By Dapper Labs, the startup that created Cryptokitties in 2017, recently unveiled its latest ethereum-based game, Cheese Wizards, last Friday. The game has since already acquired 973 players who have so far purchased 4,470 fighters as per a statement from Bryce Bladon, co-founder of Dapper Labs.
The bulk of the ether spent on these digital wizards will go towards prizes. So far, 607 ETH has been collected, which equals to roughly $190,977 at the current trading price.
Bladon told the press that the first tournament, which will see these wizards duelling until one is left standing “the big cheese,” will take place over several weeks and will kick off this summer.
Bladon stated:
“Players summon wizards, each of which is a non-fungible token (NFT). The winner gets a portion of the losing wizard’s power. … Using rock-paper-scissors logic, a winner is picked for each of the five spells cast.”
Since this game involves prizes of monetary nature, users from Canada, Arkansas, Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, South Carolina and Tennessee will not be permitted to participate due to the relevant regulations in those jurisdictions remaining unclear. However, users in these districts have already created ways to develop external apps so that they can take part in the game. As many as five different projects have already been developed on the game, including a prediction market to a decentralized exchange platform for the trading of wizards.
Furthermore, Dappa Labs has acquired more than $15 million in investments in 2018 from funds including Venrock, Google’s GV, Samsung Next and Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures. Much like the studio’s successful debut CryptoKitties, the self-custodized NFTs in Cheese Wizards are designed to attract unique features which could ultimately provide more use cases beyond the tournament itself.
Glenn Eggleton, a Canadian player, has already developed a leader board as well as an external battle game in an effort to experiment with the partially open-source game.
Eggleton told the press:
“Building decentralized applications [dapps] is extremely time-consuming because the industry is so very young. With each new dApp, the technology gets better and better. As a community, we are funding the development of that technology by playing, which I think is super cool.”
Bladon agreed with this, stating that the extensibility – which in a nutshell means the ability to the asset from the original game and use it elsewhere is the core factor for all games developed by Dapper Labs. “Cheese Wizards” utilizes the firm’s ethereum wallet, Dapper, but it is also compatible with many other crypto wallets.
Bladon also stated that the most striking lesson the startup learned from CryptoKitties was the importance of nurturing a community which builds upon and contributes to a healthy ecosystem. This is of course, what sets dApps apart from the myriad of other gaming experiences out there.
Thus, Bladon stated that Dapper Labs has plans to create new opportunities and support for devs who are seeking to develop tools, features and similar gaming experiences to that of “Cheese Wizards.”
He stated:
“[Community] is the one thing you can’t really fake at scale. A lot of blockchain games are trying to appeal to the mass market by sacrificing the decentralization and using side chains or hosted solutions. We want to go to the other side of the spectrum and create a game with the community for an experiment with user behaviour in crypto networks.”
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