Yesterday, Zynga, the world’s largest social game developer, announced its first blockchain-based game called ‘Sugartown.’
The concept of the game is that three farm animals have managed to open a “wormhole” to another dimension where creatures called ‘Oras’ can enter a gamified world. Players must own one of the 10,000 ERC-721 Ora NFTs to play. The gaming NFTs are expected to be launched later this year, and players can stake their NFTs to accumulate Sugar — the in-game currency of Sugartown.
The game is the first Web3 game from Zynga since the company appointed Matt Wolf as the Vice President of Blockchain about two years ago, shortly before being acquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2022.
Wolf said that the goal of Sugartown was to “empower players through a sustainable Web3 platform full of fun and enduring games.” He added that the aim of the new game is to first “appeal to a native Web3 market” before scaling and building an engaged community over time.
Zynga is an American company founded in 2007. It has over 300 million monthly active users playing popular games including FarmVille, CityVille, Mafia Wars, PetVille, Words With Friends, and several others. In 2022, the company was acquired by Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of Grand Theft Auto, for $12.7 billion.
There have been no specifics as to the launch date of Sugartown yet. But according to social media channels, it’s “coming soon.“
A Quick Review of Gaming in Web3
Gamers have resisted blockchain-based games from the beginning. But not so much because they object to the technology itself, but rather, they argue that the gaming experience of most Web3 games has been inferior. But as more major gaming studios and developers enter the space, that argument has started to lose its muster.
In recent months, we’ve seen several big gaming studios raise huge amounts of money to fund blockchain-based games. One of their main focuses it to create high-quality Web3 games that gamers will be drawn to. Here are some of the top headlines from Web3 gaming recently:
- June 2023: Mythical Games Raises $37M Despite Bear Market
- June 2023. Nike Teases NFT Sneaker Hunt in Epic Games’ Fortnite
- June 2023. Nike & EA SPORTS Hint NFT Enabled Games
- March 2023. Grease Monkey Games Partners with Konig for Gaming NFTs
- January 2023. Intella X Games Raises $12M to Launch on Polygon
- October 2022. NFT Game Developer Horizon Raises $40M in Series A Round
- October 2022. GameStop Partners with Immutable X for Gaming NFTs
Despite the stubborn bear market, NFT and blockchain-based gaming is only gaining steam. With major funding rounds and some of the biggest names in gaming, like Zynga, entering the space, it seems likely that gamers will embrace Web3 more in the months and years to come.
At Rarity Sniper, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for further developments in the story.