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Statement of Belief & Strategic Vision
Web3 introduces a wide range of opportunities to the gaming industry, but not without its share of frustrations.To solve these issues, MetaStudios is reimagining Web3 games to give power back to the players.We will release a “Gamefied investing experience” merging Game: Rune Realms: Genesis, displaying our ability to bring a product to market, and create a unique and fun engaging investing experience.We will use the funds from Rune Realms: Rebirth to build more games, and finalize the production of the Rune Realms IP.
Although the ongoing advancements of Web3 technologies bring excitement and anticipation to the gaming world, Web3 is still a relatively new technology with many unknowns. Instead of waiting for answers, MetaStudios is forging ahead and building its Web3 path. We believe that NFTs and play-to-earn models do more than add "earning while playing games." They can fundamentally change the player/studio dynamic and even the gaming industry.
But before we can dive into this, we must briefly discuss the Web2 gaming status quo and Web3’s negative trends.
Web2 game studios are for-profit companies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, this makes it rare for studios and players to collaborate. For-profit companies are not built to make decisions that directly benefit the player.
Examples of this include:
- Intrusive Ads: Free-to-play games are often filled with intrusive ads that break gameplay and immersion.
- Nonreversible/Nontransferrable Gem Systems: Gems systems to boost progress are nonreversible or nontransferrable. In other words, if you purchase a gem, there’s only one way to use it: in-game. You can’t transfer it to other players and convert it back to the original currency.
- Prohibited P2P Transactions: Studios try to ban any P2P transactions by making them “illegal.” If you want to “sell” an in-game item― or even your existing game account ―you can’t do it unless you use some “black market” (which in itself is full of risks).
Even though Web3 had the potential to give players more power, this is not inherently the case. Web3 game studios are still for-profit companies. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this. However, we repeatedly observe predatory behavior being directed toward players from studios. Studios often try to use the incentive of play-to-earn to rush "games" that aren't indeed games.
The result?
- These gaming ecosystems don't deliver appealing gameplay and contribute to an unsustainable economy.
- The barrier to entry ($$) on an NFT game can be extremely high and often, like any game, benefits the studio more than the player.
- This structure also creates a "pyramid scheme" where the game requires a constant influx of new players for the economy to grow.
- This fuels predatory behavior toward lower-income countries by adding incentives or "scholarships."
- Unfortunately, this leads to dull games that only compensate early adopters.
These aren’t issues without reason. Regardless of the company, every business needs a steady flow of new customers and a proven method to retain existing ones .
All this is done to avoid “churn” (i.e., the loss of clients over time). When the churn rate is higher than the onboarding rate, this causes a significant problem. Simply put, no money coming into the business = no money to pay rewards.
Clearly, this is not a new problem - companies that pay dividends face this issue daily. A classic example of this (in the stock market) is The Walt Disney Company. Here we have a multibillion-dollar multinational-mass media and entertainment conglomerate that suspended its semi-annual cash dividend due to Covid in 2021. Basically…
Parks Closed = Less Revenue -> Protection Mode
Now, when this scenario is observed in Web3 games, we would see that a few problems get amplified.
Due to the lack of gameplay and fun, Web3 games tend to have a super high, unsustainable dividend to make a game more attractive. In addition, Web3 games often only have one use for the token: gain token to sell the token. This completely depletes any value in the token, leaving the player with nothing.
Given all of these issues, MetaStudios was created to help advance and improve the Web3 gaming experience while eliminating the problems identified above.
Since this document’s publication, we’ve been developing our game for two years. In that time, we’ve been obsessively asking ourselves the following:
- What if our game was free-to-play?
- What would it look like to give game tokens actual value? or does the game needs a token?
- If looking into the pure side of the play to earn, How can we sustain a healthy economy if we don’t add new players?
We’ve ultimately come up with some pretty interesting answers.
The token shouldn’t be the main incentive for playing our game - the game itself should be. Our game’s first and primary goal should be to create a fun and enjoyable experience that players want to return to and play, regardless of whether it is a play-to-earn game.
Economically speaking, grinding the token shouldn’t be the main incentive either; that makes the game seem more like a job and eliminates all the fun more often than not.
In our games, we've eliminated tokens; the primary focus of implementing a free-to-play model is to incentivize players to use the marketplace and create an actual player-owned economy.
As you naturally progress in-game, build items, discover new areas, and level up your in-game profession, you can list all items and resources in the marketplace for other players. An excellent example is the Black Lion Trading Company in Guild Wars 2. Having a marketplace that allows players to, instead of buying from the studio to progress faster, buy from other players will organically emulate a real-world economy where productivity and scarcity of resources matter.
That said, there are multiple reasons a player will need to buy items in the marketplace:
Subsistence → Consumables, potions, spells, etc.
Shortcut → Speedup progress
Mandatory → Leveling up→ Skins, In-game cosmetics
Strategy → Lands, Legendary Troops, etc.
Our marketplace will eventually allow artists to interact with our SDK, launching their Skins, Themes, and assets as in-game NFTs.
Inviting new customers and retaining existing ones without running into the Walt Disney issues we explained above does not come with a simple black-and-white solution. So how do we plan on maintaining a healthy economy?
Through time and participation with the entire ecosystem.
For us, time is a hidden currency. Players are rewarded by in-game productivity, and just like a typical company, our marketplace benefits from the entire ecosystem.
As the company grows, new products will be released in games, tools, seasonal updates, season passes, competitions and events, new items, merch, and more. This will allow us to add more revenue streams to Metastudio, supporting our games further.
At MetaStudios, we’ve figured out a way to implement our goals, and we have multiple games in the pipeline. However, we’re excited to introduce a gamified investing experience that was created for people looking to gain a % of Revenue from MetaStudio, called Rune Realms Rebirth
Rebirth will be used as our initial cash flow to continue developing Rune Realms IP and MetaStudio. While most projects create a 10k PFP NFT collection and promise the creation of a game,
We decided to go a different route, building a mini merging "game" experience that displays our attention to detail and ability to bring a product to the market.
This gamified experience focuses on allowing you to gain a % of the Revenue generated by MetaStudio, instead of focusing on a "dull ponzinomics, gain token experience."
We’re also building Rebirth without VCs, which means we have complete creative control over the process. We don’t need to rush the creation of a project, allowing us to analyze and study the market and make better decisions.
This also means we can distribute a % of the generated revenue back to our Rune Realms Rebirth holders as we release new products.
Think of Rebirth as the Tesla Roadster to our Tesla Model 3 (Rune Realms: Clash)- it will allow us to bring Rune Realms to market as a free-to-play game while solving all the problems listed above.
Rebirth does not address ALL of the problems MetaStudios plans on solving. Rebirth is a more passive gamified experience geared towards investors, not players. However, we made sure to pack it into a fun investing experience with game design elements to make it a unique a one of kind product.
Conclusion
Web3 introduces a wide array of opportunities for the future of gaming, but that doesn’t erase the ingrained issues players and studios face while operating from outdated models. MetaStudios wants to do more than create a fun gaming experience. We want to solve these issues by completely reinventing the player/studio relationship. Rune Realms: Rebirth is only the beginning.
Last modified 8mo ago