[Investment] PlaceWar: A Multichain NFT Playground for the Artillery Gaming Community
1. Abstract
PlaceWar is a play-to-earn artillery game that allows players to battle for rewards, craft tanks, and design territories. PlaceWar is designed as a multichain dapp (decentralized application) to simultaneously run on BSC, Polygon, and Conflux to maximize interoperability and accessibility. The core gameplay of PlaceWar is inspired by preceding artillery video games, namely Fortress and Worm, where players take turns to shoot the opponents by adjusting the power, angle, and location of their tanks to eliminate their opponents.
2. Value Proposition
Axie Infinity has achieved a daily active userbase of 1.8 million and a total sales volume of $2.3 billion in less than 3 years from its launch in 2018. Along with its remarkable statistics, the fully diluted market cap of Axie Infinity has reached $30 billion as of October 2021, being placed as the 5th highest valued video game organization in the world.
The phenomenal success of Axie Infinity has kicked off the latest trend in the crypto space: P2E (play-to-earn) gaming with digital collectibles (NFTs). Although some may consider it as a brand new concept, P2E has, in fact, been around for over a decade. Selling in-game currency or items for real money might come as a familiar experience to hardcore MMORPG players. The availability of generating revenue through gameplay is what makes MMORPGs with trading features fall under the P2E category. However, an issue with this is that trading or selling in-game assets for real money is prohibited in most jurisdictions due to regulations — preventing game providers from supporting fiat transactions. Players who are looking to cash out often end up spending high fees on 3rd-party brokers to avoid getting scammed. However, the adoption of blockchain revolutionized the P2E space by bringing 3 significant improvements:
1) Non-custodial Transactions: On-chain transactions between users enable trustless trades that remove fees charged by intermediaries.
2) Seamless Liquidation: Selling your in-game assets, whether they be currencies or items, has become relatively easier. The crypto (usually ETH) you receive for selling your assets is highly liquid and easy to sell for fiat.
3) Complete Ownership: The in-game assets you obtain during gameplay are stored in your own wallet — nobody can steal it from you, not even the devs!
The factors above, coupled with the overall growth of the crypto industry, have resulted in the mass production of P2E + NFT gaming projects. According to a database from DappRadar, a leading dapp on-chain analysis platform, +1,000 blockchain games have been introduced to the market. However, a majority of them are failing to maintain retention due to high on-chain transaction fees, repetitive gameplay, and low-quality graphics.
We at Terabyte believe that the PlaceWar team is committed to and highly capable of designing an on-chain P2E game that achieves a sustainable in-game economy, high interoperability, and entertaining game mechanics to create a highly accessible NFT playground for gamers, creators, and P2E scholars.
3. PlaceWar
Gameplay
PlaceWar is a turn-based artillery game. Players bring tanks to the battlefield with the objective of eliminating their opponents. The gameplay mechanics are relatively intuitive: calibrate the shooting angle, adjust the power, and move your tanks to land your shots while dodging your opponent’s.
PlaceWar supports 3 different Battle Modes.
- PVE Skirmish: A PVE mode where players battle AI bosses called Pegatrons. To beat a round of Skirmish, the player must defeat the boss before their squad of 3 tanks is eliminated. Rewards for a victory on Skirmish include $PLACE, $GEAR, consumables, Tech NFTs, and Equipments.
- PVP Battlefront: A 1 vs 1 PVP mode where players bring a squad of 3 tanks each and take turns to make a move until the player who eliminates the opponent’s squad first wins the match.
- Guild War: A 10 vs 10 PVP mode where players bring 1 tank each and battle against the opposing team for a wager in $GEAR or $PLACE. The winning team evenly shares the wager.
A system called the Fuel Tank exists to prevent users from over-grinding and spamming. The Fuel Tank represents the energy of the player’s team. Each battle consumes a specific amount of Fuel. Once the Fuel Tank is empty, the player must either wait for it to refill or spend $GEAR tokens for a manual charge.
Placedonia
Placedonia is the virtual universe of PlaceWar, divided into small units called Pixels. Each Pixel is created an NFT, enabling its owner to design or construct facilities. Resources, $PLACE, and Pegatron randomly spawn on Pixels, serving as a farm for resources.
Inspired by Reddit’s r/place project, the owner of a Pixel may choose a color to represent the Pixel from the World View mode. Pixel owners may unite to form paintings, phrases, or even logos of their guild. Players may challenge the Conquest Mode where they can invade other Pixels for loots containing resources and $GEAR, along with the privilege to change the color of the Pixel. To guard Pixels, players must place Defenders, drones that automatically respond to invasions.
In-game Items
PlaceWar divides items into 2 classes: NFTs and Consumables.
NFTs
- Tank: As the main NFT of PlaceWar, all players are required to own 3 tanks in order to get started. Tanks are divided into 5 types: Medieval, Heavy Armor, Rocket Launcher, Mech, and Amphibious. Players must strategically arrange a squad to increase their chance of winning in battles. Players may obtain tanks by purchasing them in the marketplace or via the Crafting System. Each crafting costs a specific amount of $PLACE, $GEAR, and a Blueprint along with 2 sample tanks and Tech NFTs. To keep the supply of tanks under control, each tank can be used as a Sample Tank up to 5 times.
- Equipment: Equipments can be used on tanks to boost their stats. Players may obtain Equipments by minting them with resources or opening up loots. Equipment NFTs are divided into 5 categories.
- Turret: Increases the Damage of a tank, determining how much damage each shot deals to the opponent
- Barrel: Increases the Range of a tank, determining how far the tank can shoot
- Engine: Increases the Mobility of a tank, determining how far the tank can move during a turn
- Armor: Increases the Defense of a tank, determining how much damage the tank takes from a hit
- Tracks: Increases the Dodge rate of a tank, determining the likelihood of the tank avoiding a hit from the opponent - Tech: NFTs to be used while crafting tanks to enhance their stats or add skills that can be used in combat.
- Defender: Defenders are drones that automatically respond to invaders of Pixels. Players may craft Defender NFTs by spending $PLACE, $GEAR, and items.
- Building: Buildings are fixtures that can be placed on Pixels. Buildings can produce a stable supply of resources, serve as shops for consumables, and provide buffs to tanks during battles.
- Pixel: The land of Placedonia is divided into 90,000 (300x300) Pixels. The closer the Pixel is to the center of Placedonia, the higher its rarity. Pixels with higher rarity provide more space to place buildings and produce more resources.
Consumables
- Resources: Used for upgrading tanks or constructing buildings
- Items: Used on the battlefield during combat
PlaceDAO
PlaceWar is governed by PlaceDAO, a decentralized governance committee. Members of PlaceDAO are responsible for initiating or voting on proposals and running the Treasury in which the capital is injected from a portion of in-game fees including 4.25% of all PlaceWar NFT marketplace transactions and a TBD% of Crafting fees in $PLACE.
4. Tokenomics
$GEAR
Similar to Axie Infinity’s Smooth Love Potion ($SLP), $GEAR is the in-game currency of PlaceWar with an unlimited total supply. $GEAR is the main form of rewards that are distributed to users for their gameplay such as completion of battles or tasks. The main utilities of $GEAR are fees for crafting tanks and charging fuel tanks.
$PLACE
As the governance token of PlaceWar, $PLACE has a wide spectrum of utility within the PlaceWar ecosystem.
- Stake $PLACE to receive vPLACE tokens to exercise governance voting rights and receive staking rewards.
- Spend $PLACE to craft NFTs.
- Provide liquidity on DEXs deployed on BSC, Polygon, and Conflux to earn passive income.
- Put $PLACE as the wager of Guild Wars.
The total supply of 10,000,000,000 $PLACE is divided into the following:
5. Team
The PlaceWar Team is formed of veterans in gaming, blockchain, and marketing. Myrtle Ramos, the CEO of PlaceWar is the founder of Block Tides, the official influencer of CoinMarketCap, VP of GokuMarket, and the manager of the largest Axie Infinity Scholarship program in the Philippines.
The tech team of PlaceWar consists of members from Mega Game Studio, a leading mobile game development company from the Philippines. Notable portfolio of Mega Game Studio are:
- Glory Battlefield: 2M+ downloads with $4M in revenue
- Glory Battlefield — Middle Ages: 900K+ downloads with $2M in revenue
- Last Descendant of Dragon: 12M+ downloads with $5M in revenue
- Zoo Race: 500K+ downloads with $600K in revenue
6. Investors
PlaceWar has successfully completed 2 rounds of sale. $400,000 was raised during the Seed Round, onboarding LD Capital and Crypto.com Capital as key investors. The recently closed Private Round was oversubscribed with a total of $1.8M investment from leading VCs including AU21, AC Capital, x21, and IoTeX, Kyros Ventures, and of course, Terabyte Capital.
PlaceWar claims that details on the upcoming IDO are soon to be announced. Follow PlaceWar on Twitter and stay tuned!
7. Conclusion
The blockchain gaming industry has recently become a highly competitive scene on account of Axie infinity’s explosive growth and the market’s lookout for the next P2E gem. Similar to the traditional gaming industry, numerous games are produced, yet only a small portion survives. PlaceWar is developing a game that we believe will attract thousands of gamers and content creators with its sustainable in-game economics, intuitive game mechanics, and a governance body owned by the community.
Disclaimer
The content of this post is for informational purposes only. Nothing contained in this post should be construed as investment advice. Terabyte accepts no liability with the regard to the user’s reliance on this content. Investment involves risk.
