The First Web3 Game On The Epic Games Store
A Wild West Battle Royale
Statement:
RE3W was not paid by Team Grit or Gala Games to produce, distribute, curate, demonstrate, or advocate for its company. Any paid writing will be marked with a “#AD”.
Before we dive into what the game is offering, it’s important to note that the following details and writing are based on youtube gameplay tests, the company website, Gala Games events, other journal publications, and digital store listings. Aside from well-crafted concept art and imagery, we have not played this title and our report of this company/game may change as we play the game ourselves. We will be giving an overview and hope to do follow on write-ups as the game is released to the general public.
You can find the direct website here:
https://www.grit.gg/
Epic Games Store Size
It is important to note the significance of having web3 native games listed on the Epic Games Store. As one of the largest digital stores for PC games in the world, Grit will have ample opportunity to reach the traditional gaming market. If Grit is a failure -however that is categorized - it will be related to the game itself and not its ability to be distributed. Epic Game Store distribution is important because we have seen many web3 games claim failure due to lack of distribution or blockchain technology that cannot scale. Now, we are going to see where web3 game mechanics can succeed or fail without narratives around technological or distribution limitations.
Here is the size of the Epic Games Store by the numbers:
“There are now over 194 million Epic Games Store PC users, an increase of 34M from 2020. Daily active users peaked at 31.1M, and peak concurrent users reached 13.2M. December’s monthly active users peak reached 62M users, an increase of 11% from last year’s peak of 56M.”
“ We now have 917 titles for sale on the Epic Games Store, nearly doubling what we had available to customers in 2020. About $840M was spent through the store in 2021, up 20% from 2020. Third-party games represented 36% of all sales with more than $300M in player spending, a 12% increase from 2020.”
“Many developers and publishers collaborated with us over the year to give away 89 free games worth $2,120. Over 765 million free games were claimed by players, bringing those titles to a new audience. 76 free games broke their peak concurrent user records on PC, with an average of 13 times their all-time records! That’s incredible engagement.”
“If you played a game from the Epic Games Store in 2021, you were part of a community that spent 6.2 billion hours in-game.”
- Epic Games Store 2021 Year In Review
The People Behind Grit
Before we talk about Grit, we want to take a dive into the team - as well as the history - behind the games launched and sold prior. We found that many traditional gaming journals did not cover previous game releases nor did they touch on the success or failure of these past titles. While past performance is not always indicative of future results, we should hope that Grit is created by a staff that has made successful traditional web2 games.
Team Grit, the studio/publisher behind the game, was started by Bob Berry and Jon Mavor. The co-founders previously created “Planetary Annihilation” and “Monday Night Combat”.
Bob Berry's background:
“With a proven skill set that spans game and real-time 3D engine design, software and business development, entrepreneurship, crowdfunding, virtual reality technology, and web and back-end services development, Bob Berry has been a leader in the software industry for over two decades.
Bob founded Uber Entertainment with Jon Mavor in 2008. Uber’s first game title, Monday Night Combat (MNC) was released in 2010 on the Xbox 360, in 2011 via Steam and in 2012 as a free-to-play (F2P) sequel, Super Monday Night Combat. In 2014, Uber launched Toy Rush, their first F2P mobile title and on Sept. 5, released the grand scale RTS Planetary Annihilation, after raising more than $2 million via Kickstarter.
Recognizing that game developers prefer to focus on game play rather than developing services to support the game, Uber spun off PlayFab, Inc. in 2014 which offers Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) based on the UberNet technology platform. The UberNet platform, on which Bob was a key developer, powers the back end for all of Uber’s games as well as several other third party titles. At the beginning of 2015, PlayFab closed a $7.4 million Series A round led by Benchmark Capital. PlayFab was acquired by Microsoft in 2018.
Bob has served on the Board of Trustees for the KidsQuest Children's Museum in Bellevue, Washington since 2011 and is also a member of the Bellevue Rotary Club.”
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-berry-254941/
Jon Mavor’s background:
“A Game Engine technologist and Entrepreneur, Jon has spent the last two decades in video game business development, technical direction, and product design.”
Sources:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmavor/
Before Grit: “Planetary Annihilation”
“Planetary Annihilation” is an RTS set in a Sci-Fi universe where robots are out for blood and humans have long ceased to exist. The initial reviews for the game from the video games critics side were not great (Metacritic, IGN, Eurogamer, PC Gamer), but the fan reviews across Steam are reasonable considering the budget and scope of the project. Many of the positive Steam store reviews flooded in when an expansion to the game “Planetary Annihilation: TITANS” was released in late 2015. The original game launched Alpha and Beta testing in 2013, but the final delivery of the game was postponed to early 2014. Delays are quite normal in the gaming industry so this type of delay was not bad.
The game was originally unveiled as a Kickstarter campaign in late 2012 with a goal of raising $900,000 from the public. They went on to raise $2,229,344 from Kickstarter.
Here is the link for the original Kickstarter:
Image: The Kickstarter page for “Planetary Annihilation”
Image: Steam store reviews for the game were ultimately well received.
The title didn’t acquire as many players as it should have considering hundreds of thousands of people watched the reveal trailers on YouTube and had fan-based communities.
Image: A look at “Planetary Annihilation”
Here is a glance at Steam charts, which tracks video game use on the Steam ecosystem.
THIS CHART DOES NOT PROVIDE ALL ANALYTICS ACROSS PLATFORMS AND MAY NOT REPRESENT THE FULL HEALTH OF THE TITLE. THIS CHART IS JUST FOR THE STEAM ECOSYSTEM.
Link:
https://steamcharts.com/app/386070
The highest peak concurrent player count was recorded in January 2017.
Again, this chart does not provide full sales and distribution details. It does demonstrate average interest for the game on a monthly basis across Steam.
Here are several trailers which received a sizeable audience and positive feedback:
“Planet Annihilation” was generally well-received from the RTS gaming community and considering the not great critical review - and a smaller budget by today's standards - it performed as expected. Again despite delays.
We should note, however, the original title and its IP may have been acquired by the remaining team at “Planetary Annihilation”. We don’t have information on what the sale looked like or why the sale occurred.
https://planetaryannihilation.com/news/planetaryannihilation-com-the-future-of-titans-and-pa/
Before Grit: “Monday Night Combat”
“Monday Night Combat” was released in August 2010 and was sold on Steam as well as Xbox 360. “Monday Night Combat” is a third-person shooter / MOBA that places comical cartoon characters in a battle arena. The objective of the game is to destroy the other team's “moneyball”. The game features a class-based character system and would choose between play styles such as tank, support, gunner, healers, etc. The game shared some comparisons to Team Fortress 2.
Image: Characters from “Monday Night Combat”
The game received good critical reviews. IGN, Gameinformer, Eurogamer, Metacritic, and other publications gave the game an above 7/10 rating. Player reviews on Metacritic scored “Monday Night Combat” above 8/10. The game also sold relatively well on Xbox 360. In 2010, the Xbox live indie game and publishing store was called “Xbox Live Arcade” which would allow players to download emerging titles that did not necessarily have physical distribution. The Xbox Live Arcade store was important for many video game studios.
The below chart and credit goes to Gamasutra, a video game publication that was covering the sales across Xbox Live Arcade.
Image Credit:
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31658/InDepth_Xbox_Live_Arcade_Sales_Analysis_October_2010.php
“Monday Night Combat” was released in August 2010. This sales report was recorded in October 2010. Two months after its release, the game sold over 225,000 copies. It’s estimated that “Monday Night Combat” sold over 300,000 copies by 2011.
We currently do not know if “Monday Night Combat” was a success on the Steam store, as the game is over a decade old and with no current players, the Steam server was providing errors when we tried to perform searches.
While we could review Bob Berry and Jon Mavor’s performance with the F2P mobile title, “Toy Rush”, that seems unnecessary. We have chosen to highlight “Planetary Annihilation” and “Monday Night Combat” because we want to provide a history of their experiences with PC and console games. Their latest game, Grit, is currently a PC title and could have a console port in the future.
Grit With Gala Games Today And Potential Gameplay
Gala Games recently hosted an in-person event called Galaverse Europe in Malta, where they showcased the next web3 games in their pipeline. One of those announcements was Grit, with the additional reveal that they would work with Epic Games store on the release of the new title. We currently don’t know what the deal between Gala Games and Team Grit was to join the Gala ecosystem. We do know that Gala Games wrote about their partnership with Team Grit as early as February 15th, 2022 and the deal was subject to approval by the node operating community of Gala:
https://blog.gala.games/gala-meets-grit-f02bc6b77e5
Grit is a spin on the never-ending battle royale genre. Set in the Wild West, the game is expected to feature multiple game modes and designated Western-themed locations such as a town square, dusty plains, railroads, and more.
Built on Unreal Engine, Grit is well into production. The expected launch date is sometime in late 2022. We actually saw playtesting as early as last year, before Team Grit partnered with Gala Games or the Epic Games Store.
Image: Grit is still listed on the Steam Marketplace at the time of writing
Steam currently has a no NFT policy on any game sold on its platform. So we’re surprised to still see this listing at the time of writing.
Youtube channels such as “ChocoTaco” have already tested this game. Here’s a link to gameplay demonstrated on August 19th, 2021:
Image: Gameplay shots of Grit from the Steam Marketplace
Based on the gameplay we have watched, we will break down some of the core aspects of a Grit battle royale match.
THE GAMEPLAY IS LIKELY TO CHANGE BEFORE THE PUBLIC LAUNCH.
Match Start:
Similar to PUBG, Warzone, Apex Legends, and others, every match starts with dropping from an aerial vehicle. In Grit, each player is on a steampunk-like blimp that will allow deployment onto the battlefield.
Weapon Pickups:
Based on footage, it appears each player can pick up a variety of weapons that have a designated rarity to them. Similar to Apex Legends, some weapons may have additional attachments that increase their rarity. We also noticed a perks system similar to Warzone. There may be an ability to pick up cards that alter weapon abilities, improve rarity, or create player boosters such as additional running speed. Please note that rarity has nothing to do with an NFT. Weapon rarity has to do with pickups that are used to win a game within one match. These rarities likely won't carry over in what is called a loadout system.
Armor and Throwable Pickups:
In gameplay footage, we noticed that cowboy hats seem to be involved in the pickup system. It’s possible certain cowboy hats act as helmet plating against headshot damage. We also noticed a pickup slot for backpacks (used to carry more items), dynamite (likely grenades or claymores), various ammo types, and possibly torso armor plating. There is also something called a “Soul Coin”. We believe that could be used for something called showdown, which is similar to the “Gulag” in Warzone.
Vehicles (Horses):
When it comes to traversal, Grit has various horses scattered across the map that you can use to bridge distances faster. It seems likely that horses might have level types of breed types. It’s also possible those horses may have different perks. Similar to vehicles you would see in other battle royales.
Time To Confrontation:
One of the biggest concerns regarding a battle royale is how player movement flows around an open map.
Do the points of interest create key confrontation spots between players? How long does it take for a player to reach a confrontation? Are there enough weapon drops and vehicles to speed up confrontation without creating complete chaos?
It’s a difficult balance that many web2 games fail on. We did notice some potential concerns around points of interest and confrontation times during the game footage we watched.
Showdown (death round):
Similar to Warzone, Grit appears to have a mode that initiates when a player is eliminated called showdown. A player 1 will fight in a close-quarters match against player 2 who was also eliminated. The winning player will be brought back to life and given a second chance to compete in the battle royale match. This is an interesting feature, but already exists and thus is not groundbreaking.
Of course, there are a lot of mechanics we are not highlighting here. This game is further ahead of other web3 games we have reviewed that are close to launching in 2022. However, there is not a core feature that we have seen that really makes this game stand out. Wild West as a theme may just not be enough.
Quoting a game developer friend of RE3W:
“I think the BRs that survive are the ones with specific traits that stand out.
Fortnite: First AAA BR game to hit consoles and then go cross-platform. Movement is super smooth and the building was a whole new experience that captivated a large group of people.
Apex: Movement and gun gameplay. It can survive because of those traits but will never be a Fortnite because it doesn’t have that “stand out” thing like building.
I think the most important part of a successful game is for the game to have a truly groundbreaking trait that separates them from all other experiences.”
We currently haven’t seen a “key trait” for Grit, but that does not mean it doesn’t exist. As we have said several times in this writeup, this is based on old gameplay from last year and we have not played the game ourselves. We would like to do a follow-up based on playing the game ourselves when it is available.
We have seen many news outlets treat Grit unfairly based on graphics, which actually are not bad. The graphics are quite similar to PUBG when that game was first released and it was a massive success. We are more interested in deeper gameplay mechanics which are more important than graphics.
Grit and Nvidia Reflex?
We noticed Grit was placed on Nvidia’s website which can be seen here:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/ces-2022-reflex-games-monitors-mice/
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/technologies/reflex/
“Gamers and game developers recognize that reducing system latency is key to a great gaming experience and is why there has been such tremendous growth in NVIDIA Reflex’s low latency ecosystem over the past year. Reflex is supported in 8 of the top 10 competitive shooters including Apex Legends, Valorant, and Fortnite. Over 20 million GeForce players compete with Reflex ON each month. And our Reflex Analyzer, which allows players to easily measure system latency, is supported by over 50 mice and displays.”
We did not see many news outlets highlighting this Nvidia integration which we thought was interesting.
Controversy Over The Grit NFT Release:
The biggest red flag for this game came from the NFT drop at Galaverse Europe. This is important to highlight. While not confirmed, it appears Gala Games had a unique Grit NFT drop for physical event attendees. It was presented as a special horse that could be used in-game.
A Twitter user posted an asset for sale in the Unreal Engine store which is nearly identical. The claim is that Grit dropped an NFT that isn’t their own asset.
We will wait for other publications to verify if Grit and Gala Games did in fact release an NFT asset that was a copy of someone else's work; Asset flipping is not wrong, but presenting it as a custom NFT is morally concerning and shortcuts like that could demonstrate the potential health of the game.
Now, regarding NFTs we do know they’re selling, Gala Games marketplace is offering this item below before the game release.
At the time of writing:
4,233/10,000 NFTs have sold for this game (not great, but not horrible).
They sell at a price of .987 ETH, or 24,504.198 Gala tokens.
ETH's current price at the time of writing is $1,447 USD (NFTs likely sold at variable pricing).
It would be beneficial to know who bought these boxes, as many within the RE3W network have not currently made a purchase.
Overall the value and ownership of these NFTs will be entirely reliant on if the game that launches to the market is a success, as it should be.
Another Wild West Battle Royale… Red Dead Redemption 2:
Many will remember Red Dead Redemption 2 as one of the best video games of the 2010s. With a brilliant storyline, astounding graphics, and vast sandbox to explore, it is a must-have game in a collection. It is the first Wild West game to gain real market appeal.
When we saw that Grit was relying on the Wild West as its battle royale feature, we remembered several battle royale modes that already exist in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Make It Count:
“Make It Count is a free-for-all last-man-standing mode which pits up to 15 other players against each other in a limited playing area.”
Just like Battle Royale modes in other games, players are forced together over time by a shrinking border. If you're caught outside the playing area, you'll die.
Unlike many Battle Royale modes, however, in Make It Count you're all armed with the same gear (either Throwing Knives, Tomahawks, or a Bow and Arrows), and there's no scavenging for more weapons and equipment.
Every player will die to a single hit from any of these weapons. You can see the players remaining in the match at the top of the screen under the timer.”
Gun Rush:
“You’ll put your survival instincts to the test, gathering weapons and ammunition while the play area shrinks in this new mode for up to 32 players. Available to play now in Free-for-all and Team variations, where the last one standing wins.”
https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/25o241181798a4/Red-Dead-Online-Beta-Update
Clips of both battle royale-type game modes are easily searchable online.
Key Takeaways:
We felt that many gaming publications were overly harsh in their criticism of Grit before its public launch.
We wanted to provide a fair write-up that showcases some of the positives and negatives of this game.
Positives:
Past team performance
Epic Game listing
Decent initial playtest gameplay
Funded to completion with partners
One of the few NFT-backed games available for 2022
Fun thematics
Negatives:
Potential red flag NFT asset flip drop
Lack of “key trait” that makes the battle royale special
Early playtests had general confrontation and points of interests issues
Not great PR from traditional markets
Red Dead Redemption 2 had past battle royale modes with little desire
We will certainly play this game when it hits public release and come back with an updated review. We think having a web3 game listed on the Epic Games Store is a massive success that should be celebrated.
That wraps up the RE3W newsletter for this week.
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