Crypto Unicorns - A Light at the End of the Tunnel for P2E games?

My focus is not to review crypto games on this website, but I believe Crypto Unicorns is a noteworthy example of a web3 game that truly embodies the principles of decentralization, community, and transparency. The game launched during the peak of the 2022/23 crypto market cycle, and its coins quickly gained significant value. However, the staking feature attracted a lot of speculative capital and things were chaotic from the start. Despite facing numerous bugs and even an exploit, the Crypto Unicorns team faced the challenges head-on, and continued to openly communicate with their community through Discord. They chose to develop in the open, in front of a demanding community who had paid premium prices for many of the starter assets, and had to deliver on their promises. Despite falling token valuations, it was clear to me that this project had a strong potential for success.

Success Criteria for web3 Games

Web3 games, also known as blockchain games, have the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry. However, understanding what it takes for a web3 game to succeed can be difficult. The financial component of these games, as measured by the stability of the in-game token and the governance token, plays a significant role in their success. In order to fully understand the economic levers of a web3 game, a deep economic study would be required.

Despite this complexity, there are certain criteria that can contribute to the success of a web3 game. These include:

Avoid too many value extracting players who are grinding basic game mechanics for a maximum return on investment (ROI) on the asset they invested in or were delegated by the owner.
Reduce the velocity of money in the game by creating a lot of complexity with interdependencies in crafting and asset evolution.
Reward specific behavior to seriously advantage active players and community members.
Drive a game narrative forward so that players have to stay actively engaged to understand new game mechanics.
Facilitate onboarding of newer players by providing guides and introductory information and support.
Integrate many opportunities to spend coins in the game.
Streamline all blockchain interactions with the game play.
Makevarious game modes available to cater to different gaming styles and a larger audience.
Build a brand and IP around the game characters to build up loyalty and facilitate onboarding and increase chance to go viral.
Communicate internally and externally at high production quality and with professionalism, also in crisis.
Make the game visually attractive.
Make the game fun.
Makethe game social.
Provide and guarantee liquidity pools for all game tokens.

As you can see, making a successful web3 game is really running a business. Crypto Unicorns, one of the first games to launch in this space, have managed to get a lot of these points right. However, it remains to be seen if they can become a market leader in the crypto gaming space.

https://www.cryptounicorns.fun/

I am going to include a few game screenshots with a few comments in the context outline above:

Crypto Unicorns may be getting it right

Attractive and clean graphics

Multi-step assets evolution and neat blockchain transaction flow

Locking in of NFT assets into the game for a smoother user experience

Revolutionalliy automated decentralized exchange for non-NFT materials based on liquidity pools, designed to self-regulate price based on supply and demand.