GameFi may become a development trend. How can traditional games transition to blockchain games?

In 2021, thanks to the rise of NFTs and in-game currencies, the GameFi sector experienced explosive growth, attracting an increasing number of game players, crypto asset investors, and game developers. The potential and vitality exhibited by GameFi are sufficiently appealing to them, and the growth in this field can be seen as a continuation of the iterative evolution of profit strategies and business models in the gaming industry over the past few decades.

The popularity of blockchain GameFi games primarily lies in their P2E (Play-to-Earn) feature, where players earn crypto token rewards by spending time in the game or contributing to it (playing the game can also be understood as contributing to ecological development). GameFi typically incorporates NFTs or other forms of tokenized assets as game content, and these assets can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies (or fiat currencies) on blockchain-based markets. The P2E feature allows many game players to earn substantial profits through gaming. In addition to representative and continuously popular GameFi 1.0 chain games like Axie Infinity, X-to-Earn, represented by STEPN, is also leading the trend of GameFi 2.0, showcasing a multi-layered and multi-domain approach to GameFi.

In traditional games, players do not hold the initiative; for example, in-game items disappear when the game is closed. However, in GameFi games, the lifespan of in-game NFT assets is typically extended as these assets continue to exist in the player's wallet, even after the game is closed. The interoperability and combinability of these assets allow them to interact with other games, applications, or blockchains.

GameFi, based on blockchain and crypto assets, is oriented towards Web3. Although many GameFi projects currently lag behind traditional games in gameplay and production quality, the ideology it constructs represents a "dimensionality reduction attack" on traditional gaming. Of course, GameFi signifies a paradigm shift, offering an opportunity to reclaim time and ownership for ordinary players.

GameFi Represents a New Profit Model

As GameFi continues to "break out," more and more traditional game developers and companies are eager to try their hand in the GameFi sector. In traditional games, the overall profit is divided into three parts: developers, publishers, and distributors. The earnings of some game companies or developers are continuously compressed, and monopolistic phenomena are severe.

The blockchain gaming and its new profit model based on tokens provide a unique opportunity for game developers to create more average revenue per user, expand their user base, and explore new revenue streams, especially for small game development teams, even presenting an opportunity for "overtaking on a curve."

For game companies, NFTs also open up a new market profit form. For example, NFTs issued by game companies can earn royalties from all secondary sales, creating new revenue sources for digital asset issuing companies. Alternatively, they can choose to vertically integrate their NFT marketplace and activities within the game, as well as integrate with third-party platforms like OpenSea. With the continuous innovation of business models in the blockchain industry and the rapid iteration of product forms (such as the quick iteration in the DeFi sector), they can continuously explore new profit models, which is more attractive compared to the less flexible traditional gaming market.

According to New Zoo's "2021 Global Games Market Report," the total revenue of the global traditional gaming market reached $175.8 billion in 2021, with over 3 billion global game players. Backed by the traditional gaming blue ocean market, the GameFi sector currently belongs to the early market stage, making it easier to acquire incremental and sticky users in the initial development phase of GameFi.

GameFi is typically built on blockchain, and developing DApps based on blockchain presents a high barrier for traditional internet developers, especially since there is no unified standard across different blockchains (such as Ethereum, Solana, PolkaDot, etc.). This means developers need to familiarize themselves with these programming languages again, and the goal of cross-chain compatibility in some games further increases the development difficulty for developers.

GameFi usually incorporates a token economy model, which can be a challenge for traditional game developers who are familiar with token economics and designing token economies. A reasonable token economy and incentive model can promote the game, while an unreasonable one can lead to the game's demise due to economic model flaws. Additionally, code vulnerabilities within the game can directly affect the security of players' assets. Currently, GameFi is also a high-incidence area for asset security incidents; for instance, Axie Infinity, a leading GameFi project, recently lost over $600 million due to security issues.

Factors such as token economic models, DApp security, and game operation and maintenance consume excessive energy from many game teams, further leading to poor playability and excessive speculation. Therefore, overall, compared to the traditional gaming field, GameFi is inherently more complex with a higher development threshold, and the industry's overall standards are not unified with relatively poor support.

Currently, some platforms have emerged that position themselves as chain game distribution platforms to further assist traditional game development teams in areas such as game development, token economy construction, and post-launch market operations, serving as a bridge for traditional game developers to transition to the GameFi sector. Gmatrixs is currently one of the most supportive platforms for chain game development in terms of technology and representation. This article will take Gmatrixs as an example to briefly study the support that chain game distribution platforms can provide.

Full-Chain GameFi Release Platform Gmatrixs

Although the underlying blockchain is complex, developers no longer need to directly develop applications based on these underlying blockchains. With Gmatrixs, developers can focus on a simple and unified development environment, significantly reducing the complexity of program design.

From the perspective of the Gmatrixs platform itself, it is an open chain game development platform aimed at the entire chain, built on the Ethereum public chain with a modular, universal, and flexible framework. It provides middleware SDK tool support to lower the development threshold for full-chain games. This SDK toolkit includes multiple functions such as wallet interfaces, blockchain browser interfaces, authentication signatures, anti-cheating modules, EVM interfaces, and transfer gateway integration.

Based on the SDK, it will provide game developers with blockchain-based game modification, middleware technical support, game asset publishing, game item trading, ecological resource sharing, platform arenas, and other functions to further lower the technical and financial barriers for chain game development and traditional game chain transformation, while protecting players' asset security (developers do not need to independently develop unverified contracts).

At this stage, Gmatrixs mainly targets EVM-based blockchains, such as ETH, BSC, Heco, OEC, KCC, etc. Game developers only need to integrate the SDK once to access users across different public chain environments, ensuring their games meet future demands (with further support for other chains, such as Avalanche, as technology improves). The Layer-2 and sidechain solutions based on ETH not only ensure the decentralization and security of the games but also expand operational performance, reducing the cost and increasing the flexibility of using smart contracts.

With Gmatrixs, developers can focus on their business without needing to transfer data between different systems, significantly alleviating the technical burden. The benefits of the Gmatrixs SDK for chain game development include not only easy access and shortened access cycles but also many functions such as maintenance, contract writing, and resource management.

The Gmatrixs platform also features basic supporting facilities such as Launchpad, NFT marketplace, and Dex, allowing partners to complete the on-chain and circulation trading of game assets without secondary development, further building DeFi scenarios that serve games. After the game is developed based on the SDK, communities can directly enter the ecosystem with tokens as a link. Therefore, in addition to game development, Gmatrixs can also further assist these emerging chain games in constructing early value capture mechanisms and continuous liquidity support, actively and sustainably promoting the establishment of game economic systems. Additionally, based on the Launchpad, more game players can gain opportunities in the early market, attracting more incremental users and potentially converting them into sticky users.

Furthermore, the Gmatrixs platform can also support underlying customization. In addition to being built on EVM-based and non-EVM-based layers, it also supports the construction of independent chains (with their own independent verification pools to ensure security) to meet specific needs of certain games (such as Ronin, similar to Axie Infinity). Thus, Gmatrixs can meet the game development needs of individual developers and small game development teams, as well as provide game development and operation solutions for large game companies.

The support from Gmatrixs will continuously inject fresh blood into the development of the GameFi sector.

1. Low-Threshold Chain Transformation for Traditional Games

Many traditional games already possess basic game models, such as gameplay, non-token economic outputs, and consumption systems. Especially for many well-crafted games, their inherent playability and logic are the most valuable. Migrating to the blockchain may further alter the internal logic and functionality of the game due to development issues. At the same time, how to tokenize and NFT-ize in-game assets also faces many barriers and limitations.

With the Gmatrixs SDK, there is hope to further assist these traditional games in low-threshold migration to the blockchain, customizing development and migration according to the characteristics of the games themselves. Direct migration of traditional games will retain the original playability of the games and further introduce features such as token economies, NFTs, and P2E, enriching the application layers of the GameFi sector and qualitatively improving the overall game quality in the sector.

From the commercial perspective analyzed above, the traditional game ecosystem is more willing to align with the GameFi sector and is expected to further explore new business forms and revenue methods. The GameFi infrastructure represented by Gmatrixs will play an important role, and this sector is expected to experience an explosion soon with the migration of more traditional games.

2. More NFTs Will Enter GameFi or the Metaverse

NFTs represent a form of crypto culture, and many well-known NFT IPs have emerged in the NFT sector, such as BAYC, Azuki, Moonbirds, etc. Although these NFTs can represent crypto culture and crypto value, they are often considered lifeless. This is because the vast majority of holders do not have opportunities or facilities to showcase or apply these NFTs; they merely lie as NFT assets in wallets. GameFi may be the best choice to give life to these NFTs.

Not every NFT issuer has the capability to develop GameFi like Yuga Labs, but the Gmatrixs SDK tools make it possible for these NFTs to enter GameFi. These NFT issuers, especially some small NFT issuing teams, can further design game models after gaining some market recognition and implement game development through the Gmatrixs SDK tools to transform into chain games compatible with all EVMs, receiving support from the Gmatrixs ecosystem in token economics, operational marketing, and even governance. This will further release the potential culture represented by NFTs in GameFi, continuously injecting vitality into the development of GameFi.

Therefore, from the perspective of the support that the Gmatrixs platform itself provides for the development of the GameFi sector, the sector will gradually enter a low-threshold era and welcome more emerging roles to join the GameFi trend.

Gmatrixs Launches Its First Self-Airdrop Casual Game "Meta Attack"

Currently, the Gmatrixs platform has launched its first game, "Meta Attack," which is based on traditional fishing games and incorporates NFTs and token economics to create an engaging P2E airdrop game.

Similar to traditional "competitive fishing" games, players earn GMS (Gmatrixs ecosystem token) airdrops and NFT asset rewards by catching fish. Upon entering the game, players need to purchase cannons and launch them in the sea. By catching fish, they can earn a large number of game coins and Gmatrixs platform-integrated game items and character NFT rewards. Cannons are essential game items for all players, with each cannon being a unique NFT, totaling 10,000, divided into four different levels: N to SSR.

Different NFT cannons have different functions, such as the rewards obtained in the game and certain rights within the game, and the cannons can also be upgraded.

The "Meta Attack" game includes two gameplay modes: casual mode and competitive mode.

In casual mode, there are four different threshold game fields: Ordinary Fishing Ground, Senior Fishing Ground, Luxury Fishing Ground, and Epic Fishing Ground. The required threshold values differ for each fishing ground, allowing players to set different bullet multipliers, suitable for different types of players to choose according to their preferences. Players in casual mode can obtain up to 10,000 bullets, further earning rewards through fishing, and support for asset recharge such as USDT.

In competitive mode, players will be ranked in real-time based on their score. In competitive mode, all cannons will start on the same starting line, competing within a limited time. The match duration is set to 1 minute, with a total of 10,000 bullets; players will exit the match early if they run out of bullets. The system will reward players who rank high with airdrops and NFT assets. The game also includes some items, such as freeze bullets that immobilize all fish, and features a marquee mechanism to further provide players with opportunities to double their earnings.

Additionally, during the first two months of the game's opening (time point), players who have played for more than 30 days will enter a prize pool, from which the system will draw 300 players to receive Gmatrixs membership NFTs. In the early stages of the game, submitting feedback and bugs will also earn GMS rewards.

The NFT cannons in "Meta Attack" mainly come from early blind box sales. "Meta Attack" plans to issue 10,000 cannon blind boxes, which are currently in the sales preparation stage.

Currently, Gmatrixs has also established deep cooperation with top game development institutions such as RPGC, Taiwan's leading incubation institution Chuangmeng Market, 99META, Good Team Guild, and India's leading mobile marketing agency MoMagic, with multiple games currently in the process of integration and incubation.