2021 has been the year of DeFi, NFTs, the Metaverse, and GameFi, these trends leverage the power of blockchain in an attempt to provide users with new experiences. Together they have the potential to transform billion-dollar industries and integrate them with the digital economy.
The first big game to break into the mainstream was Axie Infinity with an innovative model that allows players to receive rewards for the time, effort, and creativity that are put into their games, called Play-To-Earn (P2E).
Despite its recent popularity, a lot of projects have been working on integrating NFTs, the Metaverse, and creating a unique experience for players around the world. In that sense, we sat down with the team behind the popular game Elemental Knights that recently launched GensoKishi a play-to-earn and GameFi model that will revamp its mechanics and player experience.
Available on Switch, PlayStation 4, iPhone, and Android, GensoKishi is the first step into a digital and P2E ecosystem supported by the blockchain and a revolution that could advance the progress of Web3 into the hands of the people. This is what they told us.
The Metaverse is one of the more ambitious ideas throughout the blockchain industry. How have you managed to be this far ahead of the trend?
Yes, as you said metaverse is not easy and takes time to build. For us, GENSOKISHI ONLINE -META WORLD-, is based on a 13 year old game titled as “Elemental Knights” and has accumulated 8 million downloads. It won the “Game Star Award Taiwan” in 2012 and we have 25k active monthly users. In-game messages are opened 80,000 times a day.
We think we’ve gotten this far because we provide so much freedom for our users. This is an MMORPG so users will tag-team with other players to clear missions and find rare items. We have multiple worlds and continents where they can explore. And you may imagine, this will be the base of the metaverse. With communities=users, then GameFi/P2E with Web3.0 and NFT to build a metaverse with our project. We are ready for it.
How does the in-game economy and user retention impact token value, and how do you address these challenges?
Yes like above I mentioned, the game has 13 years experience on user community building and branding. We’d like to invite all users including the old fans and new coming users from the crypto world. There are two tokens we are going to use at GENSOKISHI. We keep the governance token (MV) valuable and also the price controlling of in-game crypto: ROND is important too. We keep the “economics” ecosystem running well in the game just like in real world to keep it steady. So that our users could enjoy anything besides the RPG adventuring in GENSOKISHI world.
When will you do the LAND sale? What is LAND?
Thanks for asking. The LAND, which is a piece of MAP in the GENSOKISHI world, as we announced, is acquirable only if you have enough MV token staked, by an auction event to own. A LAND is a certain area in the game you could do anything you want on it. Like building your own castle(UGC function), put your favorite monsters to beat other players, or use it as an advertisement for you or your company. Other players if they want to get your rare NFTs they have to pay some ROND token as a ticket into your LAND then start playing. It will be the owners’ space so everything is possible.
Can you tell us more about what ‘UGC to earn’ means?
Per the words User Generated Content, UGC is an object such as weapons/items/equipment or NPC (Non Player Characters) that users with some MV token staked could have the rights to build on their own. This would be an entirely new concept for a GameFi game. You could just enjoy playing the game with the UGC or make it more valuable and then sell it on the NFT markets. This is another P2E (Play to Earn) style of GENSOKISHI.
Are there any IP or major companies entering the UGC space?
Simply answering your questions, YES! 😀
We already had some IP collaboration in Elemental Knights, and will definitely do the same or even more IP/Anime/Enterprises collaboration on the UGC part. It will be the most interesting and profitable model.
Can you give us more details about the game and tell us about its world?
First of all, it’s a free to play game. Register using your social media account, and boom, you can start playing instantly. No need for Metamask or crypto knowledge to start playing.
And the QUALITY. We are not starting from scratch, we have an established base. To achieve the level of quality we already have on hand, would take at least $30 million to make, in perhaps a span of 5 years.
And like I mentioned: The game design is top-notch, and when we say users can generate their own content (UGC), we really mean it. The freedom and detail in which you can generate content is what we’ve reached after these years of brushing up Elemental Knights.
You could tag with many friends from all over the world, beat the super monsters to get some really RARE NFT, then have it on sale on the market. And there are also many worlds waiting for users to adventure, to find the treasure (NF) or seek LAND to really own it. Furthermore, as a metaverse project, it’s a free world. You could just make friends and enjoy the events or create events.
What does MV token give to owners? Can you tell a bit about it’s design?
MV token is our governance token, built on the Polygon network. Users will need to stake a certain amount of tokens to generate their own unique original items, characters, worlds, and castles. As we’re making this game into a DAO, voting rights will be given to holders as well to decide in-game policies and the game’s ultimate future. You can also stake it to earn in-game tokens ROND.
Why did you choose the Polygon network to base your game on?
I myself am also enjoying some other GameFi on Polygon and felt the possibility: Speed and low-gas fee. Nowadays ETH is the most popular blockchain but with the high gas fee it’s not suitable for gaming. But people still love to trade on ETH, so as L2 of ETH, Polygon resolved the issues of our GameFi team. Also Polygon has the most active users on the market, so that’s the main reason we choose Polygon as our partner. (Also we had built the official partnership with Polygon Studio.)
What are your grand future plans for 2022?
Thanks for asking. First I want to share that we are going to have TrustPad as a launchpad platform partner running IDO in Jan/2022, and also we’ll be releasing the 1st SUPER RARE NFT auction. Except the IDO we aim for MV token listing on some CEX/DEX, for more awareness and liquidity. Also for the UGC feature and LAND auction we’ll be releasing after the official launch in Aug/2022 but if possible would like to make it happen even earlier.
For global users we’re working hard on everything that Elemental Knights never did. This would be very exciting and I hope you could join us.
Please explain in detail the partnership with TrustPad and DefF launchpad association.
We are really excited and thankful for the partnership. We had a great conversation with Trustpad and they are willing to help GENSOKISHI gain more awareness in the EU/UK area, with the powerful Defi launchpad association which is organized by lots of DeFi/GameFi launchpad platforms to help do the marketing. I never thought of such a great partnership but really appreciate it. We are going to work harder on the project. With LOVE.
Is there anything else the community should know?
GENSOKISHI ONLINE -META WORLD-‘s Whitelist Lottery, which ran until December 19, was a huge success with over 100K entries.
As a gesture of appreciation to the partnership with TrustPad and to the many people who participated in the original Whitelist lottery, GENSOKISHI has announced a second Whitelist lottery with a total value of $10,000.
The Whitelist lottery will end before the launch pad. The period during which you can participate in the lottery starts on December 22, 21:00 (GMT+8) and ends until the launchpad announcement. Everyone is encouraged to enter the second Whitelist lottery by clicking here.