Dev Blog #42

Dev Blog Summary

a) Game and Web 3 Development

• For 2023 GFC will be building towards two new major features which is in line with two key directions we are trying to follow 1) Creating a truly fun to play play-to-own game 2) Creating a larger GFC ecosystem that give utility to existing resources
• It is clear now that a game which ONLY relies on P2E to attract players is unsustainable. After all only playing the game for profits imply more selling than buying of assets, and with more assets being dumped, any game would go from profitable to play to unprofitable (e.g Axie)
• As we have emphasized throughout the development of our game the main focus has never been creating a game that is profitable to play but rather creating a fun to play game, because this is the only sustainable way to retain players. So the important question goes back to: ‘how can we continue to build out a game that is genuinely fun-to-play?’
• We hear the community and recognise the issues with the current 3v3 P2E model that makes it feel ‘unfun’, it feels P2W and unbalanced with no real progression beyond a certain point, as well as certain reoccurring bugs that ruins the fun
• Here is how we plan to solve these problems:

1. It feels too P2W and unbalanced

We believe solving this requires a completely new mode, a mode where assets and characters roughly have the same stats so it feels balanced. A mode where the rewards or profitability cannot be the main reason for playing as not to attract the wrong type of players. We believe the up and coming Battle Royale mode could be this new game mode.

2. No real progression

Our short term focus is still on Battle Royale, however we believe that expanding the GFC ecosystem with new games or mini-games (with ties to land) that can create new utility or demand for existing resources from the GFC ecosystem is also key. This is in the works and we believe this could be ready in 2023 H2.

b) Business Development & Marketing

• We are excited to announce that we, Galaxy Fight Club, are official launch partners of the Fractal Polygon launch
• As part of this partnership, you can expect tournaments hosted directly on Fractal with more exciting prize pools and other exciting events and collaborations
• We were live on RugRadio on Monday, January 23rd, you can check out a replay in the link in the full article, we will also be going on Twitter with our friend Saint from Lost Realms as part of their “Founders Series”
• Speaking of Twitter — Now that our Twitter Impact Program has been concluded, we would love to hear the communities opinion on weather we should launch another campaign through both NFTimpact and GlowLabs
• Additionally, we are exploring various other initiatives including sponsorships of events, tournaments or immersive in-game ad placements (like a sponsored map, skins etc)
• Finally, GFC is still recruiting for an open position in the field of marketing and business development / partnerships, please email us your CV if you believe there is a good fit (please note that due to the amount of applications, we won’t be able to respond to every single one)

c) Community

• Held two Cash Prize events with $1k USDC Prize Pools (6 Point + 8 Point Caps)
• Congrats to Comfy Beserk and GFI CHINESE NEW YEAR for your wins
• Launched new twitter competition featuring the best #plays-of-the-week, twitter threads of GFC art — completes end of January so make sure to submit!
• We are still looking for Battle Royale Testers, message guru if you are interested
• Reminder: winter challenge until the end of Chinese New Year on Feb 1, 2023
• Guru to spearhead new onboarding process, if you have thoughts and ideas please reach out to him

A: Game and Web 3 Development

2023 ROADMAP

• We won’t be publishing an official roadmap because it takes away the freedom for us to pivot when needed or change direction but we believe it will be useful to share two key directions (that translates to two features) we are trying to follow:

1. Creating a truly fun to play play-to-own game
2. Creating a larger GFC ecosystem that give utility to existing resources

• GFC was originally developed as a fun game that allowed different characters from different projects to fight with each other for a prize pool, while giving utility to these pfp projects. To some extent this is still our guiding objective, yet along the way GFC’s focus shifted towards play-to-earn and profitability as we introduced our P2E game mode
• However it is clear now that a game which ONLY relies on P2E to attract players is unsustainable. After all only playing the game for profits imply more selling than buying of assets, and with more assets being dumped, any game would go from profitable to play to unprofitable (e.g Axie), the Twitter thread below explains this well:

• As we have emphasized throughout the development of our game the main focus has never been creating a game that is profitable to play but rather creating a fun to play game, because this is the only sustainable way to retain players, in the thread above this is listed as one of the three solutions to building a sustainable game loop — “build an engaging social game to make people spend $ for fun”
• So the important question goes back to: ‘how can we continue to build out a game that is genuinely fun-to-play?’
• We hear the community and recognise the issues with the current 3v3 P2E model that makes it feel ‘unfun’, it feels P2W and unbalanced with no real progression beyond a certain point, as well as certain reoccurring bugs that ruins the fun
• Here is how we plan to solve these problems:

1. It feels too P2W and unbalanced

Better bots and match-making can improve the experience but it can’t solve the root problem because eventually you have to play with other real players, and without a sufficiently high DAU you will always run into players significantly stronger than you, unless you keep playing with the same people over and over again.

Asset holders who paid for certain assets believe they should have a noticeable difference in-game while new players feel that this is too P2W and the game feels unbalanced. We have been trying to balance weapons and characters for the last several months to hit the perfect balance but this balance is extremely hard, if not impossible since pleasing one side often upsets the other.

We believe solving this requires a completely new mode, a mode where assets and characters roughly have the same stats so it feels balanced. A mode where the rewards or profitability cannot be the main reason for playing as not to attract the wrong type of players. We believe the up and coming Battle Royale mode could be this new game mode.

2) No real progression

Games require players feeling a sense of progression and traditional MOBA games do this with cosmetics skins and items or unlock of characters, this is hard to replicate effectively in web3 because any characters or items that aren’t NFTs are often regarded as ‘useless’, players prefer for these items to have some real utility.

And so looking towards Wolf game we can see one of the reasons as to their popularity and success which is their ability to create new game after new game, each game creating utility and demand for the rewarded resources from their previous game. In fact, the team has been considering the idea on creating a new game/ mini-game that burns or requires staking of existing resources, which in GFC’s case is $GCOIN, weapons, key frags, keys since 6 months ago and even as far as when we first mentioned the idea of land.

Our short term focus is still on Battle Royale, however we believe that expanding the GFC ecosystem with new games or mini-games (with ties to land) that can create new utility or demand for existing resources from the GFC ecosystem is also key. This is in the works and we believe this could be ready in 2023 H2.

BATTLE ROYALE MODE UPDATE

As the smart contract development comes close to an end, we are starting to work on the server side logic and features.

Update on essential tasks on BR mode:

1. Smart contracts

All of the BR related smart contracts have been reviewed and tested. It will be deployed on the Mumbai testnet to be tested alongside the backend services later down the line.

2. Server (Record to endgame state)

Development on the endgame state record started right after the smart contract development had been completed.

We are working on the customisation on the endgame state logic to tailor for BR mode. When it is complete, we will be releasing an internal game build with the new logic to test this functionality internally. Development on this feature have started right after the smart contract development have been completed.

3. Server (Key vault that can call to smart contract)

We have also started working on the key vault related logic.

The key vault acts as a crypto wallet that has permission to interact with the game master contract, it will be in charge of transferring and burning the ticket NFTs via the GM contract. The private key and seed phases are generated on the server itself and never to be accessed by anyone, the key vault will run on its own through predetermined logic without any manual operations.

4. Server (Providing API endpoints for the game)

While the endgame state record and key vault are being worked on, we have also started the development process on the API endpoints for the game.

There will be API endpoints used to check whether a player is qualified for participating in BR. We will start development on this feature after the smart contract and the other server-side tasks, as we won’t need it until later on in the development process.

B: Business Development & Marketing

We are excited to announce that we, Galaxy Fight Club, are official launch partners of the Fractal Polygon launch.

Fractal is a tournament platform that is now supporting Polygon based games. Polygon Studios and Fractal decided that Galaxy Fight Club is the perfect game to become an official Launch Partner for their collaboration and partnership kick-off.

This partnership shows how far ahead we are from other games, not only when it comes to game development but also for business relations and execution. We are and will continue to work at the highest level of quality to ensure GFC will remain a leader especially when it comes to Polygon based games.

As part of this partnership, you can expect tournaments hosted directly on Fractal with more exciting prize pools and other exciting events and collaborations.

Furthermore, we were live on RugRadio on Monday, January 23rd. If you missed it, make sure to check out the replay here -

JavaScript is not available.

Next week, we will be going live on Twitter with our friend Saint from Lost Realms! Ado and Yas are invited to their “Founders Series”, so make sure you tune in!

The Twitter Space will be held on Friday, January 3rd at 11:30 am EST.

To set your reminder, simply head over to our Discord Events tab — https://discord.gg/Bqw9sfJf?event=1067771844117151744

Speaking of Twitter — Now that our Twitter Impact Program has been concluded, we would love to hear the communities opinion on weather we should launch another campaign through both NFTimpact and GlowLabs.

We think that the Twitter Impact Program definitely helped boost the level and the quality of engagement, content and overall feedback from our community but also from the web3 space as a whole.

We would love to hear your opinion on those campaigns and how we can structure them in a way that makes participating even more rewarding and fun for you!

Additionally, we are exploring various other initiatives including sponsorships of events, tournaments or immersive in-game ad placements (like a sponsored map, skins etc).

Currently, we are in final stages of negotiations with a few web3 companies who are interested in pursuing an advertising campaign like this, mainly to be kicked-off alongside the Cross-IP Championship.

Finally we are still recruiting!

GFC is still recruiting for an open position in the field of marketing and business development / partnerships.

It is absolutely crucial for this person to operate at the highest level of professionalism and more importantly to know their way around the web3 space. Previous experience in working for a gaming company is preferred but not required.

If you think that you are the right person for this position, please send your CV and cover letter to yas@galaxyfightclub.com & ado@galaxyfightclub.com

Please note that due to the amount of applications, we won’t be able to respond to every single one.

C: Community

Upcoming Events:

• February Slate of tournaments to be released in next few days, will be similar format (pick one event). If players are suspected and found to be playing multiple events from multiple accounts they (and possibly the guild) will receive permanent bans from future cash events!
• IF you have thoughts about weapons points, chat with Guru in General chat before they are finalized for February
• Wildcard has a slight delay (about a week) to coordinate with some KOL. Mx will have update soon, looking like February 5 9am EST
• Group Stage for Cross-IP will begin in the days immediately following Wildcard

1/17 $1k Tournament:

Congrats to GFI team Chinese New Year, appropriately named for this victory! With only 6 Weapons Points available we saw some CLASSIC team builds featuring a number of Flare Guns, Plasma Orbs, Flamethrowers and Space Guns! Shockingly the winning team was the only one to use the ECHO CHAMBER and its wall bounce skills instead of the flare gun. GFI skills with the echo chamber and the teamwork of the flamethrower/orbs combo proved to be too much for the competition as they went undefeated throughout the event, very impressive.

Shout out to Degen and 2CG for rounding out our top 3, was a well fought tournament from top to bottom.

1/20 $1k Tournament:

Another great tournament and turnout, with another dominating performance but one of GFC most feared teams, Beserk from Comfy. With 8 total points we saw the champions opt for some classics, Flare Gun, Orbs and Flamethrower. The Orbs and flamethrower dealt massive damage while the Flare gun sat back and cleaned up the messes…. Think its time to bump that flare gun back up on the weapons points table!

Wildcard: To be delayed by a week. Final date coming soon from Mx and Guru.

Reminders: CHRISTMAS EVENT running until February 1.

Submit your twitter post entries for a shot to PICK YOU PRIZE!!! You have until the end of January to submit. Can be twitter thread, art, gameplay footage — just make sure to put it on twitter and tag the team!

New Onboarding:

We know Galaxy Fight Club is a complex ecosystem, and that’s part of what the community loves about it. We also know that it is time to help make it easier for new members to understand all that is going on here. Guru will be spearheading a new onboarding process with game guides, ecosystem guides and GFC basics to make sure new people can get a feel for what we are doing without having to spend hours searching for it. If YOU think you know what’s best and how to guide new community members please reach out to Guru for further discussion. We already have a few committees formed but if there are enough interested parties we can create a new user onboarding committee to help talk through the best ways to approach this revamp.

We are committed to a strong 2023, it begins with giving new entrants a smooth and exciting experience when they step into our world.