Building Sustainable Web3 Games with xRaise: A Comprehensive Guide

New economic models that promise to revolutionise the space are constantly emerging in web3 gaming. Unfortunately, most companies that make this promise, end up delivering solutions that are poor derivatives of existing web2 game mechanics.

At xRaise, we have studied the web3 gaming landscape in great depth to understand the nuances of having an open-world game economy plugged into the blockchain.

In this article, we will delve into the innovative solutions offered by our gaming wallet and SDK solutions, and explore how they can be harnessed to build sustainable and engaging game mechanics for web3 games.

1. Choosing NFTs Over Tokens

NFTs are more than just a trend.

NFTs have a huge advantage over tokens when used in web3 games, and this is due to the more speculative nature of tokens versus that of NFTs. With NFTs, the focus becomes more about the gameplay and less about the price of the tokens used, which helps players focus on their play and not on making short-term profits.

Hence, NFTs end up offering a multi-dimensional value distribution system. Tying your game to multiple game assets (different NFT collections) offers a far more engaging experience than restricting it to one fungible token. This experience can be expanding by having interconnected NFTs (Hero character NFTs, Skill Card NFTs, Rune NFTs, each with its own slots and characteristics).

Game inventory.

As we know, with many different types of NFTs comes a need for Inventory in your game to store items that the player collected, earned or crafted. NFT items can be stored completely on the blockchain, but in this case, every element added requires a transaction.

xRaise’s Wallet Sessions features helps here. With Sessions enabled, players can edit and modify their inventory items without having to sign multiple transactions. Standardising inventories with xRaise SDK can help your players explore their assets across different games, and give rise to interoperability across partner games if required.

2. Scaling Revenue with Cosmetics

Cosmetic options available in PUBG.

Cosmetics is a great secondary revenue stream for games. Having a fancy skin or different coloured hair options allows players to express themselves with no negative impact on the gameplay or economy. In fact, cosmetics and other “expressive” features like character bases, virtual real estate, and decorations for your bases help sink earnings back into the game.

But for cosmetics to truly work, your game needs to have a strong branding or a highly social, expressive player base — only hardcore whale players spend money on cosmetics — so keep a note of that.

These cosmetic traits and add-ons can be stored on blockchain by creating as the items of special type and linking to the game items if required. Peer-to-peer asset trading is also a potential feature to think about.

These can be configured easily with the xRaise SDK.

3. Redefining Rewards with Pool Systems

Traditional reward systems often lead to supply inflation as player counts scale up. Axies, once listed at a floor price of $340, can now be grabbed for less than $1.

A good solution here would be to have well-thought reward systems. Games can control reward pools from which players can be paid out recurring rewards.

There are a few different approaches to managing the reward pool size and distribution:

• Daily calendar rewards: Give users the additional reason to open the game every day by allowing them to collect daily bonuses. Very easy to integrate with the inventory SDK.
• Quests. Display tasks that the player needs to complete every day, week, and month. Give some resources in exchange for completing these tasks.
• Lootboxes: All players enjoy a game of chance. Lootboxes can be created with custom names, descriptions, rarity, and randomised mint probabilities. These boxes can be programmed to be minted directly to the player’s inventory. When a player opens the lootbox, an item will be randomly chose using a reliable RNG provider like Chainlink.
• Limited offers: Players can be enticed with time-sensitive offers to buy items at a reduced price during a limited period of time. Special conditions like “limited offer for new players”, “limited offer for players returning to the game after a period of inactivity”, can be added.
• Collectibles: You can mint allow players who participated in special events/completed hard levels to mint rare collectibles.
• Energy: Energy mechanics can be used to control the progression speed of a player. Energy decreases with player activity and recharges over time. This helps build a player habit of playing regularly rather than few sessions of long hours. This also protects the game from bots and makes it impossible to collect too many resources in one game sitting.

The best part? All of these techniques can be implemented in just a few clicks by creating the right resources on the xRaise SDK :)

4. Tournaments, Rewards, and Betting

Tournaments, as facilitated by xRaise, can serve as both a competitive arena and a deflationary mechanism for the game’s economy. Tournaments can operate even with just 2 players — and by introducing entry costs and prize pools, tournaments can effectively remove tokens from circulation while rewarding player skill.

Pay-to-win mechanics can also be introduced to give paying players a slight advantage over the non-playing ones. This is a successful model used a lot in mobile gaming and can be implemented sustainably by making sure that the advantages are temporary and will have minimal impact on the game economy. The xRaise SDK allows you to include pay-to-win elements that uses game earnings for payments.

This encourages players to reinvest their earnings back into the game and helps create more demand for your game token (for making those P2W purchases).

Implementing F2P features (using the xRaise Paymaster for Gas Abstraction) lets new players who don’t want to spend money play the game. This is a great way to build up engagement as these free, non-earning players become opponents for paying players. You can also let players bet on the winning probability of their friends or other players, thereby adding another marketplace sink into the foray.

Reward systems for tournaments can be implemented via Reward Pots. Games can pool in the entry fees collected from players and pay out players from it. Additionally, games can further deflate the economy by giving out rewards in the form of non-transferable soulbound tokens, or as cosmetic assets.

5. Playing with NFT Durability

To combat indefinite inflation, xRaise introduces the concept of NFT durability. This system simulates wear and tear on NFTs, requiring players to repair their items periodically. These repairs, which may involve a token cost, help to balance the game’s economy by creating a sink for tokens and ensuring that NFTs don’t provide unlimited earning potential, essentially soft-capping it.

NFTs can have capped earnings in a few different ways.

• Limiting daily game sessions with Energy requirements
• Requiring NFTs to be repaired by burning tokens after certain number of usage, actions, or time
• Limit the amount of times an NFT can be repaired. For example, a sword NFT can be programmed to have a repair capacity of 3. This means that, after 3 repairs, the sword will become unusable and the player will then have to buy/find a new sword

6. Token Streaming for Novel Mechanics

Token Streaming is a powerful web3 feature that is barely used in web3 games. We believe Token streaming will allow games to create new mechanics for token sinks.

xRaise Wallet natively supports token streaming, and we’ve come up with a lot of cool ways to implement it.

Like, what if we could tokenise the HP, MP, or spell effects?

For example, games can tokenise the effects of a Spell/Potion as a Token Stream.

Players can “use” 10 $GAME tokens to use a Defence Potion, which stays active for a fixed time interval. This can work as a Token Stream, where 10 tokens are streamed from the player’s wallet to the game’s Burn Wallet, and the duration of the stream is how long the potion will last.

The result? A verifiable, on-chain representation of a Game Effect (here, Potion), and more advanced players can directly interact with the smart contract to create new Potion strategies.

7. More xRaise SDK Features

• Transactions Batching: Batching allows games to combine different actions into a single transaction. Transactions are already very cheap because xRaise wallet works on L2 networks such as zkSync, and batching further helps by making the player UX feel more like a game and less like a crypto app.
• Subscriptions to Game Passes: xRaise Wallet allows players to subscribe to automatic payments of weekly and monthly subscriptions money flows. Subscriptions are natively supported by xRaise wallet and can be charged without interruptions. Players can manage or cancel subscriptions in his wallet.
• Achievements. Achievements are a core part of playing a game, and xRaise SDK can be used to create and add on-chain achievements to motivate players to explore all the game mechanics.

Conclusion

In the Web3 era, the line between players and investors is blurring. Players are no longer just consumers; they are active participants in the game’s economy and its success.

xRaise lets developers have the tools they need to build sustainable, engaging, and profitable game economies that empower players and redefine what it means to play and participate in a game.

If you’re a game or game developer looking to get in touch with us, drop an email at hello@xraise.io, or join our discord here: https://discord.gg/5QN4zXCHgp

Learn More About xRaise on:

website: https://www.xraise.io/

docs: https://docs.xraise.io/

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DISCLAIMER

xRaise develops open-source software and self custodial wallet but does not independently provide, manage, or oversee the Protocol or any blockchain network. The Services are created to help users engage more conveniently in-game, dApp services.

xRaise is self-custodial. You will retain full control of the digital assets stored in your wallet at all times, and xRaise will never assume custody of, or exert any control over, those digital assets. xRaise will not have access to, take possession of, or otherwise have the ability to control the digital assets stored in your wallet.

WE DO NOT guarantee any profits or rewards, and any involvement in this project is entirely at the participant’s own risk. Participation in this project is done solely at the discretion of the individual, and any potential risks should be thoroughly evaluated prior to involvement.

Please note that owning and investing in RAISE token does not guarantee rewards, profits, ownership of company shares, or similar benefits. The value of token can be volatile and is subject to market fluctuations, which may lead to partial or total investment losses. We do not guarantee the future value of our token, nor do we provide investment advice or recommendations. Consequently, we strongly recommend conducting your research and assessing your personal risk tolerance before making any investment decisions. Mentions of potential exchange listings are purely hypothetical, and there is no guarantee that they will materialize. All investments inherently involve risk, and individual investments do not ensure actual results or returns. Investors bear sole responsibility for any investment decisions they make.