All Activity

Everyone agrees, Adam. Everyone agrees. View the full article

Tickets available now for Pokémon GO Safari Zone: Taipei!

We are incredibly thrilled to announce the launch of Ather Club — our bespoke Loyalty Program designed to reward members of the Ather Labs ecosystem. Ather Club members can enjoy a whole host of exciting and exclusive benefits and rewards just for engaging with us. We have created this as a gesture of appreciation for members who have stuck with us through thick and thin and supported us since the beginning. How does it work?By completing Quests, Ather Club members can earn XP and increase their Ather Rank to unlock exclusive benefits & rewards, and Nanochips for redeeming exciting rewards. The higher the Ather Rank reached, the more lucrative the rewards! Will you be the first to reach the Diamond Ather Rank? Ather Club QuestsQuests are simple tasks and activities that can be completed to level up and increase your Ather Rank. Completing a quest is rather straightforward and can be achieved in just a few easy steps. Step 1 — Navigate to the Ather Labs Dashboard and log into your Ather Account.If you don’t have an account, create one at https://account.atherlabs.com/ or check out our step-by-step guide. Step 2 — Navigate to the Ather Labs Dashboard’s new “ATHER CLUB” section.Step 3 — Choose a quest from the “Featured” List or From the “All Quests” tab.Featured Quests tab (Image might not reflect final product)Do keep in mind that not all quests are available from the start. You will have to meet certain criteria to unlock them such as completing pre-requisite quests or reaching the required level. For example, you must Link your Twitter account to unlock the “Follow Twitter” and “Like and Retweet” quests. Some quests might have level requirements as well. Example of Locked Quest (Image might not reflect final product)Step 4 — Complete the QuestTo complete a quest, you need to perform the necessary tasks or meet the criteria described in the quest details. For instance, to complete the “Subscribe to our Newsletter” quest, you must enter your name and email into the fields when prompted. The name and email within the fields are input by default. If you would like to change them, you can do so within your Account Settings. Step 5 — Congrats, Quest Completed!After completing a quest, you can claim its XP and Nanochips by clicking on the “CLAIM” button. Quest Types and FrequenciesThere is a variety of quests that our Ather Members could complete, such as one-time quests, daily quests, and recurring quests. The first version of the Ather Club will include the following Quests: Modifier QuestsThese are quests that change the way you interact with other quests and are only activated if you meet the requirements. For instance, you can get a 10% XP and Nanochip bonus when completing any other quests while having one or more Genesis Sipher NFTs in any of your Ather Account’s linked wallets. However, the bonus will not be active if you do not have a Genesis Sipher NFT in your linked wallets. Modifier Quest — 10% Bonus for Genesis Sipher NFT Holders (Image might not reflect final product)One-time QuestsThese are generally straightforward tasks that can only be completed once and serve as a quick and easy way for you to gain instant XP and Nanochips. One-time Quests (Image might not reflect final product)Periodic, Repeatable, and Recurring QuestsAs the name suggests, these are quests that you could actively repeat since they appear and reappear once in a while. They provide you with a constant stream of activities as well as XP and Nanochips. Each of the Ather Labs platforms will have its own set of quests to complete, so expect more to be added over time. Earning XP and Nanochips (Points)Completing Quests will reward you with XP and Nanochips. By accumulating XP you can increase your Ather Rank, unlocking tiers of benefits and rewards as you go higher.Nanochips are points that you can accumulate and spend on exclusive redeemable rewards.As of now, there is no limit to the amount of Nanochips you can earn. However, there is an XP cap when you reach the current maximum Ather Rank: Diamond (Level 25). Note: After completing a Quest, you must click on the ‘CLAIM’ button to obtain the respective XP and Nanochips. Levels and Ather RankThere are two components to the leveling system: Account level and Ather Rank. These are displayed on the user profile and under the “Ather Club” section of the Dashboard. To increase your level, you must earn the required amount of XP by completing quests. Each level will require a certain amount of XP, which will increase each time you level up. A new Ather Rank will be unlocked every five levels, as follows: Ather Rank is an essential component of the Ather Club, as it unlocks different benefits and redeemable rewards. For instance, there’s a Nanochip Boost multiplier applied to the account depending on the Ather Rank. Refer to the table below for the Nanochip multipliers applied at each Ather Rank Maximize your Nanochip (NC) multiplier by combining up your Ather Rank NC boost with the NFT Holder bonusAther Club RewardsRewards can be redeemed with Nanochips (points), earned by clicking on ‘CLAIM’ after completing an Ather Club Quest. Similar to quests, there will be rewards relevant to most of the Ather Labs platforms, and will be released in phases. Some of the rewards we have in store include Merchandise Discounts and Free Exclusive Merchandise; Raffles; Limited or Exclusive NFT Rewards; SIPHER Exclusive In-game Items and Benefits; Partner & Collaborator Perks & Rewards; NFT Trading Benefits; and much more. Please note that the Rewards functionality is currently under development and is planned for release within the next few weeks. However, you can still accumulate Nanochips for the time being. Make sure you stock up now to redeem rewards as soon as the feature is released! I want in! How can I join the Ather Club?Great! Joining is simple. If you have an Ather Account, you’re automatically enrolled in the Ather Club. If you don’t have an Ather Account yet, you can create one at https://account.atherlabs.com/. For help creating your account, you can follow our step-by-step guide below New Ather Labs Dashboard & Creating your Ather Account Disclaimers:Measures are in place to prevent abuse, exploitation, or cheating of the system. If an account is found to have been abusing, exploiting, or cheating the system in any way, disciplinary action will be taken on a case-by-case basis.Any Twitter-related quests such as “Like & Retweet” or “Follow Twitter Account” may show as “Processing” for up to an hour, due to Twitter API Limitations. If the quest does not show as “Completed” after an hour, please try the quest again. You can always contact our SupportPlease do not make any financial decisions based on the information above. If you decide to purchase a Genesis Sipher NFT to take advantage of bonuses or quests, please do so at your own discretion. Ather Labs and SIPHER are not responsible or liable for any financial impacts or consequences from your purchase.From One To Many 🚀 Enter Sipheria & be a part of our 350K worldwide community Sipher Website: https://sipher.xyz Sipher Official Links: https://linktr.ee/playsipher We are actively hiring! If you ♥ gaming and making great games, join us at Sipher: https://careers.sipher.xyz/ Welcome to the Ather Club! was originally published in playSIPHER on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. View the full article

nitter.net/i/spaces/1jMJgLb… View the full article

Illuvium Dev Blog — Aug 2022A new dawn.IntroWhile we love to give everyone insights into the inner workings of what we’re creating, we always preference development work (and health, in my case) over the dev blog. So while we missed July, we have some significant updates to share, and I hope you prefer that to faster updates. I hope you have an enjoyable read. Illuvium: ArenaThere are two significant features that we are polishing for PB2; The server connection and the integration of the visual assets. Both are effectively complete and have been for a while. But because we have many more features, it takes longer to polish. Also, part of this work prepares us to launch Ascendant mode, which uses the same scaffolding. Note: Balance is not a focus on this release, so if some items are weaker than others, you’ll have to wait for a future patch. Also, please keep in mind balance needs to be done at the NFT level, and Ascendant is the mode we are balancing around, so there will ALWAYS be some OP units in Survival. While that isn’t ideal, it’s typical for games with multiple modes. Don’t worry, though. If you want to play Survival competitively, you’ll battle people with the same stuff. Fair is fair. HighlightsThe client-server logic is feature complete, and we are just clearing out as many bugs as we can.All 106 new units are in the game and working. We are still optimising them, but we won’t hold back our internal release date to optimise. PB2 will be a bit more hardware intensive, but we have started to fix that. Hopefully, in the first patch of PB2, we will get the game running better on weaker machines and Macs.The prototype of constant communication between server and client was a success, and Ascendant will use this for things like moving your Drone around the board so that your opponent sees it. Yes, throwing down emotes will be included, and we will start working on that soon. The emotes themselves are locked and loaded.Some Arena team members are finished with PB2 and are already working on the next steps.The Data team continue to work on building the AI that will run our balance, so they are looking towards Ascendant mode to continue its construction.There are some Unreal bugs that we are looking to solve. Using a custom engine is always a pain since you have to maintain it yourself, but we’ve submitted a fix for the issues to Unreal, and hopefully, Unreal will integrate them quickly.As this is a Dev blog, I won’t spend too much time reviewing the improvements for PB2 since I’ve already gone through them. I want to focus a bit on Ascendant and what Illuvium: Arena will look like when finished. The next phase of work is all around the game mode itself, the user interface, and the launcher. Once they are complete, Illuvium: Arena will be ready for Public Beta. We do not require integration of every unit for it to work, although I’m pretty sure we will get them all in, considering how much faster things will go from here. Public Beta still means a game that isn’t fully optimised and doesn’t have complete polish, but it will still be excellent. It means all the core features are there with no game-breaking bugs. Right now, we only have a small team working on the UI and user experience, so keep in mind that things will improve from a “quality of life” perspective over time. I’m excited by what Arena represents. It’s the first “Add On” game to the universe where you take your NFTs and play something self-contained. You’ll need to go to the IlluviDex to buy your Shards or play Overworld to capture them yourself, but once you have done that, you can play Arena as much or little as you like. That is the beauty of a fully interoperable Illuvium Universe. You seamlessly take assets from game to game, play what you feel like playing, and track global progress. Illuvium: Arena will be the world’s best deck-building auto battler. Not just in crypto, anywhere. That will draw in crowds, even those who don’t usually play auto battlers. Once we can show what we are capable of at scale, it will become apparent what the Illuvium Universe is. Most still don’t get it. They will. Illuvium: OverworldWe are fast approaching the second part of PB2, Overworld. Kieran has spoken extensively about this lately, so I won’t spend too much time talking about the quality of it and instead focus on the functions. HighlightsWe worked on locomotion tweaks, but the core is already there. After that, we will add some bells and whistles to enhance the feedback of the mechanics. Doing a perfectly timed jump should add visual boosts like different VFX, animations, etc.The capturing gameplay flow is nearly complete and has been a significant body of work. While we are happy with it, it is something that we don’t want to look underdone, so we will continue to work on it.Forging is on schedule. The UI looks great, even though that is a placeholder, as we have something more epic coming later.The two environments are ready, if not fully optimised, so you’ll be able to see Sanctum Mesa and The Crimson Waste in all their glory. Other environments are getting finished quickly but won’t be ready for PB2.Plant interaction physics is well underway, and while simple work, it is very labour intensive. That’s one of the reasons most studios don’t do it. By the time PB2 work finishes, only some of the plants will be interactive. Have fun discovering which.The backend work is well underway as well. It was not originally in the scope of PB2, and it might not make it, but even if it doesn’t, the user will still have a local version that functions identically. Since we aren’t talking about tangible assets yet, this is acceptable.The design of all the recipes is ongoing, so don’t expect it to be balanced. Each time you do a run, the game will score you based on what you take out of the region. Certain Illuvials, harvestables, and minables will be worth more than others, so try to get to the top. By doing so, you help us to determine how to balance the drop rates and recipes.There is one more thing that I hinted at about a while ago. It won’t be in PB2, but work has been done on it and relates to our transition to an open world with combat. I’m pleased with what that pathway looks like now.Illuvium: ZeroThis product has been near ready for a long time. We are just waiting on some polish. Highlights“Final” region art is being added, including new animations. (I say “final” in quotes because the animations and VFX will continue to evolve)The overhauled UIs continue to be polished.We will focus on the core experience instead of the tutorial system, allowing us to get the overall feel correct. From the feedback, we will then make the tutorial after we find out what pain points players might have.IlluviDEXIlluviDex v2 is dropping very soon. Because this is a v2 release, there won’t be much fanfare, but you’ll notice many new improvements and features. While that might not be important to some, it’s important to others and quite essential to us. Because not only does it give us the platform to put all future products, but it frees up a significant number of our resources to help boost the production of other projects. Soon we will have a few products in development, but with far more resources per product, increasing production speed. HighlightsHomepage Updates.Land Collection analytics, landing page, graph view, and metrics.Improved filtering and sorting.Improved plot tiles and trading pages.Improved region map filtering, navigation, and zoom.Improved trade pages.Added a search feature.Better security and monitoring.Added a transfer NFT feature.Many more features, bug fixes, and QOL improvements.IlluvitarsThere were two significant changes to Illuvitars when we asked the community a couple of months ago. The first was a move to an IMX-centric approach. This work has been relatively fast, and the backend team stepped up to deliver. The second part, the Album, will take a bit more time but will improve the product overall. HighlightsWe have worked with IMX to create a system similar to how they sell card packs in Gods Unchained.The reveal animation is complete and looks fantastic.All the design changes I spoke about are finished EXCEPT the points system. I got most done before I was sick, but points I missed out on. The team loves it internally, and it will make collecting these cards engaging. Yes, there are some random elements, but for anyone that loves the feeling of buying land and ‘sniping’ plots from people, you will love this too. It’s not the same, but a strategic element in what you buy stems from the fact that you will not be able to finish all the collections. Some will say “challenge accepted”, so let’s see if you can outsmart us.We are working through the final details of the extra benefits of Illuvitars, such as Private Beta Access, exclusive merchandise, and IRL events.Launch CinematicThere isn’t much to say about this. The work is underway, but I don’t think we will leak anything from this before it launches, so I can’t go into much detail. All the assets are either completed or in progress, and we are progressing to the next stage in terms of tone, pacing and so on. HighlightsThe mocap work is impressive, where <redacted> and then <redacted>.Auditions for the voice of <redacted> are looking promising. There isn’t too much dialogue, but this one is important.Of all the characters you don’t know, <redacted> is my favourite.We’ve tried to interweave some humour with action, so I hope you like the team’s work to upgrade the rig of <redacted>.I didn’t choose the featured Illuvials. Just remember that.General UpdatesStoryThe world-building, philosophy, and mythology of the world continue development.The biologies of the Illuvials are well underway. We are still testing different formats, but we think we have something that you will like. The purpose is to build a deeper connection between the player and their Illuvials.Working on the psychology and back story of certain characters due to bringing them more to life via the cinematic.Most focus is on the Cinematic, but we have also started to look at additional ways to weave the backstory into the game as seamlessly as possible.InfrastructureAnalytics are improving all the time.Improvements to the CI/CD pipeline using AWS native tools.New operational dashboards and reporting platform.Ongoing support and monitoring.SummaryWhile the work continues, I apologise for the lack of updates. We will do the following blog as quickly as possible and then return to our regular schedule. As for the schedule of the product releases, I’ll keep that updated here as well: IlluviDex v2 → PB2 (Arena) → Illuvium: Zero Alpha → PB2 (Overworld) → Illuvitars → Game Loader And somewhere dispersed in the other releases will be the Dao Dashboard, The Content Gallery, a new Website, and (maybe) Forge. Things will start to roll out quickly over the next few months, which will help unblock some pipelines and speed up production overall. I’m excited about everything that is launching between now and the end of the year. Strap in. Illuvium Dev Blog — Aug 2022 was originally published in Illuvium on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. View the full article

Meet Howie Zhang — The Economy Designer of Guild of GuardiansWe’re on a mission to onboard hundreds of millions of gamers into digital ownership via NFTs, by building the world’s most popular mobile RPG where players can turn their passion for gaming into real assets. It’s a bold ambition, and bold ambitions require relentless focus, teamwork and some of the best talents in the industry. In this ‘Meet the Team’ series, we take a behind-the-scenes look at the team who are passionately building and spearheading the next frontier of gaming. Meet our Economy Designer and King 👑, Howie Zhang— A lifelong gamer with a passion for innovation! Previously, he worked as a Quant Analyst in a highly reputable Australian company but decided to use his skills to help build innovation in gaming. As a gamer himself, Howie has always been passionate about the gaming industry and believes that now is the time to make his mark on the blockchain world. Tell us about yourself, Howie! GOG morning everyone, I’m super pumped for this interview! So a bit about me, I come from a family of Chinese scholars and academics. I was born in Beijing, and I immigrated to Australia when I was a child. Like many migrant families, my parents gave up everything, started with nothing, and worked hard to provide me with a bright future. I’ve been a gamer all of my life. One of my earliest memories as a child was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on a Famicon-clone with the older kids in my neighbourhood. In primary school, I was playing Mario Kart on the SNES and later Goldeneye on the N64 at my friend’s place (we could never afford consoles at home). Then in high school, when I got my first taste of dial-up internet on the PC, I played Starcraft, Diablo 2, CS, and Warcraft 3, before moving on to Dota and WoW. Attending LAN parties in the early 2000s was some of the biggest highlights of my childhood and teenage years. I took a bit of a break from gaming for a few years to focus on school and work. When I got back into gaming, I was less ‘hardcore’, preferring to play more casual games on mobile and PC. My career previously was in Quantitative Finance, where I worked on market design and research at the stock exchange. I spent a few years at a start-up stock exchange, where I contributed to its growth and development until it was eventually acquired by a major US stock exchange. This experience gave me a unique perspective on what it takes to grow a market and the importance of having a diverse mix of participants in any ecosystem you’re building. The variety gives vibrancy — and this is something I’m always mindful about when working on Guild of Guardians. You’re the Economy Designer for Guild of Guardians — What exactly does your role entail? And what does a day in the life at Guild of Guardians look like for you? The Economy Designers’ job is to ensure that the generation, flow, and distribution of resources in our game is balanced and fun. Unlike a real-world economist who typically optimises for efficiency, the Economy Designer in a video game needs to optimise for fun. Our decisions typically centre around the player experience, for example: Do we introduce a resource pinch-point here?Are the rewards adequate to incentivise players to undertake challenging gameplay?More specifically, various mathematical and statistical models exist to simulate and evaluate our designs. I also give input on various other design challenges that touch on the resources; for an RPG like GOG, that means I may be required to give my opinion on non-economy-related features such as dungeon difficulty, UX flow, and general game design. My workday typically starts around 7 AM, I’ll read up on overnight messages and emails from the team in US/Europe, and I’ll follow up on the latest news on the press/Twitter. I’ll also read through discord to check in with the community pulse. I have a morning huddle with the Design team, who are located mostly in the US, and we will review the various priorities and dependencies. The rest of the morning is usually reserved for meetings and planning. My business-as-usual (BAU) involves reviewing various economy models, building my models, and reviewing/initiating design documentation. I also have some oversight into the data and analytics work that goes into supporting and monitoring the functionality of the game and its economy. In the late afternoon, I meet with our European Economy team, and we discuss the work that needs to be done and the milestones we need to reach to gear up for a successful launch. During the evening, I then either read some articles or think about our strategy. Why is it so important that our virtual economy is well designed? There are multiple reasons why we need to pay particular attention to economy design in GOG. First, player progression is very important in the RPG genre, and this is especially true on a mobile platform, where reflex/mechanical skill is diminished due to the input medium. In GOG, player progression is dependent on strategic decisions related to squad composition, energy consumption, and resource generation. This means that much of the game’s depth is contained in the design of the economy. It should be complex enough that players can get a sense of mastery but simple enough that it’s still fun — striking a fine balance between these two aspects is a mix of art and science. Secondly, we are a web3 game; what this means is that our economy is open, players own their digital assets, and this means that they are free to do what they wish with their assets. Unlike traditional games where trading is restricted (e.g. Bind on Equip/Pick-up in MMOs) or real-money trading is prohibited, our game explicitly aims to promote the ability of players to transfer and trade their assets with each other. This means that the designer has less ability to influence or dictate outcomes/player experiences. As a result, the initial set-up of the economy needs to be well designed at the outset because intervention into a live open economy is a much more complex task. Finally, we’re pioneers; the question of economic sustainability has not been fully solved in this space. There are so many fundamental and open questions right now. For example: What does ownership mean?How do we overcome player loss aversion?How do we manage artificial scarcity?How do we limit inflation?How do we prevent boom-bust price cycles?How do mainstream gamers co-exist with new types of gamers?How do we safeguard against bots and exploits?Looking around, we have many examples of what not to do but few examples of what to do. Therefore, we need to be thought leaders and propose bold new solutions to unanswered questions. A big issue in blockchain gaming is that virtual economies collapse; why does that happen? It is true that many first-generation web3 game economies have not done very well from a financial ROI perspective, especially for the majority of players who joined later. I think one of the fundamental questions that many projects fail to answer is the question of what happens when players churn. In web2 games, player churn wasn’t as much of a problem because in-game assets were generally locked to a player’s account. However, in web3, when a player churns, they can simultaneously choose to sell their inventory. If the active player base cannot absorb these goods, and the game has no incentives to sink or stake these assets, then an inevitable collapse occurs. The trap is that instead of addressing churn, projects instead focus on player growth. After all, as long as player growth exceeds player churn, then this collapse can be averted. Games that lean into this end up developing intentional or accidental Ponzi-style models where the sustainability of the economy is predicated on more players joining. An easy way to encourage new players to join us is to create a mechanic where limited assets produce more limited assets (e.g. a breeding mechanic). The excess demand on limited assets creates a price run-up, causing FOMO and player growth to rise on the expectation of large returns. However, eventually, the game’s assets become over-supplied and the reason for new players to join the game disappears. When this happens, the price rapidly unwinds, and it all comes crashing down. The problem here is that developers should focus on what makes the game fun and reduce churn, not on how to give speculators a way to make the most money. What do you think will help make Guild of Guardian’s virtual economy sustainable? One of the main innovations we are introducing is our guild crafting system. This feature requires many players to coordinate and cooperate in order to access the primary earning loops. Guilds will need to put quite a bit of time and effort into making sure that they strategise, farm the correct resources, have the optimal squads needed to farm recipes, and complete dungeons and raids. Guild spots are limited, and the number of tokens is also limited, with no ability to create additional crafting guilds. The items produced by a guild are needed for players to progress; the idea here is we balance the earner persona who just wants to grind and earn with the player persona that just wants to progress through content and have fun and mix them in an economy where both are contributing value to each other. We think this type of intensely social experience has the potential to reduce player churn and increase the emotional attachment to their assets. We hope when players do churn, there are always good reasons for players to return to GOG (social connections and continued asset utility). You were a Quant Analyst at a highly reputable Australian company; what made you switch to working for Guild of Guardians? I was beginning to lose motivation working in Finance, the truth is that financial markets have been around for hundreds of years, and the scope for innovation is limited by regulation, legacy infrastructure, and also because they’re already so incredibly efficient. Finding ways to improve the design is very difficult. Meanwhile, blockchain and crypto were innovating at such a rapid pace, and I was feeling a lot of FOMO myself. I saw gaming as a perfect application for NFTs and wanted to contribute my skills and experience to the project. As a long-time fan of Diablo 2, the idea of developing and designing a new experience for a new generation was something that excited me. What are some of your major personal goals? My major personal goal is to define this new career for all passionate current and future gamers. As the ‘metaverse’ or the time we spend virtually increases, this field will become more and more serious. I remember a time when video gaming was seen as a geeky hobby and seen as a distraction or waste of time. Nowadays, gaming is mainstream, and it’s seen as a legitimate past-time for billions of people. With the advent of web3 and more immersive platforms, gaming in all its forms and iterations will become a part of everyday life for everyone. In the future, the importance of a virtual economist to manage that design and ensure that it brings joy and is sustainable will become more and more relevant. I want to be at the bleeding edge of that transition, and there’s no better place to do it than at Immutable, working on Guild of Guardians. When you’re not grinding to help make Guild of Guardians the best mobile game, what do you like to do for fun? Outside of video games, my hobbies include road cycling during spring & summer, weightlifting all year round, and snowboarding during winter. I’m also a big fan of sci-fi & fantasy books. Currently, I’m really into the Cradle series by Will Wight — highly recommend it! Where can we follow you on social media?! Follow me on Twitter at @yowitzer! We hope you enjoyed getting to know our Economy Designer, Howie Zhang. Stay tuned for the next edition to learn more about the people behind the game, Guild of Guardians. Until next time. View the full article

We made a bit of a mistake in regards to the Pink Ticket amount for this giveaway. Each winner will receive ten Pink Tickets as opposed to three🎟️ View the full article

16% DVK staking will be coming to an end on September 30th. After this point, players may stake again at 10% until December 31st. 🪙 View the full article

Guess what!? If this contest hits 5000 entries, #Devikins will double down on the #giveaway rewards! That means we'll be giving away ten Xaron's Favour - two to each winner - in addition to fifteen Pink Tickets, with each winner receiving three!🎟️ nitter.net/klever_io/status/1572179493892067329#m View the full article

This article details the technical aspects of Illuvium's recently concluded Land Sale, focusing on the backend technology and approach. Warning, it's a long one. I've tried to put enough detail in here so that other teams looking to run a similar NFT sale can take away valuable information and ensure the success of their sale. Apologies to the casual reader! OverviewIlluvium's first Land Sale, where we sold ~20,000 NFTs representing virtual plots of land in the Illuvium homeworld, was a great success. During the sale, which ran from June 2nd to June 6th of this year (2022), customers spent over USD 72 million of sILV2 and ETH purchasing plots of land, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Gas costs per plot were typically in the $10–15 USD range, a far cry from the hundreds or thousands of dollars spent per NFT in other similar sales. And, as a cherry on top, very few customers lost gas due to failed transactions. It would be remiss not to note that bear-market conditions played a role in this outcome, as did the community-led decision to use a Dutch Auction with starting prices set at a level where Dutch Auction mechanics can function. That said, there is no doubt that the technology used in the Illuvium Land Sale was critical to its success. Our Approach to Technology and Technology PartnersSince our inception, Illuvium's philosophy has been to use best-of-breed solutions and always err on quality over speed. This applies to every aspect of our business, from our concept art to our cinematic trailers, from our IaC platform to our JavaScript code. Of our partners, Immutable was, of course, the most important. Their Immutable X (IMX) platform enabled gas-free minting and provided the APIs we use to drive our own marketplace experience. Immutable was also instrumental in helping us develop the mixed L1/L2 solution that was so important to our success. Behind the scenes, several other key technology partners played a critical role in our Land Sale, specifically: AWS — our primary cloud provider where that hosts all our backend infrastructure.Vercel — the Next.js service which hosted our Land Sale website.Alchemy — the blockchain infrastructure provider, used for all of our Layer 1 operations.In terms of our own development, one of our most vital architectural principles is that we prefer serverless designs and technologies and use them wherever we can. You can read more on the rationale behind this approach here: 25. Illuvium's Serverless Architecture Will Be "Best-Of-Breed," Says Lead Server Engineer John… The Land Sale architecture is no exception, and the only service we use that we don't consider a true serverless solution is Amazon OpenSearch. It is a fully managed service, our next best preference, but still exposes server-like concepts such as the type and number of nodes that make up the ElasticSearch cluster. Land Sale ArchitectureThe original plan for the Illuvium Land Sale was to operate purely on L1. We knew we wanted to use a Dutch Auction quite early, and that wasn't a capability available on IMX yet. However, after discussion with Immutable, we decided on a hybrid L1/L2 approach. The auction would operate on L1, but minting would occur on L2. The approach, at least conceptually, is quite simple: when the L1 purchase function completes, it emits an event to the blockchain indicating the purchase has been made. The event includes data about the purchase, such as Plot ID and Location. Our backend responds to these events by minting the corresponding token on L2 (IMX). We show this view in the figure below. The '20,000 ft' view of the Land Sale ArchitecturePlot Generation A critical facet of the Land Sale was that the full plot details were unknown before purchase. In Illuvium: Zero, the game attached to the Illuvium Land Plots, particular areas called Sites generate resources in the game. Some of these resources correspond to ERC-20 tokens called Fuel and hold value as the primary resources used in the Illuvium universe. A plot with more Sites is more valuable than a plot with fewer Sites. We wanted to ensure customers knew what they were buying but also to have some level of differentiation between each plot. This was important for both the economy and the game itself (the game is much less fun if everyone's plots are identical). To address this, we divided Land Plots into Tiers. Each Tier has a guaranteed number of Sites; higher-level Tiers have better production efficiency and more Sites than their lower-level counterparts. This information was released before the sale and confirmed in an Illuvium Improvement Proposal (IIP) voted on by our council: Note: for the sake of brevity, some details such as Landmarks (the special case of the Tier 5 plots), and the role of different Site types, have been left out of this discussion. Before purchasing, customers know the plot location, Region, and Tier (from which players can infer the number of Sites). The randomness comes into play in the make-up of the sites, specifically which Sites are generated and where are they positioned in the plot. For example, consider these two Tier 1 plots: (a) Tier 1 Plot located at Brightland Steppes (514,445)(b) Tier 1 Plot located at Brightland Steppes (473,454)Although both Plots are Tier 1 plots located in the same Region (Brightland Steppes), they have a very different make-up. The first plot (a) is rich in Carbon, as indicated by the three black diamonds on the map, whereas the second plot (b) has a mix of different resources. Detailed Architecture This generation of site data is essential to our discussion because it required us to generate metadata in our backend after tokens were sold. Such metadata included, for example, the plot images (see above) used in the IlluviDex and IMX marketplace. Taking into our account our architectural principles, the need to generate data post-sale and the core process of IMX minting our final design was as follows: Land Sale Architecture — Detailed ViewWe'll describe specific aspects of this design in detail below, but some general design principles are worth noting. The first is simply that this is a serverless solution, all the logic (excluding front-end logic) is in Lambda, and the core data store is in DynamoDB. The second noteworthy point is that we use SQS in front of almost all transactional Lambdas. We were able to design the system such that dependencies between functions were near zero, and a failure at one point did not mean that we needed to halt the process elsewhere. Rather than a set of steps that must be executed in order, our system uses a fan-out from the L1 Event Processor. To increase resiliency, all of these queues also have automatic retries in place, with the final landing place of a failing message being a dead letter queue (DLQ). Of course, such designs are not always possible, and mechanisms like AWS Step Functions have their place. Still, where available, this design pattern provides extraordinary resilience and control. We can throttle individual processing steps, retry failed queries in seconds with a DLQ redrive or even regenerate every image for every blockchain event without impacting other processing. The ContractAlthough this article focuses on the backend systems, no conversation about our approach is complete without describing some aspects of the sale contract. The Dutch Auction itself, based on the idea of selling tokens in batches which we call sequences, and a decaying price function that returns the price for a given tier, sequence and timestamp, is interesting but not relevant to the technical aspects of gas savings (as they read this, I'm sure our blockchain devs protest having tweaked and optimised the algorithm to wring from it every last shred of gas savings). Storing Pre-mint Data Eclipsing these optimisations was a line of exploration that started with a simple question about where to save the pre-mint plot data; where do we store the list of tokens, their locations, tiers, sequence IDs, and so on? Without such information, the sale can't function, but storing 20,000 complex records in the contract was prohibitively expensive. One idea was to store these in IPFS. Although this had some merit, it was still relatively complex and expensive (e.g. obviously, we couldn't read the entire 20,000 records on every contact interaction, so at the very least, an indexing scheme would be required). The idea we settled on was interesting. We chose not to store the data in the contract at all and instead store it in our backend and let the buyer pass it into the contract via our website! This might raise some eyebrows; if the buyer is passing in the data, how do we ensure they are passing in the correct data. The solution lies with Merkle trees. We construct a Merkle tree of the pre-mint land sale data, and the backend stores, along with the pre-mint data, the Merkle proof for each node (plot). The contract need only store the Merkle root and validate that the proof is valid and that the input data matches the proof. Although this technique is likely familiar to blockchain developers, for others looking to find out more, you can start at the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree. Storing Post-purchase Data After purchase, we also needed to generate and store the Site data (the positions and Site types used in the game and our sample plot images from above). We had concerns over the amount of data being stored (at higher tiers, there can be more than 20 data items), particularly for those buyers who wanted to take their tokens to L1. Our solution here was aligned with the pre-mint storage solution. We don't store this data! We are big fans of deterministic algorithms; they drive our Illuvium Arena game, and we used a similar approach in the contracts. Rather than store this data, we simply provide a view function that, given a seed value stored on-chain, can generate the Site data deterministically. The seed value is pseudo-random, derived from the block where the purchase event is confirmed, but in this context, there is no concern with manipulation. Not only is the value hard to manipulate in a meaningful way (the view function is chaotic, and you have limited control over the assigned block number due to the Dutch Auction format), but there is also little to no value in manipulating the seed. There is not enough information about the game to make definitive statements about one plot make-up (within a given Tier) being more valuable than another. We use the same view function in the backend to generate and store metadata and plot images for the IMX marketplace. Importantly, anyone can verify that this backend data is aligned with the blockchain data by running the view function from the contract. The IlluviDexAs mentioned above, the focus of this article is the backend systems. Yet no conversation about our approach is complete without describing some aspects of the IlluviDex, the web application that hosted the Land Sale. Illuvium strives to make beautiful products, and the IlluviDex is no exception. Let's first stop for a moment to admire this beauty: An overview of the Illuvium World as seen in the IlluvidexZooming in to a specific area of the map and viewing the details of a sold plotThe role of the Illuvidex is at once both simple and complex, easy to explain but hard to get right. Firstly it needed to allow users to find the lands they want to buy, which it does through a myriad of filter opens, a favourite system, and the beautifully rendered and searchable map. Secondly, it needs to integrate with the backend and the contract, tying the data together to make the purchasing process as straightforward as possible. Finally, it needs to be available continuously! Instrumental to this availability was our web hosting and Next.js provider Vercel. Throughout the Land Sale, they provided rock-solid delivery of our web content, regardless of traffic volumes and spikes. Polling L1The L1 polling solution is relatively straightforward. We frequently requested Alchemy's Ethereum API to look for new confirmed buy events on our contract. The Alchemy APIs made this particularly simple, allowing us to filter by contract and event hash. New events are published to SQS for subsequent processing. To keep things efficient, we maintained a pointer to the last successfully processed block in DynamoDB and only queried for events from the last processed block to the latest block (see below for some clarifications on this). Although the Alchemy API also provides options for pushing updates via webhooks or websockets, the polling approach made the most sense for us as only a relatively small number of events can occur within a given period (178 new land plots went on sale each hour, each sequence lasting only 2 hours). The polling approach also gave us a lot of flexibility; for example, if we wanted to re-process all transactions, we simply updated the lastProcessedBlock pointer to point to the past. Handling Re-orgs Because we minted outside of L1 (on IMX), we were quite concerned with the ramifications of chain re-organisation (re-orgs). A re-org could lead to a situation where we minted a token on L2, before the re-org, which then becomes invalid after the re-org (because another user ended up 'winning' the plot in the re-organised chain). To combat this, instead of using the Latest confirmed block, we waited for several block confirmations before considering a buy event finalised. Implementation-wise, we simply limited our Alchemy event queries to look only as far as the block number Latest - Threshold. Block PollingWe used a threshold value of 6although we did see two re-orgs that went beyond 6 block confirmations during the sale. These did not impact our transactions, but if you are looking to use an approach similar to ours, we would advise you to think carefully about this value and consider going with a higher number of confirmations, such as 10. Pending and pre-threshold Transactions One issue caused by this 6-block delay was that it meant that there were approximately 5 minutes (depending on network conditions) where a plot sale was "in progress" but not yet minted to L2. This meant browsers that hadn't refreshed could submit transactions for the same token, which would inevitably fail, losing the customer gas in the process. We introduced a Pending Transaction function (not shown in the architecture diagram) to combat this. When a customer attempted to buy on the website, we first checked the Pending Transaction function. In this function, we used the Alchemy APIs that let us query the mempool. If we found a confirmed or pending transaction (likely to succeed based on allocated gas), we would block the customer's purchase and show them a warning that a transaction was in progress. This, in turn, led to a potential risk that a well-prepared attacker could constantly keep land in a pending state by raising and cancelling transactions. To avoid this, we had a simple rule; allow a land plot to be pending only for a limited time (the pending time). After this period, the pending transaction function would not allow the land to be made pending until another grace period had passed. Pending Transaction LogicMinting to L2Once we had confirmed events, the minting process was simply a matter of creating and signing the appropriate IMX requests. Given we use C# on the backend, we opted to write our own IMX integration code, working directly with the APIs rather than using their convenient JS libraries. This meant additional work to ensure payloads and request signing was correct but was considered an approach most aligned with our architecture. After a token is minted, it is available for viewing on our own Illuvidex and the IMX marketplace immediately. IMX calls our metadata APIs to enrich the token with custom metadata, including the plot images. This metadata is generally populated 5–10 seconds after minting. ObservationsI will leave you with some observations. Firstly, our uptime across the Land Sale for all systems was 100%. There were no outages anywhere. Secondly, there were only a few hundred errors across tens of millions of invocations: Additionally, the system automatically resolved all but 5 of these errors by retrying requests. The 5 errors that remained were external requests that timed out multiple times. These were resolved simply by running a re-drive for the corresponding Deal Letter Queue. These simple 3-click re-drive operations were the only 2 manual actions taken during the entire sale. I think it's clear, from a technical perspective, that this was an overwhelming success. Allow me to express my thanks to all of our technology team, the wider Illuvium team, and the great partners that made this possible. Say No To Gas Wars: The Technology Behind the Illuvium Land Sale was originally published in Illuvium on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. View the full article

Illuvium x Bulldogs Official Jerseys just dropped and are now available on our website. We are an official sponsor of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. Our partnership with the Bulldogs is the first elite sporting partnership for Illuvium and one of the first in sport for a Triple-A Gaming studio that enables players to own their in-game assets. We’re excited to have teamed up to bring you an exclusive Illuvium x Bulldogs 2022 Official Jersey and Cosplay NFT. Designed exclusively by Illuvium to be worn by the Bulldogs in their Round 25 clash, the jersey features ILV obelisks and armour. 19 random purchasers of the Illuvium x Bulldogs 2022 jersey will receive a jersey signed and worn in-game by a Bulldogs player! Will you be one of the lucky ones who gets a signed jersey? Each Bulldogs x Illuvium Bundle Includes: Illuvium x Bulldogs 2022 JerseyIlluvium x Bulldogs Exclusive Cosplay NFTBulldogs 2023 Classic MembershipThis is a limited edition drop. Get Yours Today! Illuvium Team Illuvium x Bulldogs Official Jerseys just dropped and are now available on our website. was originally published in Illuvium on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. View the full article

Strut in style with Mareanie, Toxapex, and newly costumed Pokémon during Fashion Week!

Tokyo Game Show is renowned for its conventional gaming exhibition that attracts hundreds to thousands of visitors. After being absent for two years, the event is back in 2022 with welcomed anticipation and eagerness from both visitors and exhibitors alike. Project SEED has been keen to spread and market its first game title. Outland Odyssey, to a broader audience and sees this as a well-timed opportunity. The studio considers the event to give a chance for the studio to reach out to conventional gamers, public eyes, and the Japan market by attending the Tokyo Game Show 2022. Guests’ Enthusiasm to Outland OdysseySet to display on September 15–16th, 2022, Project SEED sent representatives: Pond Chutrakul (Chief Creative Officer) and Patra Hatajich from the creative team to set up the studio’s booth in Tokyo Game Show. Total guests coming to Tokyo Game Show during the two days are as many as 44,117 persons (Famitsu). Though it only lasted for two days, guests were pouring in and the booth gained tremendous positive feedback from people playing Outland Odyssey, asking about the crypto environment, and future prospects of the game. In the throng of enthusiastic guests, Pond and Patra even found themselves hard to sit down as the stream of visitors to Outland Odyssey’s booth was steadily coming. People find the game to be of high quality and the quirky hexagon design of the game’s booklet sure caught people’s attention! Project SEED Growing PopularityDuring the time when the team was representing the studio, the online presence of Project SEED happened to soar too. After TGS day one wrapped up, the reception in social searches increased by 12%. Not only that, the studio is listed as the top five highest influences in the GameFi category on BNB Chain. Project SEED would like to give out heartfelt gratitude for the positivity and enthusiasm we got both online and offline during the Tokyo Game Show! Follow Project SEED to never miss our announcement and latest news: Twitter: https://twitter.com/projectseedgame Discord: https://discord.gg/projectseed Telegram: https://t.me/ProjectSeed Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/projectseedgame Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/projectseedgame/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectSeedGame Website: https://projectseed.io View the full article

Everyone has a favourite of something, and today we're asking you what your favourite RPG of all time is! 🧙🧙‍♀️ Post your answer in the replies and you could have a chance to win two GH Pills! #devikins #gamefi View the full article

And number two it is! Congrats @I_AmEvra you won our latest contest! We're shooting you a message now to sort out your winnings! nitter.net/I_AmEvra/status/1569506692567826433#m View the full article

Flanagan MF. [url=https://buydoxycyclineon.com]taking doxycycline with food[/url] Minor 1 drospirenone increases levels of magnesium hydroxide by decreasing renal clearance.

October 2022 Community Day: Litwick

[url=http://buydoxycyclineon.com]doxycycline strep[/url] Growth curves were performed with viable counts as endpoints to determine the minimum dose for lethality by H 2 O 2 or protection by catalase.

At present, at least 15 potentially immunogenic allergenic components have been described. [url=https://buydoxycyclineon.com]buy doxycycline[/url]

[url=http://tamoxifenolvadex.com]nolvadex price[/url]

We are beyond excited to announce that Guild of Guardians has entered a multi-year partnership with eight of the world’s most prominent teams in esports to build the future of web3 gaming, digital entertainment and bring Guild of Guardians to the largest esports communities around the globe. Esports meets Web3Please welcome Cloud9, Fnatic, NAVI, Ninjas in Pyjamas, NRG, SK Gaming, T1, and Team Liquid to the Guild of Guardians family as they will be representing their brands as full-fledged, playable in-game characters that will be tradable as digital collectibles on Immutable X. The gaming sector is evolving at a rapid pace and is larger than both the movie and music industries combined. Esports organisations are at the core of this success, contributing to 30 billion hours of viewing each year worldwide. This unprecedented partnership will not only expose Guild of Guardians and web3 to millions of esports enthusiasts, but it will enable fans to support and represent their favourite teams in-game in new and meaningful ways via digital assets. With true digital ownership, fans will be able to create, own, and trade their digital assets while competing against others to earn rewards. Aligning incentives between esport IPs and gamesThis is a landmark partnership for the entire gaming industry with the long-term vision of aligning incentives in a win-win, symbiotic cycle of success between esport teams, their fans and, in turn, Guild of Guardians, creating long-term collaboration rather than extraction. We are taking a web3 approach where we have partnered on co-marketing and activations by aligning team incentives with outcomes. Rather than spending billions on traditional marketing, teams are rewarded proportional to their contribution to Guild of Guardian’s success, enabling us to give that back to the players and teams. https://medium.com/media/0c09334c0f97b9f484c4744315a45702/hrefHow will esports work in Guild of Guardians?There are a few phases that are currently planned… Phase 1: IP Integration We plan to natively integrate the esport brands into the universe of Guild of Guardians. This means playable characters that are either exclusively sold or will be made exclusively available to players in the game. Phase 2: Leaderboard Competitions GOG is not going to be a streamed, live gameplay esport hosted in stadiums (at least not for a while!). Instead, we plan to introduce democratised esport systems where anyone can participate and compete as part of global leaderboard systems. Players and guilds can compete for leaderboard rewards. We also have ideas about “factions” where players align themselves to an esport IP (which is a faction), and these eight factions will compete and either win together or lose together. Phase 3: New Content / Modes Guilds are a core part of the game, and we plan to add new content and modes that incorporate social cooperation and competition between players and guilds and tie that into the esport factions and tournament-like systems. We haven’t locked anything in yet, so will share more once it’s finalised! Meet our Esport partners…Our eight partners are the biggest esport brands in the world, with a combined valuation of over $2 billion. Their willingness to trust us to shepherd their IP in our game is a huge sign of faith, and they are fully committed to making Guild of Guardians a success! We can look forward to new community activations, including - Press releases and announcements across their owned channelsJoint Twitter spaces with key team membersCollaborative IP and game designs with their creative teamsCommitment to create content and promote GOG across their channelsPlease welcome our partners, eight of the biggest names in esports who are ready to spearhead the next frontier in gaming 👇🏽 Cloud9 Founded in 2013, Cloud9 has grown to become one of the most recognisable esports organisations in the world. With championships industry-wide and unmatched viewership hours, Cloud9 prides itself on being the best in all categories. At this time, Cloud9 fields professional teams in Apex Legends, Chess, CS:GO, Fortnite, Halo, Hearthstone, League of Legends, Overwatch, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Teamfight Tactics, VALORANT, Wild Rift, and World of Warcraft. Fnatic Fnatic is a global esports performance brand headquartered in London. It is laser-focused on levelling up gamers, thanks to its digital ecosystem and physical products. Founded in 2004, Fnatic teams have since claimed more than 200 championships across 30 different games and are one of the most successful esports brands of all time. Fnatic is the channel through which the most forward-thinking brands communicate with Gen-Z and Millenials, delivering industry-leading content, experiences and activations. NAVI NAVI (Natus Vincere) is one of the leading esports clubs in the world, founded on December 17th, 2009, in Kyiv. During its long history, the club has represented 24 disciplines and won over $18,000,000 in prize money. NAVI became champions of The International in 2011, the major-tournament PGL Major Stockholm 2021, and has won over 100 gold medals across over 250 championships. NAVI has gained more than 17M fans on social media and YouTube. In 2020 and 2021, the club became the world’s second most-watched esport organisation. Ninjas in Pyjamas Ninjas in Pyjamas is one of the most global esports organisations in the world, with esports operations across the strongest gaming regions, including the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Born in 2000, NIP earned its stripes by competing at the very top level across almost a dozen game titles. Their vision is to bring gaming culture to a world without boundaries. NRG NRG is a professional gaming and entertainment company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 2016, NRG has embodied competitive esports excellence and the best of gaming culture over the last half-decade. Known for championship teams and innovative gaming lifestyle content, NRG is one of the most-watched organisations in the world on Twitch and YouTube, and the most watched org across platforms in North America during 2021. SK Gaming SK Gaming is the most traditional esports organisation and one of the world’s leading brands in competitive video gaming. Founded in 1997, “Schroet Kommando” has been shaping and inspiring the industry for more than 25 years with a proven track record of business success. In the past two decades, SK Gaming built a legacy of achievements with more than 75 major championships and a rich history of competitive excellence across multiple game titles and genres. SK Gaming strives to inspire young people to have goals & aspirations in life — leading by example with a genuine family-friendly approach while actively promoting youth development, equal opportunities and diversity. T1 Entertainment & Sports T1 Entertainment & Sports is an award-winning global esports and gaming organisation. Fielding professional rosters in League of Legends (LoL), VALORANT, Dota 2, Super Smash Bros, Overwatch, and Splitgate. T1’s LoL team has won three World Championship, two MSI and eleven LCK titles, making it one of the most successful teams of all time. Team Liquid Team Liquid was founded in 2000 in the Netherlands and has evolved into one of the leading international multigame esports teams with training centres in Utrecht, São Paulo, Brazil and Los Angeles, California. Team Liquid has over 120 athletes competing across 19 distinct games, including all major esports titles, such as VALORANT, Rocket League, DOTA 2, League of Legends, CS:GO, Fortnite, Rainbow 6: Siege, and more. Team Liquid is one of the most successful esports teams in the Western market in terms of competitive achievement and fan engagement across multiple sports. After 12 months of discussions and planning, we couldn’t be more thrilled to pioneer the next frontier of gaming with our new partners. But stay tuned, as there’s much more to come! If you’ve yet to pre-register for one of the most anticipated games in the space, then what are you waiting for? Register NOW! Until next time, LFGOG!! View the full article

How to Build a Sustainable Game Economy Part #2 — The SolutionsGaming has been enjoying a rapidly increasing acceptance for years. As the popularity of the new form of entertainment grew, so did the market. By surpassing the music and movie industries by a considerable margin, the gaming sector is considered one of, if not the most profitable entertainment industry, projected to generate near $260 billion in revenue by 2025. In part one of this article, we had a look at what drove the massive growth in gaming and the new possibilities NFT technologies create for the industry. In Part two, we’ll explore what defines a well-designed and sustainable game economy. The Importance of Game Economy DesignNo matter the platform, a successful game needs to have attractive traits and defining characteristics to capture the attention of potential players. There is no set formula when it comes to game design. Some will captivate the player with an exciting story, and others will heavily emphasise the visual charm or auditory style. However, the most important of all is gameplay. Gameplay defines the way your players are able to interact with the game. It covers the general rules defining what the player can do in the game, the goals and milestones for players to reach, in addition to the overall experience that is being curated by designers. Game economy design is a subset of these gameplay elements, and there are two primary purposes for focusing on it. Its primary function is to mediate players’ time and effort in the game with tangible rewards and progress. Game economies are like real economies where labour and material are inputs, and goods & services are outputs. Players put in the time and derive things like experience, currency, and loot, which drive player satisfaction. Traditional Game Economy DesignMicroeconomy: Game BalanceMicroeconomic design refers to the feature-level progression of players through the game’s core loops. It can refer to how players obtain the various resources necessary to advance through the specific challenges and the pinch points laid out by the game’s design. For traditional games, this can cover things like monetisation and the utility of the various forms of soft and hard currency within the game. 2. Macroeconomics: Taps and Sinks Taps and sinks define the allocation of in-game resources and how the player can spend them. Taps are the activities and actions the player can do to receive a reward, like dungeons, combat, or puzzles. Sinks are the various ways those resources or currency can be used or spent. 3. LiveOps A staple in modern game design — LiveOps ensures high player retention rates. By continuously updating and adding new content to the game, it is possible to extend its shelf life vastly. Developers can promote player acquisition and retention by introducing new events, exclusive content, and interesting features. 4. Analytics and Metrics Staying updated with the in-game state is essential. Anti-bot systems and preventative measures such as swift bug fixes must be employed to prevent exploits. Interacting with the community can prove helpful in determining potential future events and changes for the game. Lastly, monitoring the inflation rate and using appropriate techniques to sustain appropriate levels is vital for sustainability and stability. Building a Sustainable Virtual Economy.Unlike traditional games, blockchain games require a more sophisticated in-game economic system. In a game where players are free to trade with other players then, the economy design is also concerned with the level of utilisation and circulating supply of the game’s assets amongst the game’s players. In addition to this, economy designers also need to be concerned with things like stability (volatility imposes direct and indirect costs to players), inequality (players don’t like the rich getting richer), and growth (players want to see opportunities expanding). Due to the digital assets in blockchain games having permanence, these things gain importance in the game’s design, but they also add constraints. 1. Deflationary Sinks To prevent economic stagnation and promote active trading, game studios may use deflationary sinks. These systems remove the utility from neglected or unused NFTs. In other words, players may receive minor but fair penalties for hoarding their tokens. By promoting trading, newer players will receive a fair chance of progressing in the game while the network maintains its worth and stability. 2. Tournament Systems The idea behind tournament systems is to host competitions that require some sort of investment or contribution to the prize pool. Tournaments can hold any form. The important part is to give players of all skill levels and advancements an equal chance to win the match. As long as the competition is fair and exciting, the player will be motivated to compete and engage in these social events. Additionally, promoting social gameplay will raise further interest in the game and potentially attract new players. 3. Incentivise Reinvesting Keeping player investment high is key. Through exciting gameplay and captivating new content, keeping player engagement high at all times. Equip the game with fun mechanics and game loops and give the player a sense of progression. Through questlines and content, keeping the player base invested in the gameplay to promote their further engagement in the economy. 4. Daily limits Another way to slow down inflation in virtual economies is to set daily limits on player actions or set up a system with diminishing returns. This is a limit consumption and allows the game’s developers to design new features and mechanics for continued engagement. Mechanics include limiting the benefits of repeated daily activities or implementing cooldowns to regulate advancement rates. 5. Social Engagement It is important to acknowledge that one of the main contributing factors to a game’s longevity is the community. There are many examples of older games that have survived for decades as they provided ways for players to engage with their peers. Give players the ability to demonstrate their mastery and experience in the game and highlight their desirable social status through different means, like exclusive cosmetics, limited-time events, and so on. 6. Vertical and Horizontal Progression Limiting gameplay progression in one way could prove to be a devastating mistake for non-story-driven games. Divided between vertical, aka power-based progression, and horizontal, non-power-based progression, players should have the ability to see and feel their improvement in areas different from the main gameplay, like crafting, trading, farming, and so on. Offering various gameplay systems and achievements to incentivise progression in those areas by creating intertwined missions and activities. Encourage spending and reinvestment and give your players a new way to enjoy your game. 7. Trade Offer different trading opportunities and allow players to specialise within the economy and market. Give players an incentive to trade their assets actively. By promoting a vigorous player-based market, you can give new players an engaging experience and boost their interest considerably. Final Thoughts.Sustainable NFT game economies are a work-in-progress concept. Implementing some or all of these features does not guarantee perfect economic stability. Likely, future games will find innovative ways for further engagement that rely on the open features of blockchain game design. Examples could include: User-generated content, external partnerships, and the integration of ancillary media (e.g. streamers, multimedia) these aspects can extend the remits of game economy design, adding more complexity but also more vibrance to the game’s ecosystem. Finally, although game designers control many aspects, some things lay beyond their control — by opening real-world value to the game’s assets, there is a link between external factors (e.g. real-world macroeconomic shocks) with in-game systems. Nevertheless, in future articles, we will be exploring how we use the concepts explored in this article in the exciting new game, Guild of Guardians. Stay tuned for further thought pieces where Guild of Guardians Economy Designer Howie Zhang delves deeper into the importance of Game Economy design in the uncharted territory of Web3 Gaming. View the full article