Oasys Fund Backed by Giants including SEGA, Korean Studio Leverages Audience & IP to Enter Web3 with METAPIXEL & Other News
Gm Watchers! Welcome to another weekly newsletter, bringing you the hottest business and tech news at the bleeding edge of gaming.
Big News
Oasys Ecosystem Fund Backed by Giants Including SEGA
Earlier this month, Singapore-based Oasys launced an ecosystem fund meant to drive mass adoption of blockchain gaming. The Fund will prioritise early-stage projects that are focused on building out the Web3 gaming ecosystem, including decentralised gaming apps, infrastructure, liquidity venues, and game studios.
Oasys Director, Daiki Moriyaka said:
"We've seen the staggering growth and resilience of the blockchain gaming industry over the past year, but we also recognise that recent developments in the adjacent crypto space have inevitably created uncertainty. With the launch of our Ecosystem Fund, we want to offer the best emerging projects the opportunity to continue building and scaling. We remain steadfast in our vision to bring blockchain gaming to the masses."
Importantly, this fund is supported by some of the biggest names in the gaming industry – Bandai Namco Research, SEGA, Ubisoft, Netmarble, WeMade, Com2uS and Yield Guild Games.
Please note that SEGA and Ubisoft have already been involved with the gaming-optimised blockchain, specifically by being part of 21 initial node validators. We covered this September last year, you can read more on it here.
Fractal Expands Beyond Solana, to Polygon
On January 24th, Polygon Labs announced their partnership with Fractal, a blockchain games marketplace where players can discover, buy and sell gaming NFTs.
Fractal’s expansion to Polygon will mean more games to discover for players who use the platform, as well as their product F Suite being made available to developers in the Polygon blockchain ecosystem – which includes an NFT launchpad, marketplace, tournaments, developer SDK, game launcher as well as Sign-in with Fractal.
Polygon will reportedly also be making a strategic investment in the platform, following in the footsteps of Paradigm and Multicoin Capital who led Fractal’s $35 million seed round back in early 2022.
In co-founder Justin Kan words for GamesBeat:
“We want to be where all the games are – the most anticipated game developers wherever they will be.”
Evidently Polygon continues to be a trailblazer in the Web3 gaming space, and at this stage of the market, focusing on attracting game developers makes more sense than focusing on player/user acquisition. Where the best games are, the players will come.
Korean Studio Leverages their Audience & IP to Enter Web3 with METAPIXEL
Korean game studio NPIXEL was founded in 2017 and achieved unicorn status ($1 billion+ valuation) in 2021 – holding the record for fastest unicorn status in Korean game industry history. Which is really saying something. Read more about them here, they have a lot in the works and a massive audience.
Currently, they are focused on leveraging their brand awareness and the creative potential of their flagship IP Gran Saga by building METAPIXEL – a metaverse, or in other words an ecosystem of games. Built on Aptos.
Read the full article here where Lucas Ko, head of Web3 gaming at METAPIXEL, explains in which ways GSU goes beyond the definitions of a traditional game. A project to watch.
METAPIXEL official links: Discord | Twitter
Treasure Ecosystem Continues to Grow
There are a couple of new additions to the TreasureDAO ecosystem.
Firstly – MetaFab, a games tech protocol making web3 games frictionless. How? Well for a start, every blockchain transaction or interaction is “magically handled under the hood”.
They also provide developers with simplified APIs, further easing the game-making process: “all MetaFab systems automatically handle the deployment of necessary smart contracts to your blockchain(s) of choice from our pre-written templates. You own and have full control over these deployed contracts. These contracts are audited, open source and proven at scale.”
Secondly – Bitmates, a pixel MMO game where players can explore, gather resources and socialise. For the time being, you need to own a Bitmate NFT to play, although their Beta launch in 2 months time will be open to all.
See a summary of the ecosystem thus far. Kudos to fritten.smol for making it.
Bitesize News
Immutable X shares their Outlook for Blockchain Games in 2023
Saudi Arabian PIF Gaming Investment Plans
Rainmaker Games Announces $4.7 million Seed Round
