Just in case you don’t already know what a PlayToEarn (P2E) game is, it’s a game that you play which actually makes you money. That’s right, real money. This is a huge shift from the normal Pay2Play/P2P or Free2Play/F2P (spelled microtransactions) dynamics that have dominated the gaming world for over a decade. P2P and F2P won’t simply go away, but they will blend with P2E, making the games themselves self sustaining (meaning you earn more in the game than you spend).
The game I’m creating is a crafting game, which allows you to slowly progress by crafting items, and unlocking new ones to craft which are more valuable. You can then take those items and:
- Equip them as gear on your pirate crew (questing/battling heroes)
- Sell them in your shop to NPCs
- Sell them on the in-game marketplace for gold or gems
- If they are rare (legendary or above), you can take them out of the game as NFTs
You have a small chance to generate a Legendary item, and this will only happen once you’ve completely mastered the item (each item has multiple stages of mastery).
Because crafting an item has a duration, say 20 seconds, and mastering it completely requires that you craft it a specified number of times (50 for instance), this means that there’s a time-element involved in getting a craftable to a point where you can generate NFTs with it; which in this case would be 50 * 20 / 60 = around 16 minutes with one crafting slot. These numbers scale up the higher the craftable tier is, so imagine it could take you a few months of grinding to master that powerful high tier item that everyone is looking for, and then a bit longer to get lucky enough for a Legendary rarity.
The concept of crafting is merely the backbone to the game which gives it the base structure/genre. However, the fun doesn’t stop there. Along with crafting is the concept of your Crewmates which you can send of to Quest for components (used for crafting higher tier items), experience (to level them up), and loot. You equip your crewmates with the gear you’ve been crafting, and it helps them fight stronger quests which in turn give you more components; allowing you to craft more and stronger items. There’s a lot more to them, but I don’t want to spoil the fun too much :)
The last core piece of gameplay (in this first version) is the Guild mechanics. You can (and should!) join a guild, as it will greatly speed up your progress. There is a concept of investing in this game, where you put your earned money into workers as an investment for your future. These workers give you buffs based on their level such as crafting speed bonuses, unlocking new craftable types, and the ability to have more guild members. The investments are aggregated guild-wide, meaning you all enjoy the benefits of the sum of all guild member investments.
As of right now, I have the hard stuff already completed. That means all of the game logic is written (and tested!). I created it as a shared C# library so that I could test core functionality without needing to have Unity3d open.
That doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of work left! Right now I’m linking up all of the functionality to the game. After that I’ll need to create a bunch of assets (3d models mostly) to complete the gameplay. I intend on a little bit of duplication to start with in that aspect, as two swords looking the same isn’t the end of the world, and will allow me to release the game earlier and get feedback quicker.
— — —
Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/playbootyloot where I’ve started posting daily updates about the game.
