Cantina Royale Is Coming To The Maiar Launchpad: Web3 Gaming For The Next Billion People
The video game industry has become bigger than the movies and music industries combined. This massive shift in entertainment was enabled and catalyzed solely by the internet.
At first, game developers were reluctant to add online components and multiplayer modes. Today, video games distribution and gaming happen almost exclusively over the internet. 3 billion people thus have access to what will continue to be a rapidly evolving form of entertainment.
Blockchains and Web3 technologies, are setting the premise to bring a new “internet” moment to the video gaming industry, enabling and catalyzing the next massive growth wave in the process.
Accelerating the evolution of gaming
Video game development time and cost have gradually decreased over time. This is thanks to advanced creation and editing tools.
Owing to tools such as Unity and Unreal, technology is no longer the most important differentiator. Game play elements can easily be replicated. Thus, the battle for player attention needs to happen on new grounds.
What if players could engage with interoperable virtual worlds that allow them to retain and transport their experiences and achievements between gaming realms? What if they could create and enjoy a new and recurring income stream while doing so?
This is precisely what NFTs and blockchain make possible.
Enter Cantina Royale, let a new generation of games begin
Cantina Royale is a free-to-play cross-platform tactical action shooter. Its beautiful graphics and addictive gameplay are already enough to earn it a place at the top of its genre immediately after its July launch.
But what will make it even better is the integration of Elrond blockchain technology. Characters and items become upgradeable NFTs. Players are able to buy, sell or lend them. The game has its own economy, based on the $CRT token, which players are buying to pay for upgrades and new items, and earn as rewards for winning PvE or PvP games.
The lending element will be essential for onboarding free-to-play users. Think of it as an owner lending his racing car to a talented driver, and sharing race prizes.
Here, the drivers are free-to-play users, and the car owners are NFT owners. Owning an NFT is essential for engaging with play-to-earn mechanics. But unlike other blockchain games, owning an NFT is not required to play, which means anyone can jump into the action immediately.
Perhaps most importantly, the interaction is so seamless and rewarding that new players won’t have to know about the blockchain components but they will be able to explore the full benefits they bring.
A Web3 experience framework for the Metaverse
Cantina Royale is built on Verko, a gaming API layer that connects to the Elrond Network. Its role being twofold:
- To give players the gaming experience they are looking for, and upgrade it with the Web3 component they will come to love. - This enables the framework to settle the blockchain transactions in the background, without the need for players to create new wallets and go through the entire blockchain onboarding process.
- To give game developers the freedom to integrate smart contracts and NFTs with just a few lines of code, without taking resources away from creating the actual game. - This means that every new or existing game can be upgraded with internet-scale blockchain super powers. Furthermore, it means that any NFT collection can make its way into the games integrating it, such as the Bored Apes Yacht Club, which is scheduled for integration in Q3 2022.
The future looks bright for this new type of gaming. More NFTs will make their way into Cantina Royale, and more games will be running on the Verko platform. NFTs marketplaces, lending marketplaces, will thus become legos in this new gaming space.
New games, new experiences, new economies
Cantina Royale is the first in a new breed of games, experiences, and economies. Perhaps this will be the wave that will carry blockchain gaming outside of its current niche and into the mainstream.
Enabling users all over the world to create new economies and grow them alongside friends is extraordinary. Being able to do so via Elrond as one of the most advanced blockchains in the space is even better.
Incorporating all these features while making them invisible and seamless for players to interact with. This is the crucial advantage where Cantina Royale opens a new and remarkable path.
Experiences, achievements and assets that will be transportable between virtual realms will likely become the norm in all video games.
And perhaps in business, productivity, social and other platforms too.
One thing is clear: true ownership of income generating assets that are transportable between games will transform the video games and Metaverse space. Allowing players to engage in a partnership relationship with developers, to co-own and jointly drive its evolution will vastly augment its economic footprint.
There are, of course, obstacles. And paradigm shifts cannot happen overnight.
But Cantina Royale brings a new model. One that could undoubtedly reshape the gaming space.
The Cantina Royale Maiar Launchpad Event
The Maiar Launchpad will host a no-loss lottery where long term Elrond supporters will be able to purchase tickets based on the amount of staked EGLD.
Winning tickets will be used to redeem Cantina Royale Tokens (CRT) which sit at the core of the Metaverse arcade’s Web3 economy.
In an exciting first for our leading ecosystem accelerator, the Maiar Launchpad event will also include a Mystery Box NFT sale, following the same no-loss lottery model. Participants will have the option to purchase a new type of lottery ticket which gives them a chance to win a Mystery Box containing a Genesis Space Ape.
Genesis Space Apes are the first set of playable NFT characters and the only Cantina Royale collection with a perpetual income stream related based on future NFT playable characters recruited by Genesis Space Ape owners based on a “breeding” model.
The sale event will happen in July, at a precise date to be announced soon. Stay tuned for the exciting updates and visit the Maiar Launchpad website, where you can find more details about the Cantina Royale project and start the KYC process.
Beniamin Mincu, Co-founder of MultiversX, is a distinguished tech visionary and one of Europe’s early blockchain pioneers.
