Author:@0xMavWisdom

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On May 24th, Web3 game studio Metagame Industries announced the completion of a strategic financing round with an estimated valuation of nearly $100 million. Participating institutions include Sui development team Mysten Labs, game publisher Funplus/Xterio Ecosystem Fund, among others. Abyss World, the 3A-level game produced by Metagame Industries, also announced its upcoming IDO on June 1st. In addition to the endorsement from the prestigious financing team, the game has garnered 120,000 players on its Steam wishlist. With the question of whether it can reverse the trend in the Sui ecosystem or the GameFi track, the game has generated high expectations.

Abyss World is a third-person ARPG open-world game built on the high-performance Sui network, and later expanded to become a multi-chain game parallel to Sui and Polygon. Set in an alternate world called “Nordinia,” which is filled with ancient secrets, players can explore this vast world and gradually unravel the mysteries leading to the “secrets of the abyss.”

Game Basic Concepts

1. Heroes

The hero characters in the game are a combination of professions, races, and traits.

(1) Professions include Warrior, Musha, Mages, Engineer, and Explorer. Each profession has different attributes, which can be divided into external attributes (such as strength, intelligence, magic, and luck) and internal attributes. The parameters of external attributes determine the combat power and the minimum requirements for equipment and skills, while internal attributes refer to the character’s combat skills.

(2) Races are divided into Bannerlord, Human, Orne, Seracoron, and Sigma Elves. Different races exhibit different combat characteristics in the game competition.

(3) Each hero has their own quirks/traits, which can be positive or negative. For example, there is a “Captain” who buffs the team and traits like “Fight to the Death,” which means they won’t retreat even when heavily injured (making them more likely to die).

2. Gameplay

The gameplay in the game can be divided into two categories. One is the PVE mode where players explore the in-game environment. The other is PVP, which takes place in The Abyss Colosseum and The Battle Arena. The Abyss Colosseum involves AI-driven battles after player matchmaking.

3. Assets

Unlike the typical dual-token model, the value-generating homogeneous assets in Abyss World can be understood as “Token+Points+Stablecoin.” In the early stages of the game, there will be only one native token, AWT, with a fixed supply, which is not directly used for governance or equity tokens. The second is the in-game currency, MGC, which functions solely as a game point/credit and is not initially on the blockchain, thus lacking speculative properties. The third is the stablecoin USDT/USDC, used for pricing and trading all in-game assets.

NFT assets can be roughly categorized into two types. The first type is weapon or hero NFTs, referred to as “commodity NFTs” or “resource-generating NFTs” by the official sources. The second type is non-weapon or non-hero NFTs, called “asset-based NFTs” by the official sources.

Game and Economic Systems

Based on different game modes, players can be broadly divided into two categories: casual players who focus on PVE and competitive players who focus on PVP. Casual players and competitive players achieve a balance by interacting with each other economically, without colliding within the same game. Casual players can earn the in-game currency MGC, which lacks speculative properties, by completing PVE daily tasks. They can use MGC points and collect the necessary game items (NFT fragments) to mint weapon or hero NFTs. Casual players can sell these weapon or hero NFTs on the in-game marketplace to make a profit. Competitive players, aiming for good rankings in different PVP competition leaderboards, need to improve their immediate combat power and increase their chances of winning by purchasing better weapons or hero NFTs from the marketplace.

These weapon/hero NFTs created through minting can be referred to as resource-generating NFTs. Minting these NFTs requires the use of a specific NFT factory within the game, where a 3–5% minting fee is charged as a source of income for the factory. In the early stages, the management rights of the factory belong to the game project team, so the minting fees are part of the game’s profit (the minting fees should be denominated in MGC, providing a foundation for future integration of MGC on the blockchain). In the future, the profit distribution of the factory will expand to long-term partners and stakeholders of the game. The minted NFTs can be freely traded through the in-game C2C NFT market, where players can use the stablecoins USDT/USDC for trades. Trade fees generated from these trades are paid to the foundation and its partners, making the C2C NFT market another source of profit for the game.

Just as MGC primarily serves for weapon or hero NFTs and PVE rewards, AWT is primarily responsible for non-weapon or non-hero asset NFTs and incentives for core players.

Firstly, AWT acts as the raw material for asset NFTs. In the scenarios outlined in the official documentation, it is described as follows:

When players complete season tasks and obtain treasure chests, they need keys to open them. For a certain period of time, ownership of the keys can only be generated by burning AWT, and the keys can be freely traded on the market. Players who hold the keys will be entitled to trade fees from the items inside the treasure chests.

The official commitment is to design multiple similar scenarios within the game that can attract more participants who contribute value to the game without disrupting the traditional player experience. Although the specific examples provided by the official documentation do not explicitly state it, it can be inferred that both the keys and the items inside the treasure chests will be asset NFTs, and the burn of AWT will be dynamic. The value of the keys and the scarcity/functionality of the items inside the treasure chests complement each other. When the items inside the treasure chests are sufficiently rare or have powerful functional effects within the game, the potential value of the keys increases. Since pricing and trades in the marketplace are denominated in stablecoins, this also anchors a dynamic real value for AWT. The higher the value of the items that can be obtained, the higher the value of the keys, leading to a greater burn of AWT.

Furthermore, 40% of the total supply of AWT will be allocated as incentives for core players in the game ecosystem, including players who complete in-game tasks on a weekly basis, PVP rewards, game guild operation rewards, proposal rewards, and third-party marketplace liquidity rewards.

Governance System

The governance system of Abyss World is also worth mentioning as it deviates from the traditional “1 Token 1 Vote” governance model. Governance rights are not allocated based on the quantity of AWT tokens held by users, but rather focus on players’ achievements within the game and their nomination for governance seats based on multiple in-game metrics. This approach avoids the dilemma of large token holders who may not be active players and ensures that they do not have excessive influence in proposals. These in-game metrics may include players who rank high on the season’s PVP leaderboard, players who hold Gazer/Genesis NFTs, or players who hold key asset NFTs. Additionally, after the issuance and circulation of AWT, an Abyss World DAO will be established.

According to online videos and community feedback from participants in the closed beta demo, Abyss World, powered by Unreal Engine 5, shows a high level of completion, with visuals that rival some AAA titles. As a result, the game has higher system requirements for PCs. Furthermore, the Abyss World team is actively focused on attracting Web2 player communities and has collaborated with well-known gaming platforms like EPIC and showcased the game on reputable gaming media outlets like IGN, demonstrating their determination.

However, strictly speaking, Abyss World still falls under the category of a Web2.5 game, meaning that the assets are on the blockchain while the game itself is not. From Abyss World’s economic system, it is evident that the team has deeply considered the dual token model used in blockchain gaming and has provided their own solution of “non-governance token + in-game currency point/credit + stablecoin pricing and trading + categorized NFTs.” Nevertheless, this is essentially a patch rather than a breakthrough in the dual token model, which is a challenge faced by the entire blockchain gaming industry, not specific to Abyss World. Abyss World follows the logic often mentioned by capital, emphasizing that blockchain games should meet the graphical standards of traditional games and prioritize game quality and player experience, with tokenomics playing a supporting role.

Additionally, although Abyss World initially aimed to build on the Sui chain, subsequent planning may involve constructing some genesis assets on Polygon due to better liquidity and the presence of native stablecoins on the EVM chain. Sui chain may be repositioned for settlement purposes within the game. This may lead to future discussions on cross-chain security between EVM and non-EVM assets, as well as compatibility issues with single wallets.

Reference: https://medium.com/@ABYSS_WORLD/tokenomics-update-ido-de3a3915eb37

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