fivefingergames: Creating the First Play&Earn Game

fivefingergames

My name is Lukas Anetsberger, I am the CEO of fivefingergames, a German indie studio responsible for the upcoming game Knights of Cathena.

fiverfingergames started as a small gaming company, founded in August 2019 by three friends: Michael Baudler (CTO), Martin Wagner (CIO), and me. We all met one evening at a hackathon hosted by our former employer and soon stumbled upon our shared passion for crafting games.

Back then, when we started our game development journey, blockchain gaming or NFTs were not as well-known as they are nowadays. First projects like Splinterlands or Gods Unchained were already released but far away from appealing to the traditional gaming market.

But looking at the technology, we felt that blockchain gaming can have huge benefits if executed correctly, not just for the developer but especially for players. So for the last three years, we evaluated several concepts, blockchains, and game engines, and created multiple prototypes for our approach. The result of that long process birthed our debut game: Knights of Cathena.

Knights of Cathena

Knights of Cathena is a turn-based tactics multiplayer game with RPG elements. Set in a medieval fantasy world, called Altea, it will draw players into a realm filled with mighty gods, mythical creatures, magic, and opposing factions. There, players will battle over magical dominion to secure their power and patronage of the goddess Cathena and her kin.

The core gameplay is pretty simple and easy to understand as we try to reach a casual audience. Players try to overwhelm their opponents in action-packed 1vs1 matches with an army full of soldiers, each equipped with NFT-Items, that have been placed thoughtfully on the battlefield. Every soldier has its unique advantages and disadvantages and needs to be used strategically to outplay the enemy and kill the opponent king to ultimately win the battle.

As we researched the current blockchain-gaming market we noticed that nearly all projects, so-called Play2Earn games, follow the same pattern: putting profit and earning rewards as the first priority rather than concentrating on what is, in our opinion, the most important thing – the game itself. We want to change that. This is how the core of Knights of Cathena came to be.

Mixing Turn-Based Tactics and Blockchain Technology

For Knights of Cathena, we've coined the term "Play&Earn", differentiating itself from the very beginning from the more common "Play2Earn" approach that, in our opinion, neglects the overall gaming experience and puts monetization first. For us, it’s important to value the time someone spends on the game and deliver a top-notch gameplay experience without any prior investment while also letting gamers see the advantages of blockchain gaming without requiring any further knowledge or diminishing their day-to-day enjoyment of the game.

Our idea was to create a concept that keeps the blockchain part completely hidden away from the player. No manual wallet creation, no crypto handling beforehand, and zero crypto knowledge required. Instead, players can just dive into the game by using their common social logins like Google Play, Apple Gamecenter, or even Facebook and get rewarded while having fun, which again, should be the main reason to play a game. And unlike most blockchain games we aren’t offering any NFTs on pre-sales just to raise money from our potential players, but instead, each NFT will have to be earned in-game by playing the game.

What our vision for Knights of Cathena actually tries to do is to elevate playtime to real-world values. Wouldn’t it be great if, while enjoying our favorite games, all the hours, days, months, or even years, would be additionally rewarded in the "real" world? Our vision is exactly that, but with the most important thing: never compromise on game design or put profit over fun! And this is where our Play&Earn approach shines.

Long story short, play the game and get rewarded. If you are not interested in the rewards, just play and have fun. Knights of Cathena is designed as a standalone game that can be enjoyed without utilizing the rewards you earn from it. Just like a traditional game without blockchain integration.

Tools

Our tech stack is pretty straightforward and traditional. For the game client, we use the Unity game engine. All assets we needed were mostly crafted in Blender. Textures and sprites for UI, are created with tools from the Adobe Creative Cloud platform.

On the server side, we use a Nakama game server for our real-time gameplay implementation and a few additional servers which are handling the blockchain magic for our players.

Coming to the unusual part – the blockchain. Our game is based on Elrond, which is the first carbon-negative blockchain in Europe, that we use for our whole item economy. Therefore, we had to utilize Rust to write smart contracts on the blockchain with which we can communicate directly.

Gaining Audiences

In terms of building an audience, in my opinion, we have one advantage over traditional games. We do not have to focus solely on the traditional gaming market. As we are combining blockchain and gaming we will also combine the two audiences of each space, which increases the overall reach as a whole.

Talking about the blockchain space, as the first official game launched on the Elrond blockchain we enjoy a lot of first-mover advantages to build our initial audience.

On the traditional gaming market, however, we have strong partners, speaking especially of our recently announced partnership with ComboStrike which are absolute experts in this area with their usual clients being Sega, Tencent, Blizzard, Sharkmob, Amazon Games Studios, and many more. You can see the announcement on our blog.

Currently, in anticipation of our closed alpha test phase which will start later in Q2 2022, we have created a waiting list, where users can complete "Quests" and refer friends to earn access to the closed alpha. This enables us not only to grow our audience in an organic way but also helps us to find engaged players, who can help us with the testing of the game. The plan is to deliver a solid alpha version in Q3 2022 so we hope to gather enough players that are eager to work with us on the quality assurance side of test phases. You can check out the event here.

Developing Blockchain Games

Is the market in need of more blockchain titles? In short: Yes! Should every game have a blockchain integration? Absolutely not!

It would definitely be the wrong approach to blindly put blockchain integration over all sorts of games. We see the most benefit in games that have economies that are built between players. For example, if we take a look at single-player games, we certainly do not see a benefit there. But who knows what some creative developers will craft in the future.

We strongly believe that blockchain will have a fundamental impact on the gaming industry of the future. It will be a great idea for both developers and publishers to take a closer look at blockchain gaming and embrace the possibilities that these new technologies provide.

The main advantages of blockchain gaming are primarily on the player side. Players can be assured that the treasures they collected in-game are securely stored on the blockchain to which nobody except themselves has access. Even if the studio is discontinuing a game, the information stored on the blockchain isn’t lost, which means there is nothing stopping the community from spinning up their own game servers and continuing right where they left.

Of course, the blockchain also provides an easy way for players to sell their items and tokens. Developers on the other hand profit from a standardized method of storing crucial information on the blockchain which enables a simpler way to build symbiotic partnerships between different projects. A sword in one game may turn into a fancy hat in the other.

On the developer side, there are additional advantages like:

• New fundraising opportunities: the most difficult phase of an indie game studio is the start. One is always dependent on external funding or publishers that help the studio survive while developing a game. Entering the blockchain space unlocks access to a new way of funding – token sales. Instead of selling equity to an investor or onboard a publisher that takes most of the profit, studios can create their own tokens that they sell in advance (if designed correctly of course);
• New models of monetizing the game: on the monetization side, developers have new ways of generating profit. Instead of adding ads to a game (which every player hates) or selling random skins that are just in the game because the studios need to earn money (just to name a few models), with blockchain, the studios can turn their in-game currency into a real currency with real value. That way they don’t need to rely on fiat transactions to earn their share. Instead, they can profit by taking a share of the item economy of a game directly.

We know that recent scams and subpar gaming experiences left the genre in a bad light and many traditional gamers do have a very negative impression of blockchain gaming in general. With Knights of Cathena, we want to show that this isn’t an inherent problem of the technology but instead just a matter of execution.

Roadmap

As mentioned before we are currently in preparation for our closed alpha testing phase which will take place in Q2 2022. So the main goal right now is to prepare the game for the first wave of players and to build an audience that will help us expand from that.

Once we ensured the level of quality we have in mind, we will release the alpha version of the game in Q3 later this year. This version will include the most important features of the game, such as the full blockchain integration, the core gameplay loop, and the marketplace. The beta version will follow shortly after in Q4 with the main focus on the social aspects and features of the game. Where players will be able to have in-game chats, a guild system (called Noble Houses in our game), friend lists, etc.

Once the game is fully released in Q1 2023, we will of course continue to develop it and gradually update the game with new content such as new game modes, arenas, exciting lore, and gameplay updates.

Lukas Anetsberger, Chief Executive Officer of fivefingergames

Interview conducted by Ana Kessler