Grand Theft Auto owner enters Web3 via mobile gaming arm Fun fact: mobile gaming giant Zynga is owned by Take-Two Interactive, the sa
Grand Theft Auto owner enters Web3 via mobile gaming arm
Fun fact: mobile gaming giant Zynga is owned by Take-Two Interactive, the same company that also owns Rockstar Games, which is behind ultra-popular video game series like Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption and NBA 2K.
Now Zynga is making its Web3 debut with a new franchise.
Best known for its FarmVille series, Zynga has created an offshoot studio called Zynga Web3 (or ZW3) and announced Sugartown. It’s a cross-media world that will be more like a Web3 gaming platform than a single title. The cute cartoonish animals featured in the teaser video give clues that there might be more than video games in the works.
It looks like a scene from a new Netflix series, so I won’t be surprised to see a cartoon featuring the Sugartown characters.
For now, though, the only thing that’s confirmed is that Sugartown will launch an NFT collection called Oras, and they will be required to participate in upcoming games within the universe. ZW3 said the franchise is working with different communities to allocate allowlists for the NFTs.
If this platform becomes successful, perhaps it could give the green light for some of those big titles from the same company to jump into Web3?
More play needed in Play-to-Earn — Istanbul Blockchain Week
Why aren’t Web3 games adopted as much as traditional games? That was one of the subjects talked about during a Web3 gaming panel at Istanbul Blockchain Week 2023. The panel mainly focused on Web3 gaming adoption, the problems of Web3 gaming and the developer side of things.
Curator Studios co-founder Uluç Yuca’s answer stood out in particular as I sincerely believe it expressed the thoughts of many traditional gamers – including myself – toward the big problem with Web3 gaming.
He started his speech by asking the audience how many Web3 gamers there were. There were a few hands raised. “And this is a blockchain event!” he commented, then asked how many traditional gamers there were. There was a significant increase in the number of hands raised. He pointed out there are 3 billion traditional gamers in the world and only 15 million Web3 gamers.
15 million was not the (number of) active users in Roblox back in 2015. So what we have right now is just a little private party. That means we did something wrong.”
Here’s what we did wrong, according to Yuca: The Web3 community is always talking about features like third-party trading, ownership, making money and interoperability. But these features have existed since games were around, including in-game items in World of Warcraft, rare items in Dota, auctions in Diablo and those occasions RuneScape’s in-game currency was used as the local market currency when Venezuela’s money was depreciating.
So, we focused on features that already exist in various forms and combined them with games that aren’t fun:
We talk about all these value propositions and monetization models. Play-to-Earn, Play-and-Earn, Play-and-Own, Play-and-Have-Coffee, Play-and-Get-Married. It doesn’t really matter because there is no play. There is no product.”
He stressed that he has yet to see a game like Minecraft, or one that does “What Angry Birds did to mobile gaming back in the day.”
Despite the potential brought by Web3 elements, the real question was, “Do we have a game like Roblox (in Web3)?” Unfortunately, we do not.
Bitcoin casino works exactly like what you’d expect
Not many people know this but Satoshi Nakamoto may have been a poker player, with the original 0.1.0 Bitcoin code in 2008 containing scraps of code for an online poker game.
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With the introduction of Ordinals, it looks like we might be headed back in that direction. Ordinals has enabled the Bitcoin base layer to become home to numerous images, videos and even some basic games, and also laid the groundwork for “DeFi on Bitcoin” protocols such as Trustless Computer (TC) and the related New Bitcoin City (NBC).
Launched in early August, the gaming platform utilizes TC and transitions gameplay to NOS, a layer-2 on Bitcoin, according to core member Punk3700, who says it enhances speed and efficiency, ensuring complex interactions occur off the Bitcoin mainnet.
NOS brings an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to the Bitcoin network,…
cointelegraph.com
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