What Have We Been Up To
2018 has drawn to a close and it has been a year of great challenges for many of us in crypto as “crypto-winter” has arrived — but there has also been incredible progress too. Admittedly, we’ve been very heads-down on product development, and on our Smart Game Object tech, after the close of our Wave 2 Token Sale. We’ve had several significant milestones to achieve before the close of the year and it’s been encouraging to see the team steam-roll the obstacles typically encountered in game development and in start-up life.
To that end, here’s an update outlining some of that progress:
Game Development
If you’ve been following our various social medias — specifically twitter — you’ll have seen a steady stream of Project Genesis updates thanks to our intrepid community manager Oscar 8CS. For those interested in watching how the meal is made, our Discord channel has been the go-to place to stay up to date with the latest and greatest, as well as join in the conversation with the devs.
Project Genesis
The product team’s focus has been on a ship customization system, a character customization system, space combat weapons systems, space combat physics and controls systems, first person combat and movement systems, AND multiplayer systems on dedicated servers.
This all requires unspeakable amounts of technical and design competency because space combat and FPS are two different modes of play — Project Genesis core developer Christian A. is a UE4 gamedev savant and has been a master at melding these two genres in an intuitive and compelling way. Then there’s all the incredible work that our artists have been crafting: Ed C. on characters, Mark Nicolino on pretty much everything else visual, and Casey P. O’Neill making mad beats and evocative original sound tracks.
We’ll be diving into specifics in future Developer Blog updates in the coming weeks, hosted by our intrepid Producer Deejay Beck. Our Developer Blog updates will be a new feature and they can be found in their full form on our YouTube channel in a week or two.
Alien Arsenal and the Space Drop
In May 2018 we launched our proof of concept mobile app Alien Arsenal: Battle for the Blockchain. This little underdog game demonstrated our design philosophy of making blockchains easy and accessible. Alien Arsenal helped us get our 8 Bit Tokens into thousands of folks’ wallets as a part of a Space Drop (our friendly aliens bring gifts!), prove out our backend technology that allows us to connect games to the Ethereum blockchain, and demonstrated the prototype version of our Smart Game Objects that makes it possible for your aliens (and soon characters and avatars for Project Genesis) to evolve and level up over time. We also got a chance to navigate the Google Play and App Store certification process. Google is known for quite an easy review, whereas Apple has a more stringent quality control review that seems to have presented some challenges for other blockchain-based game and app developers. While any certification process can be nerve racking for developers, our experience was great because we found Apple to be genuinely curious and supportive of blockchain-based development.
Mankind Reborn
In September 2018 we announced our partnership with cyberpunk MMO Mankind Reborn creator Far Frontier Studios. A community driven product, Mankind Reborn is the perfect hardcore game (with an even more hardcore community) to develop our blockchain-based property system with. In a world where life is cheap, and player vs player looting is built into the core economy of the game, having a secure and transferable blockchain-based “safe house” is undeniably valuable.
Blasted Planet
We haven’t talked too much about our next mobile title Blasted Planet (outside of some clever sleuthing by our community), but we can say that it will be built using the Unity engine.
Blasted Planet will mark forays into all of the primary development engines or methods typically found in the games industry: Unreal Engine, Unity, React Native. Our intent is to demonstrate to other developers how to leverage the power of blockchains using their preferred development environments — our philosophy is a simple one: the more developers building great games, the faster user adoption of blockchains will happen.
Press, Social Media, & Community 2.0
In the Press
We’ve been very fortunate to have had some great coverage in 2018. In fact we were covered 206 unique times between external YouTube channels and individual publications. We benefited from over 1,375 article shares and overall we reached over 433,185 people through journalist shares in their individual networks.
Here are a few examples of our most popular articles:
Forbes: How Nintendo, Microsoft Veterans Are Helping Build A Real Metaverse
VentureBeat: 8 Circuit Studios unveils blockchain-enabled deep space survival game Project Genesis
GeekWire: Seattle-based 8 Circuit Studios wants to build the Metaverse with the blockchain
Forbes: Why games are poised to change blockchains forever
The Daily HODL: Nintendo, Microsoft and EA Veterans Join to Create the Future of Blockchain Gaming
EthNews: https://www.ethnews.com/building-the-metaverse-one-block-at-a-time
Social Media & Community
Our friendly and enthusiastic Community Manager Oscar has been on point to facilitate our champion team of dedicated community members and help welcome new members as they arrive. In fact, our community has grown a bit in 2018:
Discord 2579 (+ 1289%)
Twitter 541 (+546%)
- Tweets averaged 100,000 more monthly impressions YoY
Instagram 97 (+900%)
Reddit
- Content shared on REDDIT content generated over 3,000 likes
Facebook 1506 (+753% )
- Breach and Board trailer grew the Facebook audience by over 1500%
YouTube 170 (+229%)
- The D-PARC fly through video generated 62,000 views
Additionally, Oscar has been doing heaps of heavy lifting to retool our social media channels to take advantage of what each platform is well-suited for. Twitter and Discord is where you’ll find the most frequent and “open kitchen” style content. These two social media platforms are great if you are interested in how a video game is made or would like to have more immediate conversations with the team. Facebook and YouTube is where more polished work can be found along with our Instagram. Reddit is primed for posts now and will play a more prominent role as we start ramping up our play-test sessions and open Alpha.
Whiteboard Sessions
In October 2018, we’ve started a series called our Whiteboard Sessions. These are an opportunity for a small number of community members to participate in an exclusive insiders look at how we’re developing Project Genesis. We have complete three sessions already, and the feedback was very positive and instructive — but more importantly, we got to hear directly about what our most active and engaged community members value in gameplay experiences and their insights into where they think blockchains are going to take games in the coming years. If this sounds like something interesting to you, be sure to jump into Discord and join the conversation.
Blockchain Development
On top of all the great progress on Project Genesis, connecting games to blockchains and Smart Game Objects is where we’ve made significant advances. Once we get multiplayer Phase Two completed in February for Project Genesis, we’ll be showing off why we think the blockchain is going to bring a lot of changes to the game industry. From identity to property to cross-game virtual goods, gamers are going to have some incredible options at their disposal.
This is more than just the typical focus on “owning your own stuff” — this is akin to putting something living on the blockchain.
2019: Onward and Upward
In 2019 we will continue the momentum towards blockchain based game development. Our focus will be on product development and we’re racing as fast as we can to get Project Genesis into everyone’s hands.
Calling Project Genesis Test Pilots
We’re already entering into the planning phase for our open Alpha (currently scheduled for mid 2019) for Project Genesis. Before then, for those who can’t wait to get their hands on new tech before anyone else, we are also offering a way for you to play Project Genesis and help guide the direction of development. If you have a knack for breaking things, are meticulous in reporting issues of quality, or are a student of great game design we’d love to consider you for inclusion in our closed play-test sessions.
Sign up on our main site here at https://www.projectgenesis.com
Conferences
Last year we attended a number of game developer events: GDC, E3, PAX West.
Blockchain Gamer Connects
Last year we attended new conference that will be sure to become a player in the blockchain game development industry in the coming years. It is called Blockchain Gamer Connects. Held in San Francisco, there were a bunch of great talks all around. This year we received an invitation to speak at the BG Gamer event (this time in London, UK) on our favorite subject: Building the Metaverse One Game at a Time.
If you’re in London from January 21st to the 22nd, stop by and say “hi”!
Game Developers Conference
GDC starts on Monday, March 18th and closes on Friday, March 22nd in San Francisco. I’ll be attending to catch up on the latest industry techniques as well as meeting old friends and making new ones. If you’re in town, let’s meet up to talk shop!
Stay Tuned
After reflecting on 2018, it’s somewhat surprising how much we’ve accomplished with our small team, but then again, we’re fortunate to have so many talented, experienced, passionate, and dedicated team members building great games and tech to drive the mass adoption of blockchains.
Looking ahead, we’ll have some big announcements for exciting skunk-works projects that the team is exceptionally fired up about. In the mean time, we hope your 2019 is off to a great start and we look forward to you joining us to help push what’s possible with blockchain based games.
Onward and upward!
UPDATE: Added additional social media numbers
About the Author: James Mayo is the Founder and Navigator at 8 Circuit Studios. He’s a grizzled veteran of the games industry — starting his career at Nintendo way back in 1990. You can find him occasionally blabbing about blockchain games on Twitter or LinkedIn.
About 8 Circuit Studios: 8 Circuit Studios is a small independent game company made up of game developers and crypto-enthusiasts with big aspirations. They are working hard to develop rich gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain and whose vision is to contribute to the metaverse one game at a time. For more on 8 Circuit Studios, be sure to follow on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or join the conversation in Discord.
