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🎮Gates of Ethernity🎮

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The crypto version of Pokemon Go?

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Introduction

Augmented Reality blockchain game that integrates real world terrain within the gameplay mechanics. Has a separate game called Cards Of Ethernity where each card is an tradeable NFT. The team looks to add additional experiences to their economy once the main gameplay is out. The team also plans to have multi chain compatibility across networks such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Avalanche.

High Level Token Summary

  • $GOE is the native token in the Ethernity Games ecosystem. It will be used across different game experiences built by the company and not just with the upcoming games.

  • It has a total allocation of 1,000,000,000 tokens No new tokens will be minted by the team.

  • Players can acquire the token through Decentralized Exchanges, gameplay rewards, and staking rewards.

  • Its main utility comes as a currency within the ecosystem.

    • It can be used to purchase NFTs (creatures, adventurers, cards) and other items (treasure chests, keys, battle passes)

    • Used for gas fees/transaction fees as well.

Market Design

Based on OpenSea statistics, 800 Genesis NFTs have been released in February, while another wave of genesis NFTs will be sold on March 25. There are 439 holders of the genesis NFTs and the collection has a total trade volume of 23.9ETH, Having the game accessible and compatible on multiple blockchain networks helps the team manage and reduce congestion from the use of their game.

Player Archetypes:

  • Killers – Users who are looking to compete on the ESports scene

  • Achievers – Users who will play to collect creatures/cards within the ecosystem

  • Investors – Users who are early adopters of the game. These users purchased the genesis NFTs that yield access to specific drops or releases related to the game.

Mechanism Design

There is no mention of any governance procedure or DAO feature within the game, hinting that the project might be centralized to the development team.The games are still early in development, therefore there is limited information on the actual gameplay itself.

Each creature, called Ethernal, has a set of abilities, elemental attribute, a level rating, and statistics:

  • Attack, Defense, Speed, and Dexterity

Each Ethernal also has a special ability and expertise that they can use in Battle:

  • Do damage, reduce incoming damage, heal, block abilities, increase attack miss chance, prevent enemy turn, or build up for next attack.

There is also mention of items that can be used in the game (consumables, traps) and adventurer’s ultimate skill all through a turn based gameplay mechanic. Each PvE encounter can range from 1 to 3 Ethernals that, when defeated, a user can catch and mint on the blockchain to be transferred to their wallets. The card game has not that much information written on the whitepaper about how the game is played, but the team did mention that the Cards Of Ethernity gameplay will have a total of 150 cards that are NFTs and can be tradeable.

In terms of timelines, a playable demo for the card game is expected to be out in April of 2022, while the main AR gameplay is set for release in early 2023.

Token Design

Drivers:

  • Main supply driver for the $GOE token will be its reward emissions (staking, community, or gameplay)

  • Main demand driver for the $GOE tokens will be the purchase of NFTs and items to be used for the game. Additional demand driver for the token are the gas and transaction fees of the protocol.

Allocation and Distribution:

  • A third of the distribution will go to Community and In Game Rewards (15% Each), while the next big allocation will go to the strategic investors of the game.

Risks

Systematic Risk:

Nostalgia played a big factor in the success of PokemonGo. The players were already familiar with the monsters in the game because of the recall power of the Pokemon Franchise. Gates of Ethernity does not have this characteristic and would need to create it from scratch as they are a new franchise.

  • Find a way for users to get attached to the creatures they catch. The goal is to form a personal relationship with the Ethernals through either gameplay features or through lore releases.

Idiosyncratic Risk:

How the team plans to start the game will be crucial. Will it be FreeToPlay with an option to mint the monsters caught into an NFT in order to access certain features of the game or will a user need to purchase a monster first before playing the game?

  • The former asks the question of what features will the FreeToPlay players be limited to? The latter is a question of where do these players get their original creatures from if there no mention of breeding in the game at the moment?

  • To resolve this, a possible solution is opening the game up to certain players first, say early adopters, that hold a genesis NFT or a certain number of $GOE tokens. Let these people catch the creatures first and sell it on OpenSea for other prospective users to use to get into the game. Basically players will need a start Ethernal in order to play the game.

Over inflation of Ethernals. Since the game is aiming to be like PokemonGo, it can be foreseen that there will be an oversupply of creatures, especially the easy to catch ones, in the marketplace. This might cause the selling of creatures to be not as profitable for users, especially at the start of their game journey.

  • This might be where community rewards or in game rewards come into play as an earning solution when there is an oversupply of creatures caught and sold on the marketplace.

    • It Can be in the form of a bounty when you turn in a specific number of a certain Ethernal.

Creatures caught in the game are added to the wallet as an NFT. If a player catches a lot of creatures and these creatures are automatically minted to their wallets, gas fees might be a problem for the user, especially if this causes them to incur a loss.

  • This adds to the previous risk of over inflation of Ethernals as this would make the sale of the creatures not that profitable.

  • A potential solution is storing this data on the game servers first and choosing to mint the creatures into NFTs in the future will save on gas fees.

Sinks can be seen as a problem at the early stage of the game. There seems to be not much fundamental demand drivers for the $GOE token if users can just catch creatures and mint them into NFTs instead of breeding them.

  • Adding a “pokeball” mechanic where users can purchase consumable items that specifically catch these creatures adds a demand driver for $GOE. Introducing more items (like health potions, mana potions, ability increases) that can be purchased using $GOE will also help in this aspect.

  • It is good to note that the team behind the project foresees multiple experiences built around the main game they plan to release. The $GOE token will still be used through these other experiences.

Conclusion

Gates of Ethernity is a promising game if they can pull it off correctly. They do not have the franchise familiarity of PokemonGo, but the core gameplay is there. The game has a very cinematic feel to it, at least based from their trailers and whitepaper, but it has yet to be seen if this can be realized through the game. There are still a lot of questions with regards to the overall gameplay, the economic sinks, and the whole player experience, but more information will be released as the game progresses in its development.