By now it’s well known that Avalanche Network is doing its best to entrench itself as the Gaming Blockchain of the future via its Subnet scaling technology. One of the most anticipated titles coming to its own Avalanche Subnet is Shrapnel. Shrapnel is an AAA First-Person Shooter with a robust creator-based economy planned, coming to its own subnet on Avalanche. Much of the reason that Shrapnel has justly received hype is the myriad of credentials the fully doxxed team boasts. With experience ranging from work on HALO to Call of Duty to Westworld, this is a team of professionals that knows what it takes to produce a game at the highest levels.
The brain-drain from Web2 to Web3 has just begun, and it’s apparent that Shrapnel has become a leading project for some of that talent to gravitate toward.
Having talent that has experience in such high stakes brands as EA, HBO, and Star Wars will come in handy as well, considering the scope and size of what Shrapnel is trying to become. Essentially being designed as a user-focused, player built experience, it will take a lot of balancing and sharp execution for it to pan out. However, if it does… we could be watching a multi billion dollar project in its infancy. As stated the economy is going to be largely creator based, from maps to vanity pieces, the community will be able to extract value in one form or another, all powered by the $SHRAP token.
The Whitepaper for this project was released on 4/11/22, so with all of the buzz surrounding it, I figured I’d break down and give an overview of the information that’s now been made public surrounding the game. Long story short- what’s being built is a highly ambitious and wide-scoped game which if delivered can be a case study for how to build a sustainable Play to Earn economy
The Overview
To give some background on why the gameplay is designed the way it is, here’s a bit of the game’s lore:
The Shrapnel universe is set in a world where the moon is struck by an asteroid, causing lunar meteorites to pummel a 500km band into the earth known as ‘The Zone’. After the chaos of the impact settled, it became quickly apparent that highly desirable materials were strewn throughout ‘The Zone’ and large companies quickly started fighting for domination of these materials, especially one particular valuable known as Compound Sigma…
MEF Operators and Gear The player comes into the Shrapnel story as mega-corps begin hiring what are referred to as Mercenary Extraction Forces (MEF Operators). Each player will outfit their own MEF Operator with different gear, most of which are NFT’s (consumables and 1-shot deployables are not minted NFTs). As one might expect by the name and storyline, the player’s role in gameplay revolves around extraction of high value materials from The Zone, most specifically tranches of Compound Sigma.
When selecting how to move into the Shrapnel world, players will have an option between 3 MEF Operator classes- Assault, Survivalist, or InfoSec. Each of these three classes possesses their own skill based progression tree, and differing abilities encourage cooperative gameplay in order to complete extraction missions efficiently and without loss of loot/gear, which leads into my next point. In Shrapnel, gear is dropped on Death so players must be careful when considering how risky they might want to get when trying to complete a mission.
The running inventory system has been described as similar to Escape From Tarkov, with a similar mechanic of when trying to leave a mission/session with loot from an area, players will need to protect it until they can be successfully extracted. Once a looter successfully defends their claim until extracted, the NFT’s are transferred to their inventory for use in future sessions. The aspect of dropping loot on death (including Compound Sigma each MEF operator drops in missions for other players to collect toward their session goal) and the gear crafting mechanics of the game develop a large amount of strategy in gameplay when deploying into a session. There will be a myriad of equipment to balance and choose from for loadouts for all different mission types, and being correctly outfitted will be highly advantageous when out in The Zone.
Some Tokenomics Information
As previously stated, the economy in Shrapnel is designed to be heavily creator driven. In practice, this means that those players that take advantage of the planned suite of powerful building tools and create a popular map, or perhaps a series of popular vanity items, will be rewarded alongside those players that are in the game dominating missions and earning $SHRAP as well. $SHRAP by the way is both the reward token in the game as well as the governance token of the project’s DAO which will pave the way forward for the game’s mechanics, economy, marketplace, etc via decentralized voting. Not to mention it will be the gas token on the game’s subnet.
Player-creators will need $SHRAP in order to mint items to the marketplace (maps, skins, guns etc) and then player-consumers will need $SHRAP to purchase these items as the games marketplace will display USD value but move $SHRAP on the back end for purchases. All of these mechanisms serve as strong theoretical sinks for the token to reduce sell pressure as large token unlocks take place during the first 2 years the token is released.
There will also be an interesting staking model for $SHRAP where players can stake their coins in particular NFTs to increase their marketplace visibility and also receive a share of the $SHRAP rewards being generated by the item, whether that be a particular gun blueprint or a player designed map. Below is a snippet from the Whitepaper that explains in a blurb the advantages of staking and just how this creator economy can return value to itself:
Discovery: Using SHRAPNEL’s creator tools, the community is empowered to build a library of NFTs to use in-game, share with the community, and trade with other players. The process of promoting and discovering the best items and maps in this constantly expanding collection is critical to the creator ecosystem.
SHRAP staking drives discovery for all player-created content. Anyone can stake their SHRAP on vanity items and maps, which increases their discoverability. Stakers, creators, and others stakeholders receive SHRAP rewards based on how well content performs.
In addition to the above, there will be different MEF factions that players can join, and being part of a larger and more powerful MEF Headquarters will provide in-game benefits that are thus far unreleased. Fore more information about Tokenomics please visit the whitepaper which provides breakdowns of allocations as well as a token release schedule for investors viewing.
Reputation is Everything
A final bit I’d like to mention from the Whitepaper is the Reputation System that was discussed. The team behind the project has elected to police player actions with a system that tallies an overall reputation score for players based on their play, creation, and community scores. The purpose of having this system is to encourage positive behavior in the community. Players with a high total rep score will make their profiles more visible and discoverable in both the maps discovery system as well as the marketplace, which can lead to opportunities for increased rewards.
On the other hand, players that repeatedly infract upon the game’s rules and earn a negative reputation are punished by means such as muting, or even banning repeat offenders.
In having this system the team hopes to create a community/environment that self polices and lends itself to being a positive place to engage with others.
TL;DR
Shrapnel is vying to create the first AAA, creator-driven, play to earn game economy on AVAX utilizing its $SHRAP token as gas for the planned subnet release, as well as for DAO governance and in-game rewards. The value proposition of a creator-based economy is one that is tried and true in Web2 with games such as Minecraft, Diablo II, World of Warcraft etc etc. The model is one that is tried and true, and just needs a bit of luck and for this world-class team to deliver in order to potentially create something special here.
Play to earn is in its infancy, and if Shrapnel can develop into the AAA game its claiming to be and create an engaging and rewarding game experience, it has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar project with an equivalently valued in-game economy. Personally I am extremely excited to keep tabs on this project to see where its development takes it, not due out in any form until Q4 2022, this one is a long way off, however, this is the case with all true AAA games being developed for the space.
Anything that truly classifies as an AAA video game takes years and millions of dollars to develop. Fortunately the Shrapnel team, via multiple successful rounds of funding has the runway to take their time and create something special that does not exist in the Play to Earn sector as of yet, and to do it right.
Sources- 1. https://www.shrapnel.com/Shrapnel-White-Paper.pdf
