The world of blockchain gaming can be confusing. For every great success, there is an equally unfortunate story of the disastrous undoing or slow demise of a play-to-win (P2E) game (see the rise and fall of Axie Infinity). But if done right, gaming on Web3 can be a powerful gateway to bring billions onto the blockchain. And, while a bona fide AAA blockchain title has yet to arrive on the scene, skeptics should not dismiss the progress and innovations being made in the crypto-native sphere.
Wolf Game is just one of those success stories. One of the most compelling and popular entries into the blockchain gaming space, Wolf Game’s Genesis Collection alone has generated over 26,399 ETH in secondary market trading volume as of January 2023. The game’s high risk, high reward dynamic is unique. another project in the NFT space and has attracted many big-name NFT icons including Beanie, Gmoney, Gary Vee, and Seedphrase. With the developers releasing the full version of the game on December 2022, Wolf Game has regained the attention of the wider NFT community, so we’ve broken down what the game is and why it’s so unique. Let’s dig in.
What is Wolf Game?
The wolf game opens his “wool paper” cinematically: “In a picturesque region of the metaverse, sheep and wolves on the blockchain compete for a tempting prize of LANA, with very high stakes.” Far from being an action-adventure title where characters race to complete objectives, this play-to-win game forces players to strategize their moves, combining NFTs with Defi elements to allow their characters to earn passive income through through the betting mechanics. The game exists very much in the vein of predecessors such as Anonymous Y EtherOrcsboth chain games that used game theory in their own way.
The current version of Wolf Game was released in December 2022 after several iterations, including Wolf Game November 2021 and three derivative minigamesAlpha Game, Cave Game, and Risky Game, all of which included or alluded to some form of current game mechanics.
wolves against sheep
On November 18, 2021, the developers at Wolf Game released the Genesis collection of the project: —10,000 Wolf and Sheep NFT priced at 0.06942 per piece, and sold out quickly. Even during the minting, the probabilistic nature of the game was present; collectors had a 90 percent chance of coining a sheep and a ten percent chance of getting a wolf.
Wolf Game’s premise and dynamics are relatively straightforward: Sheep NFTs strive to lead a relaxed life by producing WOOL, the game’s native token. Sheep make WOOL in one of two ways: either by the owner staking them in the barn, or through breeding. But Wolf NFTs represent a risk to this idyllic life.
To collect the game’s resources, Sheep must venture out of a barn onto its grounds (expending energy in the process). However, this carries the risk of being looted by a Wolf. If a wolf loots them, they will only return to the barn with a fraction of what they collected. The amount stolen in any particular loot depends on the outcome of a minigame played between those two NFTs. Wolves can even make do with another player’s sheep NFTs, adding them to their collection and increasing their ability to generate WOOL.
Therefore, players are not only at risk of losing significant amounts of the in-game token they have staked their NFT for, but they are also at risk of losing their NFTs entirely. As the game’s whitepaper explains, the ecosystem requires a minimum of player time and a maximum of player thought to outsmart the competition.
Wolf Game Communities
All of this LANA production, theft, and strategy occurs in the context of the Genesis Lands, where players intend to use digital grounds (supply limited to 20,000) that help them gain economic dominance over each other. In total, there are 101 Communities on these lands. Wolves live on the Peak (Community 0), where they can breed and recharge. Recharging is required when a Wolf Game NFT runs out of energy, a component of the game that depletes when an NFT engages in almost any activity.
Most of the events in Wolf Game take place on the Farm, the plots of land that make up the game universe other than Wolves’ Peak. Each parcel of land produces a different resource depending on its geography: grasslands produce grass, forests produce wood, quarries produce stone, and lakes produce water. Players can use these resources to build a variety of structures, including barns (when sheep spawn), bathhouses (where sheep and wolves can recharge their energy), and dens (when wolves spawn). All these structures can be updated later with WOOL.
One way Wolf Game incentivizes participation in its ecosystem is through the game’s tax system. Landlords in the game can collect taxes from resources that other players collect on their plots, but those resources will be burned if they don’t do so within seven days.
Lana, farmers and other NFTs by Wolf Game
Aside from Sheep, Wolves, and Land, several other Wolf Game NFTs influence what players do (and cannot do) in the game. We have already talked a lot about LANA, a ERC-20 expendable token whose supply will be limited to five billion. As mentioned, staking a sheep is one way to generate the token, producing 10,000 WOOL per day.
If a player wants to claim their LANA without undoing their NFT, they can do so through a process known as slicing. Doing this allows them to receive 80 percent of the accumulated token, with the remaining 20 percent going to the tax collected by the Wolves for not attacking the Sheep in the Barn. Players can also purchase a WOOL-related NFT called wool bag in OpenSea, which unlocks the WOOL it contains over time.
Other Wolf Game NTS include Generation 2 wolf and sheep. These are similar to the Generation 0 (and bred in Generation 1) wolves and sheep, but have lower energy capacities and require more frequent recharges. Then there are Farmer NFTs, which players can use to speed up the process of raising sheep and decrease the chances of wolves stealing newly bred sheep. Lastly, there are Wolf Game Relics, 1-of-1 pieces that tell the lore of the game, and even Wolf Game Merchandise.
Can Wolf Game hold its own?
All P2E games come with concerns about sustainability, and Wolf Game is no different. The FOMO that enabled people in the early Wolf Game ecosystem of late 2021 make massive profits in your NFT purchases was never going to last forever. Still, the project has demonstrated impressive longevity in its ability to maintain the value of its assets.
The economy surrounding Wolf Game is intriguing. Since most players stake their NFTs to win or steal LANA, there aren’t a huge number of them on the market. For example, out of the 13,000+ NFTs in the Genesis 0 collection, only 315 are currently listed (and have a minimum price of 0.5683 ETH). Even a slight increase in demand for those NFTs can cause people to buy what is available, as they did in November 2021. This, in turn, creates a greater incentive to gamble to win WOOL, increasing the value of the token. and creating a cycle. of increasing value.
This may seem a bit Ponzi-adjacent, but the game has some dynamics that actively push against runaway inflation, like the fact that low-level sheep and wolves take over a month to spawn a new NFT. The Wolf Game team has also been involved in some important record events in its history. One of these occurred in January 2022 when game developers auctioned off the 10 relics now trading on OpenSea for millions of tokens, and another when 76 million WOOL they were burned coin first generation NFTs. Wolf Game players can also visit the in-game butcher to burn their sheep for chops (a resource used for breeding), and eventually all WOOL spent in-game is either burned or added to the community rewards pool. .
The future of Wolf Game
Wolf Game continues to be a healthy ecosystem. With the launch of its most recent iteration, the original NFT collection has seen a relatively strong trading volume of 567 ETH on OpenSea in the last 30 days. Also, with people like Gmoney dropping 25 ETH in a piece of Wolf Game land and Shamdoo selling Wolf NFT For over 100 ETH, it’s safe to say the game is still going strong. The Wolf Game team has also continued tweet cryptic messages that hint at the future developments of the game and has consistently shown a sincere interest in doing the right thing for his community.
The future of blockchain gaming is still far from certain, but it is encouraging to see long-term experiments in the P2E sphere like Wolf Game establishing themselves as serious creative forces in the NFT space. If anything, the game has proven to be a fascinating case study in how the clever and careful incorporation of risk and strategy into the world of Web3 gaming creates an allure that people just can’t stay away from.
