it.

This declaration made me more curious about this P2O game mode. Can blockchain mobile games really develop in this way? I know that the game team released the native token $KING and two series of NFTs, but how to integrate them into the game? These are things I don’t know yet, but they’re what draws me in: gameplay first, then other elements.