Landowners, Warlords and Farmers Push the Economy of League of Kingdoms Forward
One of the latest promising additions to the blockchain gaming space is League of Kingdoms. Starting from May 25th game studio Nplus Entertainment launched the first pre-sale for its massively multiplayer online strategy game in which players can buy virtual land at a discount. We sat down with CEO Chan Lee to talk about this exciting blockchain game.
Nplus Entertainment is operating from Seoul in South Korea and Singapore. The team behind the upcoming strategy game already has experience with blockchain games. Under the name NOD Games they worked on Crypto Sword & Magic.
With Crypto Sword & Magic they had approximately 700 daily active users last summer, peaking in October with more than 800 active players. During those months this blockchain role playing game had an average of 20 thousand dollars in trading volume per month. One year later the blockchain-powered role playing game still attracts an active community. On a daily basis there are around 350 active players, underlining that these game makers know how to keep their audience entertained. However, the value of the transactions dropped significantly towards an average of 3300 dollars per month.
Using the lessons learned from Crypto Sword & Magic, the team began working on League of Kingdoms during the second half of 2019. This blockchain-powered game needs to attract more gamers, and keep them engaged for a longer time.
Not a direct copycat
Just by looking at the screenshots, mobile gamers might notice that League of Kingdoms looks quite a lot like Rise of Kingdoms. However, according to the CEO of the company, League of Kingdoms is more a strategy game like The Game of War, while Rise of Kingdoms requires much more attention from the player. "Your strategy to attack another kingdom doesn’t involve micro-controlling units, therefore there is more focus on the strategic decision and less attention is needed", Lee said.
Differences aren't only seen in gameplay, but can also be found underneath the hood. League of Kingdoms is built on blockchain technology, allowing players to have ownership over land and be productive on those lands. "Landowners can monetize their investment and game time as they receive rewards, while average gamers can also monetize their game time by collecting resources and trading them", the studio boss explained.
In addition the game will feature a blockchain-powered voting and congress system, even though this is still under heavy development and not expected until a few months after launch. Something that's also coming a couple of months after launch, is skins. These cosmetics can increase the power of a city, and are sometimes only temporarily or in limited quantity available.
Getting started should be easy
Nplus Entertainment made it their goal to make the onboarding process as easy as possible for all gamers. Players will only require an email address or social media accounts, like for example Google or Facebook, to get started playing the game. In addition League of Kingdoms is designed to cater the mass market. "Players don't need to know anything about blockchain to enjoy the game. As a result, onboarding to the game will not only be easy, but also free", the South Korean studio boss told Dapp.Review.
Of course players with experience in similar games, like Rise of Kingdoms, will have a natural advantage. They already understand the concept of Strategy MMO gameplay, and therefore League of Kingdoms will be easy to pick up. Even though players won’t really see the blockchain elements in the game, they will surely be there. According to the developers the land tokens are at the core of what this game is all about.
Land is the most important
Out of all tokens that will be available for League of Kingdoms, it's the land token that really stands out. Having a piece of land allows gamers to earn rewards, including resources and cryptocurrencies. The more land someone owns in this game, and the more developed the land is, the bigger their stake in the reward pool will be. A percentage of the in-game revenue will be added to the reward pool. In addition to the financial gains, landowners will also earn five percent of the resources collected from their land. These resources can be obtained daily. After that landowners can use these resources or sell them on a secondary market.
Gamers can buy a piece of virtual land at a starting price of $17.49 for a level 2 land. Lands will come in six levels at launch, and a level 6 land will sell for $167.99. The higher the development level (D-level) of a land, the smaller the available volume will be. However, players can always level up their level by playing the game, collecting resources and consuming the in-game currency crystals on their own land. When the value of a piece of land increases, it also affects the surrounding lands.
During this pre-sale only little over 7 thousand pieces of land will be sold at a 30 or 20 percent discount. This is approximately 11 percent of the total supply. As an incentive, gamers will also get crystals as a pre-sale bonus. At the time of writing, the first land pre-sale is happening and they sold 64.74% with a total value of 298 ETH, which equals 60,494 dollars. The other 58 thousand land will be available without a discount nor any crystals, when the game launches.
Being an investor in the game
In total there are 65.536 pieces of land. Each piece of land has a 4 by 4 scale, allowing space for 16 kingdoms. The entire continent will be full when all the 1.048.576 kingdoms are in use. Nplus Entertainment will then decide to open a new continent for players to join. As a result landowners will then control the same piece of land on two different continents, or you might say in two different dimensions.
"If we would sell the land on a newly opened continent, the value of outstanding NFTs could have been diluted", Chan Lee told us. In that case Nplus Entertainment would make some quick money, but the in-game economy would not have been sustainable. With the current model, landowners are also stakeholders into the ecosystem. Lee prefers this concept of a participation economy.
Without a doubt this becomes interesting when League of Kingdoms becomes a successful game. With a monthly revenue of 10 million dollars, every landowner will earn for example an average of 15 dollars per piece of land. Of course this amount will change based on the D-level. "Users don't only invest in a patch of land, but also in the future of the platform itself", Lee concluded.
League of Kingdoms will create its own economy built on the success of a genre, but empowered with blockchain technology. Nplus Entertainment is putting lots of power in the hands of gamers, allowing them to be landowners, warmachines, or farmers. Players will even get to vote over the in-game politics, making League of Kingdoms are very ambitious project you should definitely keep your eyes on.
About the author
Robert Hoogendoorn is a Dutch native with over 15 years of experience in media production. He worked for a variety of magazines, news agencies and video production companies. Currently he's writing about blockchain gaming, utility and adoption for specialized and mainstream media. Follow him on Twitter @nederob.