Joyride: Can it become the Steam of Web3 mobile games?

Author: Chole, Chain Teahouse

Joyride is a technology-based blockchain game publishing platform that has supported over 30 billion players and best-selling mobile games over the past decade. It provides comprehensive solutions for independent developers in designing, publishing, and scaling blockchain games with economic development needs.

Joyride founder Omar Siddiqui stated, "Web3 allows players to be part of the game economy for the first time, which is really exciting," Siddiqui explained, "We believe the potential is enormous."

Currently, millions of users are playing Joyride's Solitaire Blitz, the top-ranked dapp game on Flow, which adds 142,695 users on-chain each month. By participating in matchmaking games and tournaments, users can earn RLY tokens in the game. Solitaire Blitz has gained widespread popularity in India, the Philippines, and many other countries due to its straightforward gameplay and effective reward mechanisms.

This is also the purpose of Joyride's existence, as it provides an end-to-end publishing platform for Web3 mobile games. Not only is it integrated with Unity, but it also addresses operational aspects of games (such as real-time operations) and resolves technical barriers related to wallets, tokens, and NFTs, helping developers build communities for their games throughout the ecosystem. Like any well-established platform, Joyride has been leveraging its technology to create unique games.

The emergence of Solitaire Blitz aptly illustrates the above, as this mobile game running on the Flow blockchain is available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It attracted over 250,000 users in its first month after launch, which may not sound like much compared to the popularity of "Garden of Time" 12 years ago. However, in the Web3 gaming world, this is enough for Solitaire Blitz to rank among the top five blockchain games and hold the number one spot on Flow blockchain applications.

1: Project Overview

Unlike many other games, Solitaire Blitz does not boast complex gameplay, dramatic storylines, or mysterious legends. Instead, Solitaire Blitz weaves competitive elements and social networking features into the classic Solitaire card game. More importantly, the game employs a mechanism that allows players to earn money; players can win real cash and earn RLY tokens by participating in matchmaking games and tournaments, significantly enhancing the overall appeal of the game.

The $RLY tokens earned in the game are stored in the user's Joyride wallet, which can connect to MetaMask for deposits or withdrawals to the player's Ethereum wallet address. By using RLY as the in-game currency, Solitaire Blitz ensures that its game ecosystem is inclusive and interoperable, a design that aligns perfectly with the spirit of Web3.

It is worth noting that players of Solitaire Blitz can continuously level up after each match based on the experience points they earn. Players can enjoy skill-based matchmaking to prevent biases in the game, ensuring true competitive fairness.

So how does the game use a unique matchmaking algorithm to achieve true fairness and unbiased matches? According to the official website, the algorithm was originally designed to match players based on their skill levels. Additionally, its player-versus-player (PvP) gameplay further provides an excellent opportunity for players to challenge themselves.

Players with relatively comparable skills will compete against each other for victory, with the highest-scoring player emerging as the winner and receiving amazing prizes. Solitaire Blitz also features many items and game twists to ensure players have an enjoyable and exciting experience.
Not to mention, players can also compete against friends or strangers on the Solitaire Blitz platform.

Moreover, according to foreign media reports, the platform behind Solitaire Blitz, Joyride, has high visibility in India and the Philippines, both of which happen to have large crypto user bases and are important markets for money-making games. This has laid a foundation for the success of Solitaire Blitz in expanding into international markets.

As Solitaire Blitz further penetrates the gaming markets of these two countries, many valuable insights have emerged: the internet and smartphones are quite prevalent in the Philippines and India. However, data indicates that most digital users own lower-end Android smartphones, which often cannot run high-performance hardcore mobile games.

Therefore, lightweight casual games like card games and gambling games are naturally favored by players in these two markets; additionally, card games like Solitaire Blitz have long been popular in the Philippines and India, with many card games consistently ranking at the top of the charts on Google Play in these countries.

2: Token Mechanism

RLY is the native token of Rally, a platform that enables creators and their communities to build their independent digital economies. Many projects have benefited from the RLY-driven economy, including social applications, games, NFT communities, metaverses, and more. Holding RLY means users can access Rally's diverse ecosystem.

Additionally, users can exchange RLY for other cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies on multiple exchanges, including MEXC, Bitget, KuCoin, Huobi Global, and Phemex. The current trading price of the RLY token is $0.0434, with a market cap of $131.29 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $1.63 million. The maximum supply of the token is 15 billion, with a current circulating supply of 3,025,250,369.

3: Future Development

In Q2 2021, Solitaire Blitz was launched on Joyride. Subsequently, fiat currency was added in Q3 2021, and Beta tokens were introduced on Solitaire Blitz in Q1 2022. The mainnet of Solitaire Blitz and partner tokens was released in Q2 2022.

In Q3 2022, Solitaire Blitz is set to update, with the team expecting to introduce token bridging between Flow and Ethereum, along with token minting and exchanges. Solitaire Blitz will also move towards NFT functionality, with players anticipating token bridging between Solana and Ethereum in Q4 2022, which will introduce more competitive games. Finally, introducing game staking in the beta version will be a major development goal for Solitaire Blitz in 2023, aiming to fully launch Game staking in the game, with future plans for token decentralization, voting, and more game releases.

4: Team Introduction

Although most people may not have heard of Omar Siddiqui, he has been making F2P games for the past 15 years, including "Garden of Time," which not only has 200 million monthly active users but was also a major reason for Disney's acquisition of developer Playdom for $763 million in 2010.

Since leaving Disney, Siddiqui founded another F2P mobile developer, which was sold to RockYou, and in 2017 launched his current company, web3 game developer and publisher Joyride Games.

Siddiqui graduated from Harvard University and is an entrepreneur with a background in product design and global operations. He is also an advisor and investor in great companies such as Gopuff, Clubhouse, TrueLayer, Zeplin, Phils Coffee, Tajir, NayaPay, Abhi, Rhone, BigBoxVR, Deep Vision, Banyan, Ipsy, Papaya, and Atoms.

5: Joyride Community Status

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/onjoyride/
9k followers

Discord:
https://discord.com/invite/joyride
33,643 followers

6: Chain Teahouse Review

The gaming industry is rapidly evolving, and crypto-driven incentive mechanisms can inject new vitality into classic games like cards. As DappRadar tracks thousands of dapps, it is noticeable that many game creators emphasize developing engaging, legendary story-based games. However, if they cannot drive user traffic, no matter how successful the game development is, it will be forgotten by the world. The success of Solitaire Blitz serves as a reminder to many creators that understanding the target audience and designing games tailored to them is the key factor for successful development.