2021 marks the initial year of the Metaverse. In March, the first stock of the Metaverse concept—Roblox, was successfully listed. Its market value on the first day exceeded 40 billion US dollars. And thereafter, the concept of Metaverse began to become known outside the fixed circle.
For a time, Metaverse became the target of pursuit and adulation for different institutions and the capital market. An overall view of the world market tells us that the Metaverse is starting to heat up—
- In April, Epic announced that it had received 1 billion US dollars in financing, primarily for Metaverse development.
- In July, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that within five years, Facebook will transform from a social media company to a Metaverse company.
- In August, Nvidia announced the official launch of Omniverse, a virtual work platform benchmarked with the Metaverse.
- At the end of August, some media reports pointed out that ByteDance spent about 9 billion RMB to acquire the VR company Pico, which was called “a letter of admission to the Metaverse.”
- China’s game behemoth Tencent has already started creating a layout for Metaverse games. Roblox and Epic are both on the list of investors to build the so-called All True Internet they proposed.
- In addition, Microsoft, NetEase, etc. have also entered the market increasing investment into the Metaverse…
In simple terms, Metaverse is the combination of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and the Internet. The construction of a virtual world allows each player to have an avatar in it.
The entire Metaverse is built based on a complete economic system that allows players to freely shuttle through it as well as retain their identities in this virtual world and the items they have purchased.
Some people believe that the Metaverse is a fantasy that is still 10 years away from actualization; some people believe that at this stage, it is a great attempt by humanity to move towards the Oasis, made famous by Ready Player One.
However, in any case, the emergence of the Metaverse has pushed the relationship between gaming and finance to become closer than ever, and has taken the large-scale application of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology forward.
Now, let me introduce two very popular Metaverse games—SpaceY 2025 and Star Atlas. Let’s compare them and see who will be the next bellwether of chain games.
Metaverse Architecture
SpaceY 2025 is a 3A Metaverse sandbox tower defense game themed around Martian immigration. The setting of the story takes place around a fictional Mars settlement mission to Mars based on Elon Musk’s goal.
Musk wants to create a multi-planetary system suitable for human survival through an interstellar immigration program to preserve and spread human cultural genes. The SpaceY 2025 team wants to do the same thing and hopes to do so by using NFT technology.
SpaceY 2025 attempts to create a new virtual Metaverse to bring more new possibilities for humanity’s development and inheritance.
In this parallel world, every player can become a creator and complete our ascension from carbon-based life to silicon-based life. The oasis in Ready Player One and the cyberspace in Cyberpunk 2077 are becoming reality.
Star Atlas is a 3A-level space hegemony MMORPG Metaverse game created by the Unreal Engine 5. It is set in 2620 when there are three main factions competing for resources, territory, and political dominance.
The Star Atlas team’s goal is to advocate the monetization of time in the virtual world, while emphasizing the ability of this monetization to surpass the virtual world.
The ownership of digital assets always belongs to the holder, and the encrypted assets earned by players can be converted into legal tender quite effortlessly.
Like World of Warcraft and Zhengtu, Star Atlas allows players to mine, refine oil, construct, and the like to obtain materials and rewards for production. Plus, players can also explore unknown areas and fight against players of other races.
Game token model
In the SpaceY 2025 Metaverse, players can participate in Mars missions released in-game, buy land, build tower defenses to guard their homes, collect rare NFT items, compete with others, and get rewards from ladder rankings.
The game adds a new map every month and settles season rewards. 80% of all revenue flow from a season will be allocated to the player prize pool, and the monthly top 10% of players will share the prize pool.
Players must have a proper strategy to climb the ladder to get rewards, not just mortgage assets. As an incentive system, SPAY tokens can be used for in-game consumption. Players can use it to purchase NFT prop assets, or mortgage to the platform to get handling fees.
In addition, SPAY can also be used as a community governance vote. Players have the right to vote to determine the development direction of the game world and the distribution of benefits. The official website has established a DAO community for players to vote. Players’ tokens, land, and item assets will all be counted as VP for voting.
In Star Atlas, players can choose their professions which can offer them income in the open universe. A profession with a higher income also comes with higher risks.
Players are divided into three camps. In starship battles, the victors can get loot, and part of the inventory assets from the losers will be randomly destroyed. If the player’s starship is destroyed in battle, the corresponding assets will also be destroyed.
Every asset in the game will be presented in the form of NFTs, such as spacecraft, crew members, parts, land, equipment, and so on. There are two kinds of tokens in Star Atlas, ATLAS and POLIS, which together with NFT assets, form an in-game economic system.
Players can act as an explorer to collect resources, which can be sold as ATLAS on the decentralized in-game market supported by Serum, or traded with other players.
Team background
SpaceY 2025 was created by the team at Blockfish, a classic chain game born in Silicon Valley. Its members have different backgrounds—such as the artist from Death Stranding, the game designer from Roblox, and a CEO with more than 20 years of experience in traditional video game development.
In addition to the basic attributes of chain games, such as decentralization, autonomy, freedom, play, money, social aspects, strategies, and a sandbox environment, SpaceY 2025 is also on the forefront of blockchain games due to its excellent sci-fi style, textures, light rendering, 3D modeling, etc. Moreover, a ray tracing tool similar to the one used by Unreal Engine 5 has been applied.
The entire development team of Star Atlas currently has more than 50 members spread across over 14 countries around the world. They have decades of experience in game development and have participated in many high-profile projects throughout their careers.
The Star Atlas team stepped into the field of blockchain as early as 2013, and has four years of expertise in developing decentralized applications, empowered by eight years of experience in AAA Electronic Art, Mythology Entertainment, 3G Audio, and more, spanning over 1047 games.
Investors
SpaceY 2025 is currently in the second round of financing for tens of millions of dollars, and previously completed the first round of seed financing totaling 4.65 million dollars. It has also obtained investments from well-known crypto capitals, such as LINKVC, Longling, FBG, NEO, Bonfire, Hotbit, etc.
In the second round of private equity financing, SpaceY 2025 received strategic investments from Huobi Ventures and OKEx Blockdream Ventures.
Currently, the key partners of Star Atlas include: Solana, Serum, FTX, Stardust, Yield Guild Gaming, Solstarter, PAID network, and Blind Boxes.
Investors for Star Atlas include Moonwhale Ventures, Serum, LD Capital, and Yield Guild Games.
Social media
At present, the core gameplay of SpaceY 2025 has gained support from more than 6,000 KOL users, and has more than 120,000 players and community fans from dozens of countries around the world.
The V1 version of SpaceY 2025 is now online, and the land and battle systems on Mars have been released. The official website announced that the functions of the system battle and player battle will be released in October of this year, and the full version of the game will be released in November.
Players can buy tickets on the official marketplace or Opensea to get a first-hand experience of the V1 version of the game.
Currently, the Star Atlas community, with more than 100,000 fans, is very active. Thanks to the star blessing of SBF, the IEO was also very popular.
However, the full version of Star Atlas has not been released. Development on the game is still in a relatively early stage of a long cycle. According to notices on the official website, the game will release an alpha version in the first and second quarters of next year.
Therefore, if players want to enter the interstellar Metaverse of Star Atlas, they still need to wait for a relatively long period of time.
Conclusion
From the perspective of the concept design of SpaceY 2025 and Star Atlas, these two games both have high playability, which has integrated a variety of popular game modes, and the setting of the game is also very popular and enticing.
Moreover, the token model design of these two games also has a really high incentive value. Coupled with the strong technical background due to their respective teams, the graphics are also worth looking forward to.
In addition, the official teams both have very ambitious visions and blueprints. Who can become the next bellwether of the chain game Metaverse? Let’s wait and see.
