The Road to Web3 Games: Opportunities and Challenges of SLG

Author: W Labs Guatian Laboratory

After the release of the first article in this long series on casual icebreaker games, the response was more enthusiastic than expected. It is evident that after 10 months of a bear market in blockchain games, players are no longer asking at the outset: "How can I make money the fastest?" Instead, they are first considering and judging whether it is worth deep involvement. Moreover, we have taken a fresh and hot case for in-depth analysis, which is more profound than the previous series that merely skimmed over examples of projects. In the second article of this series, we will discuss how SLG games in WEB3 can break through.

When the W Labs team initially started discussing SLG games, I was a bit confused. Some colleagues mentioned that SLG stands for Simulation Game. Huh? Isn't it "Save & Load Game"? I have been a fan of SLG games for over twenty years, from the earliest tactical games like "Fire Dragon Knight" and "Empire of Angels" to the current "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition." Could it be that my understanding of the definition has been wrong all along? After a quick search, it turns out SLG is indeed referred to as Simulation Game, a type of simulation strategy game.

Well, let's not get caught up in the definition of words. Anyway, anything involving turn-based and management development should count as SLG games. Besides the few early tactical representatives I mentioned, other well-known titles include the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series, "Mount & Blade," "Civilization," "Clash of Clans," and games like "Rise of Kingdoms" and "Kingdoms: Genesis."

The biggest characteristic of SLG games is: high strategy, deep learning, high fan retention, and the longest lifecycle. A quality SLG game can still be profitable years after its release. The most famous example is "Clash of Clans" by Finnish company SuperCell, which was released in 2012 and has made $500 million annually for ten years now, with total revenue exceeding $10 billion when combined with its sibling card game "Clash Royale."

However, this biggest characteristic has also become the biggest pain point for this type of game entering WEB3. Currently, GameFi players are accustomed to gold farming and quick in-and-out gameplay. Ten years? If a GameFi can last ten months, it would be a phenomenal success! Just like we analyzed the SLG blockchain game "League of Kingdoms" in our long article series "The Exploration Path of Traditional Games Entering Blockchain GameFi," SLG games are inherently slow-paced, while the consensus among current GameFi players is that the lifecycle of blockchain games is only a few months. Thus, before the game even starts to be enjoyable, the token price is nearly zero.

Is the problem with SLG games themselves? Clearly not. It is still what we have been discussing: The Play-to-Earn economic model of GameFi has skewed the entire blockchain game track, and after this skew, everyone seems to think that this model represents blockchain games. In the first article of this series, we also expressed a sense of helplessness: why does a casual icebreaker blockchain game need to join the fray to design a gold farming model? Wouldn't it be better to design a model aimed at the metaverse scene? In the future, it might collect millions in tolls from WEB3 users, which is far more exciting than just making a few hundred dollars from gold farming players, right?

As a long-time supporter of SLG games, let me briefly discuss what makes SLG so addictive for players:

First, strategically: the god's-eye view of troop deployment allows players to enjoy the thrill of strategic planning. If RTS (Real-Time Strategy, like Command & Conquer and StarCraft) games are more about gradually accumulating advantages through micro-management, SLG games test your control over the game. I still remember when I first got hooked on COC ten years ago; the entire group was discussing how to arrange walls, buildings, bombs, and traps to ensnare opponents. When the attacking giant is blown up by a bomb, and the wizard is repeatedly launched into the air by traps, you can't help but laugh out loud.

Second, tactically: if the team composition is good, defeating stronger opponents is not impossible. The thrill of a free-to-play player occasionally defeating a heavy spender will make you want to share the victory everywhere. For example, in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition," a representative SLG that debuted at its peak, it has dominated the top ten in domestic game revenue for five consecutive years. In the game, if you use a basic Wu soldier to fight against a fully upgraded red Wu cavalry, you are likely to win, even if you are on a monthly card or free-to-play, while your opponent has spent $100,000. Isn't that even more satisfying? I can't help but share such battle reports in our alliance's small group.

SLG games are so attractive that in the explosive year of blockchain games in 2021, they naturally attracted many teams. Here, I will analyze two cases in depth: Heroes of Mavia (HOM) and Galaxy Blitz (GB). Why these two? Because they are currently both claiming to be blockchain versions of COC and have received decent funding.

(1) Heroes of Mavia

First, let's talk about HOM. In January 2022, it was announced that Binance led a $5.5 million investment, with Animoca, YGG, and Delphi Labs participating. What more could you ask for from such a top-tier project? I remember when the Guatian community was just established, Guage led dozens of people to form three teams to grind for white lists, and they really put in the effort, showcasing various talents. Then in February, it was announced that the second round was led by Crypto.com, raising another $2.5 million, generating another wave of excitement. After grinding, we got the white list, and the NFT mint peaked at over three times its initial value. Then various messages urged you to stake your NFTs, which we did, but then the updates dwindled, with only a few images and videos released each month. The Discord community went from hundreds of messages a day to fewer than five.

So this game is a typical Vietnamese team style, prioritizing customer experience. The promised July beta test has not seen any updates. I heard something about engineers being in Ukraine, which affected development progress, making it feel like a test of our intelligence.

Here’s a screenshot of their October pinned video on Twitter; it really feels like they completely learned from COC, and the project team seems to be hinting, "We are still working on it."

(2) Galaxy Blitz

Now, let's focus on Galaxy Blitz (GB). The WGGDAO community participated in two beta tests, so there are quite a few points to critique.

It also announced its funding news in January 2022, raising $10 million, with investors including Conflux Foundation, Tomochain, Ascendex, Gate Labs, Lbank, Bitmart & Amplio Capital, The Moon Carl, DCI Capital, OIG Investment Group, Criterion Ventures, MH Ventures, BlueWheel Capital, Digital Strategies, SMO Capital, Gains Associates, DuckDao, NFTb Labs, Synapse Network, Starter Labs, and EnjinStarter. The investment lineup is not as luxurious as HOM, especially with some unfamiliar names at the end. We googled them, and most are Web3 investment institutions from Europe, such as OIG, which is a PE firm from the Nordic region, and MH Ventures, a partner of the BNB Chain European accelerator.

The project team announced that they directly hired people from SuperCell, the creators of COC, and that it is a space-themed game in the style of COC. However, this year, when people hear about space-themed blockchain games, they often feel overwhelmed due to frequent delays in development. Our Guatian community humorously referred to the three most popular space-themed MMORPGs last year as "the three space donkey carts" and even invited one of them to a space-themed stand-up comedy event, resulting in a lot of laughter and banter, as shown in the following image:

However, the GB Chinese community surprisingly reached out to us last month, expressing that the game had started internal testing. The project team had been following W Labs' blockchain game articles, believing we are true gamers, so they invited our team to join the first batch of internal testers. Now, let’s discuss our impressions from the internal testing:

A. It is a relatively complete COC-style game. PVE, PVP, and guild battles are all available. There were some bugs and glitches during gameplay, but since it was the first internal test, they should be able to debug it later.

B. The graphics and UI design initially felt a bit like StarCraft, which is different from the cute cartoon style commonly adopted by current SLG games. GB has taken a hard-edged realistic art style that indeed fits the space theme. The details of defensive weapons and various buildings are very refined, with a strong cyberpunk and sci-fi feel, although it can be a bit dizzying if looked at for too long.

C. Currently, the placement of defensive buildings does not feel particularly strategic. I just surrounded the main base with a circle of weapons and then surrounded that with a circle of buildings. The troop deployment needs further optimization.

D. There are nearly 20 types of troops to choose from, including assault, tank, melee, ranged, magic, and air units. I haven't tested which combinations are optimal yet. I have been upgrading motorcycle troops and using a swarm strategy, reminiscent of the dog packs in StarCraft. So I haven't yet experienced the fun of troop composition.

E. Through communication with the GB Chinese ambassador, the project team believes that the COK model (like League of Kingdoms and Meta Apes) is relatively difficult to adapt to blockchain, but the flexibility of the COC type is sufficient. In the early stages, even a relatively simple personal PVP can attract a massive number of Web2 users, while also using Axie's confrontational gold farming model to attract Web3 users. Currently, the project is undergoing its second internal test, focusing on guild battles. The project team has set an interesting idea to retain Web2 users, encouraging them to join guilds primarily led by Web3 users and participate in intense interstellar territorial battles organized by the guilds. In this process, the guild that occupies interstellar land will receive a large amount of loot, and both Web3 and Web2 users can share in the fruits of victory, thereby attracting and converting a large number of Web2 users, achieving the crossover attributes of Web3 games. If this model works, it will be a classic case of solving the "WEB2 to WEB3" dilemma, with results yet to be verified.

Having participated in two internal tests, the WGGDAO members seriously provided over thirty suggestions and corrections. The project team even held an internal discussion meeting with us to go through everything, and it feels like the team has deep experience in WEB2 game development.

Additionally, the game's token MIT was already listed on exchanges back in April this year (after all, investors include Gate.io and others), and it has been on a downward trend ever since. So I find it strange; SLG games are supposed to be slow-burning, so why list so early? Without sufficient empowerment and community enthusiasm, the token price is bound to decline! If it were last year, it would make sense to list early in a bull market to earn several times and then slowly develop, similar to Illuvium. But it was already a bear market in April this year, right? It can only be understood that the investors might have had a requirement for listing.

Recently, the project team has been quite active. During our internal testing, we tracked information indicating that it will be one of the first games on Aptos; they also held an AMA with thousands of participants on Binance, etc. It feels like the project team is conducting promotional activities in conjunction with the game's public testing.

Now, let's talk about the promotional heat we observed. GB's Twitter has 210,000 followers. According to the information released by the project team on October 28, the second internal test had over 13,000 registered users, with a terrifying retention rate of 73% (the average retention rate for SLG in WEB2 games is around 40%)… To be honest, we were a bit shocked by these numbers. Could it be that the project team is aggressively promoting in Europe and America?

In our impression, good SLG games have always been popular in Europe and America, even single-player games, which has allowed domestic game developers like Lilith, Youda, and 37 Interactive to earn hundreds of millions of dollars. During the internal test, I chatted randomly with some English-speaking players in the game, many of whom were COC players. For instance, most of them still refer to DAOs (the guilds in GB) as Clans (the clans in COC).

However, as a player, I still care about the essential strategic playability of SLG games. From the two internal tests so far, I feel that there is still a lot of room for improvement in the strategy and tactics of GB's offense and defense. The project team's feedback is continuously adjusting, such as the range and breadth of weapons, etc. Well, no matter what, GB is the first playable blockchain game of the COC type that we have seen, and I hope it can continue to evolve.

To summarize, high-quality SLG games will be the most profitable type in future blockchain games because their long-tail effect can last for years. Based on this, it is not advisable for such blockchain games to directly apply typical gold farming models, as the boom-and-bust cycle contradicts the inherent characteristics of SLG games. SLG blockchain game teams need to spend more time working on the strategic and tactical diversity of offense and defense.

Links to this series of articles:

1. "Pain Points, Opportunities, and the Freshest Cases in the Blockchain Game Track" First Article How Casual Icebreaker Games Enter WEB3?

Other completed long articles by W Labs:

1. "Unveiling the Economic Models of Blockchain Games"

2. "The Future Path of GameFi Blockchain Game Economic Models"

3. "The Exploration Path of Traditional Games Entering Blockchain GameFi"