Source: Former Space Bomb
Ubisoft, the giant gaming company that produced Assassin’s Creed, has made a new move in the field of Web3 games.
After the first unsuccessful test of NFTs, Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab has partnered with Immutable, a Web3 gaming network, to leverage Immutable’s experience and ecosystem to build a Web3 gaming platform.
This isn’t the first time Ubisoft has explored Web3 gaming. In June of this year, Ubisoft officially announced its first Web3 game.
As the world’s leading traditional game manufacturer, Ubisoft has developed many popular games such as the Far Cry series and the Assassin’s Creed series, creating an industry myth of “5 triple-A games released in a year”. But in the past two years, the big brother of the game has fallen into content dysplasia, not only has he not produced any more popular triple-A games, but the stock price has also fallen all the way, and he has repeatedly sought acquisitions without success.
In this situation, Ubisoft in 2023 has made many innovative attempts, including combining external big IPs, expanding its own old IPs, and actively introducing AI-assisted creation, while also aiming at Web3.
So, will Ubisoft’s new move bring new traffic to it, and will the addition of the “regular army” of games bring changes to the Web3 blockchain game market?
Ubisoft, headquartered in France, has a large number of game developers with studios all over the world, and is known as a “creative genius” in the video game industry, producing series such as “Assassin’s Creed” and “Call of Duty” that have been regarded as classics by gamers to this day, creating the industry myth of “5 triple-A releases in a year”.
In contrast to its glorious history, Ubisoft is a bit strained, and in the past two years, the major game company has not produced a triple-A game that can match Assassin’s Creed in terms of reputation and sales.
The decline is also reflected in the stock price. Since 2021, Ubisoft’s share price has fallen from a high of 86 euros, and by January 2023, the share price has slipped to 19 euros, almost to 2015 levels. Ubisoft’s 2022-2023 annual report shows that as of March 31, 2023, the company had an operating loss of $538 million, which is almost equal to Ubisoft’s net profit over the past five years combined.
! [shMVC1Zc2lxpjkIKgvlgCxT22gmbQcCtuPuVAVcA.jpeg] (https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-40baef27dd-ced26e45b6-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp “7136563”) Ubisoft stock price is back to 2015 levels
In the face of successive losses, Ubisoft has shown a strong desire to survive. In addition to attracting external big IPs to join, Ubisoft pulled out its own old IPs to save the scene. “Rainbow Six Siege” has helped it achieve “significant growth”, thanks to the influence of its own IP, Ubisoft’s financial report for the first half of the 2023-2024 fiscal year shows that the company’s revenue is 836 million euros, an increase of 14.33% year-on-year, net bookings are 822 million euros, an increase of 17.59% year-on-year, and profits have finally achieved a year-on-year turnaround.
But it’s not enough to lie on the credit book and eat the same old book, and Ubisoft has realized this and extended its tentacles into Web3.
In June, Ubisoft unveiled Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, the first role-playing game based on Oasys blockchain technology. According to the rather limited information available at the moment, it seems that in this game, players can use classic characters from mythology and form teams to play against other players.
The first blockchain game has not yet been officially released, and Ubisoft has reached a partnership with Immutable, a Web3 gaming network, to build a Web3 gaming platform by leveraging the blockchain infrastructure’s experience and vast ecosystem to open up to Web3 games.
Ubisoft’s first contact with Web3 dates back to 2021. At that time, NFTs were on fire. Ubisoft introduced a Tezos network-based NFT virtual item for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint on PC, as well as a series of events to coincide with the NFT’s appearance. As a result, after the event, only 15 NFTs were claimed, with a total transaction value of less than $400.
Gamers aren’t buying it, and even NFT enthusiasts aren’t showing interest in it. The main reason is that the NFT in the game is not a necessary item that affects the progress of the game, but it requires players to “burst their livers” for 100 hours and 600 hours before they can claim it, and it is difficult for such a virtual item to arouse the interest of players. For NFT players, the hottest track in the market at that time was picture NFT, which could be obtained by minting and profitable when sold, so there was no need to climb the high threshold in the game to obtain it.
Having failed to break into the Web3 world from the NFT market, can Ubisoft succeed in using the Immutable blockchain network to build a Web3 gaming platform?
The key is the economic model
The last time Ubisoft engaged in NFTs, it was not at the middle of the industry development node, and it was an inopportune time to make game NFTs when picture NFTs were popular. Now, it may have encountered a rare market trend.
According to DappRadar data, as of Q2 2023, the number of daily unique active wallets in the Web3 gaming sector was 699956, accounting for 36% of the industry’s total engagement, far ahead of other types of apps.
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Web3 games have more unique active wallets per day than any other app
Other game makers also seem to be seeing an uptick in Web3 gaming activity, with game makers such as Square Enix, NCSOFT, and Jam City starting to adopt a strategic layout, and Ubisoft is keeping up at this time, with its excellent production capabilities, as long as it is fast enough to create a hit, it is likely to attract Web3 game players.
Fun and profitable Web3 chain games are indeed a scarce commodity in the market. From 2021 to the present, most of the Web3 games based on blockchain technology and economic models are not playable, and the economic models will always fail in the later stage.
The main attraction of Web3 games that don’t have much to play is that the game assets can be realized: buy the basic props and start the game, explode the game assets, and sell them on the market. This process is also known as “digging and selling” by Web3 players.
Therefore, Web3 games are also known as Play To Earn games, which are translated as P2E play-to-earn games in China. However, crypto assets in P2E games will eventually fall into a cycle where output exceeds demand, and eventually fall into the fate of opening high and going low. When the game assets can’t be sold at a high price, the game itself has little replayability, and players lose their profits, they will abandon the game.
As a result, people in the Web3 industry who are optimistic about the game track always call for P2E games to enhance their playability, looking forward to the birth of a Web3 game with a perfect combination of gameplay design and economic model. Some are pinning that hope on traditional game makers.
As a triple-A game giant, Ubisoft clearly has mature production capabilities. However, if Ubisoft wants to make Web3 games, it not only needs to move games that meet the Web2 user experience to the blockchain that can support the operation of the game, but also has to design an economic model of the game assets.
For the new Web3 game layout, Ubisoft chose Immutable, a company that came from the gaming industry to do blockchain infrastructure, with a vision to support the development of all Web3 games, and the path is to build a Layer 2 network that facilitates the trading of game NFT assets, which is known in the Web3 world as Immutable X.
Immutable X is a game-specific chain in the blockchain market, not to mention 0 fees, but also supports high concurrency of transactions. The mere fact that there is no handling fee greatly reduces the entry threshold for users. At the same time, Immutable X can process 9,000 transactions per second, which can support the rapid flow of game assets on the chain.
In addition to infrastructure, Immutable has a game studio that independently publishes and operates several chain games.
In addition, Ubisoft’s last officially announced Web3 game was built on the Oasys blockchain, which is also a blockchain infrastructure specifically designed for gaming. In addition to Ubisoft, Sega is also developing its first blockchain game, “Three Kingdoms” (Web3 Remake), based on Oasys, in an attempt to bring new fans to this old IP circle.
Based on the advantages of high performance and 0 gas, both game blockchains have cooperated with Ubisoft, the former to provide basic design and technical services, and the latter to provide high-quality game content and design, where truly playable Web3 games are expected to be born.
At the moment, Ubisoft has not disclosed the specifics of its Web3 games. What is certain is that triple-A game production, vivid game plots, and good game experience are the direction of Web3 chain game development, which is likely to attract traditional game manufacturers. And when the big game manufacturers break into this place, the biggest challenge is how to design a good economic model that combines the gameplay.
To put it bluntly, whoever can build a sustainable Web3 game that gets rid of the “digging and selling” cycle will be able to dominate the blockchain game market.
