Ubisoft enters the blockchain game, can traditional game giants play this card well?

By Zen, PANews

At the Japan Blockchain Week last week, the "Oasys Special Event" held by the game public chain Oasys was one of the most watched side events on the game track. The companies and projects participating in this conference have lived up to expectations, except that the Korean game giant Com2uS said that it will launch its 3A-level chain game Summoners War: Chronicles ("Summoners War: Chronicles") on Oasys; the chain game company double jump.tokyo won the Sega licensed to launch a chain game based on the IP "Three Kingdoms War"; Japan's largest social networking site MIXI and Oasys cooperated in content development and other good news, and the game giant Ubisoft (Ubisoft) even directly released its "big move" - will Launched the first official blockchain-based game, Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles.

Ubisoft is a game giant from France. Since its establishment in 1986, it has launched many popular high-quality games, including "Assassin's Creed" series (Assassin's Creed), "Far Cry" series (Far Cry), "Rayman" ( Rayman), "Rainbow Six: Siege", "Brawlhalla" and "For Honor", etc. Ubisoft has nearly 20,000 employees worldwide, and has more than 20 game studio production teams responsible for development, release and operation. Its technical research and development team La Forge covers rendering, animation, artificial intelligence, audio and other fields.

In partnership with Oasys****Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles

The just-announced "Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles" is a tactical RPG game based on the blockchain in cooperation with Oasys, aimed at PC gamers. Ubisoft describes Champions Tactics as a player-versus-player tactics game where players use mythical champions to battle each other. At present, there is only a trailer on the official website of the game, and the trailer does not show the game screen, game mechanism, gameplay, testing, launch time and other information. From the perspective of its art style, it is easy to think of "God". Games like Havoc and League of Legends.

The game public chain Oasys is jointly launched by Japanese traditional game giants Bandai Namco and Sega. The games on this public chain mainly run on its second-tier network. Its transaction speed is faster and players do not need to pay Gas fees. Oasys launched the main network in October last year, and 21 institutional nodes are responsible for maintaining the network operation. Ubisoft is one of the main nodes. Other well-known game companies and Web3 companies involved include Bandai Namco Research Institute (Bandai) Namco Research), Sega (SEGA), game union YGG (Yield Guild Games), encryption investment institution Jump Crypto, etc.

Recommended reading: "A detailed explanation of Oasys: a zero-fee high-speed game public chain compatible with EVM"

Two failed NFT attempts by Ubisoft

In fact, before embarking on the development of the chain game "Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles", Ubisoft has launched two "experiments" on NFT applications, but they all ended in dismal.

Different from the current "all losses", the rapid rise of the NFT market during that period ignited an upsurge in the application of new technologies in traditional industries. From automobiles, luxury goods, sports brands to food and catering, everyone "follows the trend" and hopes to use new technology to promote the brand. There are also some NFT games like Nike that simply open up a new development direction, represented by "Axie Infinity". The great success has also played a demonstration effect for the game industry. Ubisoft, which has always been more radical in the field of technology, may also be based on these considerations. After launching the metaverse platform Ubisoft Quartz in December 2021, its strategic innovation laboratory designed three NFTs based on the Tezos blockchain and introduced third-person shooting In the game "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint", three NFTs can be applied to game costumes, namely rifles, helmets, and pants. The latter two need to play for 600 and 100 hours respectively before they can be claimed.

In Ubisoft’s view, through massive participation in the game, players can not only improve the level and level of the game, but also win the “digital scarcity” items that only a few people have. These NFTs can also be sold on the Ubisoft Quartz platform to obtain cryptocurrency or cash. However, game enthusiasts obviously do not buy the "Play to Earn" rules customized by encryption enthusiasts: Ubisoft received a lot of opposition after announcing the news about the NFT, and the market performance of the NFT is also very different Satisfactorily, the trading volume on the Quartz market in the first week was less than $400.

Ubisoft's first NFT experiment was finally terminated in April 2022. On the one hand, its failure was due to "hunger marketing" and the extreme need for "liver" (meaning that players need a lot of time to play games), which seriously dampened the enthusiasm of players. On the other hand, , the game itself does not belong to the best batch of Ubisoft. In the same month, Ubisoft first announced that it would launch the battle royale game "Project Q", and fans speculated that the game was an NFT game based on the wording of its announcement. In January of this year, for unknown reasons, Ubisoft suddenly announced the cancellation of the upcoming closed test of Project Q, and stated that the project would no longer continue to be developed.

Perhaps under the pressure of the previous two failures, Ubisoft entered the chain game again this time, and did not make a high-profile announcement directly on the official Twitter as before, and "Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles" is obviously still in a very early stage of development , whether it will be stillborn like "Project Q", and how it will develop in the future, there are still variables. PANews will continue to follow up on the progress of the project.