Produced by Odaily
Author｜Qin Xiaofeng
What are the hottest interactive projects in the encryption community right now? Chain game MetaCene undoubtedly ranks first.
At the end of February, OKX Web3 wallet launched MetaCene, the 14th phase of Cryptopedia’s project. As of press time, more than 2 million people from Brazil, the United States, the United Kingdom, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions had participated in the project, ranking first in CryptoPedia’s current rankings.
In addition to OKX support, MetaCene is also one of the Binance Labs incubation projects. The current announced financing reaches US$15 million, with investors including Folius Ventures, SevenX Ventures, Hash Global and MixMarvel DAO Venture.
As for the team, MetaCene was born from a famous family, which is in sharp contrast to the current wild chain games. The founding members of the project mainly come from a number of traditional Web2 game manufacturers such as Shanda Games, Blizzard, Perfect World and Snail Games. They have launched Legendary World , Dragon Nest and many other popular games.
With all kinds of honors, MetaCenes ambitions are naturally not small. It directly challenges the ceiling of the gaming industry-MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), trying to create a co-play, co-create, and co-governance for all game enthusiasts. The unbounded home on the chain.
Although the journey was difficult, MetaCene never stopped. Both the first and second tests were launched as scheduled and delivered good results. Now that the third test has started, while the players are excited, the degree of involvement in the community is also staggering.
1. Standing at the crossroads of game industry reform and making a leap towards Web3 chain games
In 2010, after two years away from Kingsoft, Lei Jun started a new business and established Xiaomi. At that time, it was in the early stages of the development of the mobile Internet. The dividends of the times eventually became Xiaomi. In 2021, the torrent of Web3 swept the world. Tan Qunzhao decided to follow Lei Juns example, play something big, and gamble the wealth accumulated in the game industry in the first half of his life to start a business again. The blockchain game MetaCene was born.
(MetaCene concept image)
As one of the first online game pioneers in China, Tan Qunzhao has served as the chairman of Shanda Games since 2009, leading the team to launch large-scale online games such as Legendary World, Dragon Nest and Aion. Although it said goodbye to Shanda Group since then, it has always paid attention to new changes in the gaming industry. In 2021, the blockchain game Axie Infinity completely left the industry, which also made Tan Qunzhao pay attention to the new opportunities brought by technology and see the direction of the change of the game industry.
Although competition in the domestic game industry is fierce, from the perspective of the global market, the game industry is entering a golden age. Tan Qunzhaos words are not without purpose. According to a report released by the game market research company Newzoo, the total revenue of the global game market will reach 184 billion US dollars in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 0.6%; the game market revenue will maintain an average annual growth rate of 1.3% in the future, and will reach 184 billion U.S. dollars in 2026. Reaching US$205.7 billion.
At the same time, blockchain games based on new technologies are impacting the traditional Web2 game market and may even subvert the industry.“In the past few years, the game industry has been unable to see new technological changes. Now AI and Web3 will have a revolutionary impact.”Tan Qunzhao is very interested in the emergence of new technologies. First of all, this will completely change the industry structure, give birth to a number of new great game companies, and also eliminate many old game companies; second, it will give a completely different presentation of the form and appearance of games; third, it will also It will affect many surrounding industries.”
He explained that the revolutionary transformation of blockchain technology in the gaming industry is to force gaming companies to transfer certain rights to players in exchange for their trust. For example, in the past, almost all game companies would declare that game accounts and all data assets in the accounts belong to the game company, and it would be unfair to players to move virtual assets in user accounts at will. Now user rights can be guaranteed through on-chain contracts, using Web3 technology It brings more transparent rules and data, which is more conducive to industry supervision and creates a more harmonious industrial environment.
Judging from the data, the chain game market is indeed growing rapidly and its potential is gradually becoming apparent.The latest report from Fortune Business Insights predicts that the global chain gaming market will reach US$615 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 21.8% from the market size of US$128 billion in 2022.
Compared with the traditional game industry, chain games have undoubtedly just started and are still a vast blue ocean, attracting a large influx of hot money and resources. But in development, some problems cannot be ignored.
For example, some emerging chain games are of low quality. They use Web2 stand-alone game production standards from decades ago to produce various junk games with low playability and low picture quality. The economic model is not well integrated with playability, and they only rely on marketing gimmicks. Attracting public attention greatly consumes Web3 network resources. In addition, some game production companies are still based on traditional traffic thinking. They only treat players as data to achieve the above purpose, but ignore the stickiness building of community users... and so on. So far, chain games seem to be just a product of self-entertainment in the Web3 world, and there are only a handful of projects that have truly made it out of the circle.
After deeply understanding the stubborn problems of the blockchain gaming market, Tan Qunzhao decided to join the game and incubate and invest in a new generation of games powered by Web3 and AI overseas - MetaCene, an MMORPG type game. “I hope to continue the original intention of starting a business twenty or thirty years ago and deeply participate in this change.”
2. Play together, create together, govern together, MetaCene builds a borderless home on the chain
The Hong Kong Web3 Carnival was held as scheduled in April 2023, and Tan Qunzhao made his first official appearance with his MetaCene. In his keynote speech, he mentioned that a new player-centered gaming era is coming.
“The player-centric model will involve Web3 games with digital assets and player-driven MMORPGs (massively multiplayer role-playing) as mainstream genres, as well as AI-generated content (AIGC) that involves player-driven creativity and leads to independent Project growth.”
The reason for choosing MMORPG is that Tan Qunzhao has launched the same type of Legend in the Web2 era in the past, and it has achieved great success and has considerable experience. On the other hand, MMOs and chain games can complement each others strengths and solve some of the problems existing in current Web3 games, such as attracting whale users, improving user stickiness and game longevity.
MMORPG is almost the mother of all things. It can accommodate almost all game rules and many technical achievements. Therefore, what the team chose to make is a container, which can hold many things, Tan Qunzhao explained, Using the borderless nature of games like MMOs, players can attract people from all over the server. The larger the platform, the more attractive it will be to UGC players. The platform itself is a very important network effect.
Back to the game MetaCene, the most intuitive feeling for players is that the background setting of the story is very grand.。
The game presents a surreal apocalyptic society where survivors create a new virtual society and redefine civilization through communication, cooperation, and confrontation. The world set in the game is called Bohr World and consists of five parts: Taiping Continent, Daxi Continent, Wilderness Continent, Boulder Continent, and Raging Ocean. The cities on the continent are divided into four categories: Novice Village, Free City, and Shocking Continent. Bird Town, Capital City; in the game, each player plays a different role (mortal, heavenly being, new heavenly being). Each character has his own life experience and mission. These people are called fire messengers.
The MetaCene team has set up three core gameplay modes: co-playing, co-creating, and co-governing, and has set the entire game into three chapters: the source of fire, the realm of apocalypse, and the spirit of all things. The three chapters proceed in sequence, which not only unfolds the story of the MetaCene game, but also heralds the evolutionary trajectory of a new metaverse.
The first stage Source of Fire corresponds to Playing Together.At this stage, the MMORPG open world has begun to take shape. The system has opened up a variety of gameplay methods such as Mining, PVE, and PVP. Players can either play alone or form groups for team battles, establish alliances, and challenge world bosses (specific gameplay methods) Refer to the official documentation for rules).
The second stage, Realm of Apocalypse corresponds to Co-creation.At this stage, the World Island will be opened, which is built from two main sections: user-generated content (UGC) and NFT land assets (Land). Each piece of land will be able to host game and non-game content, and be compatible with player-created game modules (MODs). It will extend outwards under the nourishment of user-generated content, and ultimately support a boundless world island.
At present, UGC has become a game innovation model, which is accepted and liked by more and more players. It has also become an important direction of game development. Representative cases include Egg Party, Minecraft, etc. Second-generation products emerge in endlessly. Tan Qunzhao’s idea is to allow players to participate in the design and distribution of the game. (MetaCene) supports users to have their own game servers, and on this basis, they can open game sub-lines and create unique game content. This is a new possibility brought by the UGC model.
For example, MetaCene will provide players with an AIGC-based skin editor. Players can create their own unique skins using UGC and map them to MetaCene to replace the appearance of assets. In addition, MetaCene will provide an API that allows users to develop custom NPCs similar to Discord bots. Even after approval by the server council, players can also co-create in-game NPCs, props and items, in-game monsters, game rules, etc. The UGC model has also expanded new business models to a certain extent. Some external brands may seek cooperation, carry out joint brands and hold events, which is both playable, profitable and has unlimited possibilities.
The third stage Spirit of All Things corresponds to co-governance.At this stage, MetaCene has officially evolved into a real on-chain metaverse, codenamed Pangu. Multiple Web3 IPs have bloomed together, and on-chain assets have been highly integrated with virtual reality to create a game metaverse with a flourishing value network and all-inclusiveness. .Among them, the most important function is the addition of governance. One of MetaCenes core visions is to achieve co-governance through community DAO.
Specifically, governance is divided into: platform DAO governance and each game server DAO governance. Among them, the DAO governance of the MetaCene platform is realized through the governance rights of the governance token MAK; the DAO governance of each game server is realized through Realms NFT (realm key) and is managed by the parliament and the government - the members are controlled by the Realms NFT holders of this server. People are elected to form a parliament, and then the parliament elects its own government.
3. Gain the favor of leading capital and balance the economic system and playability
The popularity of Axie Infinity has greatly promoted more traditional Web2 game developers to enter the Web3 chain game market to a certain extent. Every new player who enters the game often has lofty ambitions. Words such as AAA masterpiece were everywhere in the past few years, but in the bear market of 2022, the vast majority of projects have died.
There is no doubt that without sufficient financial support, if Tan Qunzhao wants to develop an MMORPG, it may not be possible with just passion. Fortunately, its team background and past successful experience have been valued by leading crypto capital, and it has completed two rounds of financing totaling US$15 million, which greatly eased the teams financial pressure:
In July 2023, MetaCene completed a US$5 million seed round of financing, led by Hash Global and SevenX Ventures, with participation from WeMade, Emurgo, MixMarvel DAO Ventures, Sinovation Ventures and LK Venture.
In September 2023, Binance Labs announced the sixth season of incubation projects, including MetaCene.
In March 2024, MetaCene announced the completion of a $10 million Private Series A round of financing, led by Folius Ventures and SevenX Ventures, with participation from The Spartan Group, Mantle Network, Animoca Ventures, Longling Capital, Comma 3 Ventures, IGG and others.
As a non-encryption native team, in addition to funds, another problem faced by Tan Qunzhao is the technical level. MetaCene needs to be able to support high-concurrency transactions on a blockchain - millions of users online at the same time, thousands of people playing games at the same time, thousands of people fighting on the same screen, millisecond-level real-time response, and the interaction cost must be reduced to an extremely low level. This is obviously Ethereum and most blockchains on the market cannot satisfy.
In the end, Tan Qunzhao set his sights on MixMarvel, one of the investors. As a professional service provider of Web3 chain game solutions, MixMarvel provides MetaCene with two major infrastructures, including Rangers Protocol and MixMarvel SDK.
MetaCene has a dedicated blockchain under the Rangers ecosystem, and can set up its own consensus mechanism and verification nodes, while benefiting from the speed, stability and security of Rangers Mainnet as well as the EVM compatibility of Rangers Connector and cross-chain interaction of asset data. sex. In addition, MixMarvel SDK (MMSDK) provides MetaCene with integrated functions covering DID, DeFi, NFT, cross-chain and blockchain data. Through MMSDK, MetaCene has efficiently built an in-game Web3 account system, token exchange, and NFT market; MetaCene players can seamlessly enjoy in-game account management, blockchain asset transactions, etc.
In addition to technology, Tan Qunzhao is also working hard to solve the death spiral problem of chain games and develop a more complete design of the token economic model.“I think one of the basic principles of game design is to perfectly combine the economic system and game playability. The better players play, the more they should get. I don’t want the two to become an antagonistic relationship. How to keep players engaged in the game? We can feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction while maintaining the economic balance and playability of the game. This is what we need to focus on when designing the game.
Specifically, MetaCene designed two main tokens: MUD and MAK to support the economic cycle of the entire game. MUD is a game token in MetaCene. The total amount is not limited. It can be used as basic materials (to strengthen weapons, etc.) and is also the settlement currency in the game. MAK is the MetaCene governance token, which mainly serves mid-level and advanced players of the game. It has a total circulation of 1 billion and has a variety of application scenarios, such as staking to obtain income, participating in community governance, unlocking advanced content of the game, purchasing land and other advanced NFT assets, participate in PVP battles, etc.
Different from other chain games, in order to ensure that the value of MAK remains stable and healthy in the long term, MetaCene has also added a repurchase mechanism and will use 30% of the revenue (platform revenue + game revenue) for repurchase.
In addition to balancing the economic system, MetaCenes design also follows the principle of focusing on social interaction and focusing on competition. “Social emphasis” means that MetaCene values the social experience of players in the game, and “competition emphasis” means that MetaCene emphasizes competition and confrontation within the game. MetaCene provides players with in-depth game content through rich plots and unique growth paths, avoiding boring game modes such as repeated dungeons in traditional MMOs, and maximizing the game experience.
Conclusion: Several tests have won market fans.
With the support of leading capital, strong underlying technical support and a complete economic system, MetaCene is naturally highly sought after by the market, and has obtained eye-catching data in every round of testing.
In the first test in August 2023, 3,000 white single players were invited, and the second retention rate reached 85%. In the second test in November 2023, there were 170,000 interactions on the chain, more than 6,000 on-chain asset holders, the proportion of active players reached 83%, the next day retention was as high as 75%, and the 14th day retention remained at 50%. From the perspective of user distribution, Brazil, Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea are the regions with the largest number of test players.
Judging from the data, as of March 6, the total value of equity NFT assets previously sold by MetaCene has reached 1,600 ETH. The floor price of the first-generation Apostle NFT has continued to rise from the initial Freemint to around 2 ETH; the floor price of the second-generation NFT CECE Cube has risen from the launch price of 0.12 ETH to a maximum of 0.4 ETH, and it has also been empowered and launched soft staking airdrop rewards. Eligible CECE Cube holders will receive MetaCene asset airdrops regularly.
Recently, MetaCene announced that it will launch three tests at the end of March, and officially provides a million-dollar value reward. Previous equity NFT asset holders can qualify for the Alpha 3 test, which is bound to further detonate the blockchain game community, and Odaily will continue to pay attention.
