Source: news.google.com
The third aspect of Illuvium’s highly anticipated “interoperable blockchain gaming” ecosystem launches today (January 6).
Not only is this a major milestone for the Australian-founded project, but also for the Web3 gaming space in general, as Illuvium is a widely touted title within crypto circles as a serious contender for genuine AAA gaming status.
What is Illuvio: Zero? It’s the city-building-style resource generation game that accompanies the other two core aspects of Illuvium: Overworld and Arena (both in beta test modes).
This component is being released in an alpha state and is available for play by any land-owning Illuvium participant. Once it reaches beta status, Illuvium: Zero will be free and open to the public.
The value of owning Illuvium land
Ground? In June of last year, in one of the most embarrassing stages of the ongoing bear market, the Illuvium team conducted a highly successful virtual land sale where 20,000 pieces of land were sold to 5,000 buyers, raising a total of 72 million dollars.
At the time, project co-founder Kieran Warwick told us that owning Illuvium land is akin to owning “a mine that can generate residual income for 10 years.”
Sure, it’s nothing like owning a lithium, gold, silver, or copper mine, but there’s still something to that statement for cryptocurrency fans. In fact, the lands themselves (which have the ability to generate NFTs of in-game assets that can be used to power up in-game actions or sold on the open market) have risen in value in the run-up to the game’s release, increasing at an average of about 48% over the past week.
Illuvium ZERO minimum price is now .5th 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Mn5RhH8pr4
— Fight4ETH ♊ (@Fight4Ethereum) January 5, 2023
Commenting ahead of the event, Co-Founder and Game Director Aaron Warwick said:
“Illuvium: Zero is one of the three pillars of the Illuvium Universe, and players will quickly see the utility of owning Illuvium Land. We can’t wait to see the gameplay strategies unfold as we continue to create the metagame between all of the Illuvium titles.”
Meanwhile, Illuvium CTO John Avery is confident that casual mobile gamers will enjoy what Illuvium describes as Zero’s “simple yet complex gameplay,” not to mention the opportunities to influence the game’s price. from the other two Illuvium games.
“One of the unique aspects of Illuvium Zero is the deep interaction between the in-game economy and real-world markets,” Avery said. “Players can use their in-game industrial complex to craft and transform ERC-20 tokens, leading to interesting possibilities. For example, you can use your in-game factories to convert one token into another to take advantage of small market differences (arbitrage).”
Live Now: Illuvium Insider presents never-before-seen gameplay of the upcoming Illuvium: Zero Private Alpha! 🚀https://t.co/vkkqyznhfx
— Illuvio (@iluvio) January 5, 2023
“We care about the gaming experience”
NFTs are still seeing a backlash from the gaming market in general. And this is despite, or perhaps in part because of, the growing interest and investment that Web3/NFT gaming and metaverse companies are seeing from outside the cryptobubble.
(For example, late last year, the president of Activision Blizzard announced that he was leaving the company to become CEO of blockchain company Yuga Labs, which owns the Bored Apes and CryptoPunks brands.)
Still, Kieran Warwick says that the goal of Illuvium is to change that negative connotation:
“We are built on an Immutable X carbon neutral platform, which eliminates environmental setback. We’re also building our universe with players in mind, which means we care about experience, not the ability to win; if players win within our universe, consider it a bonus.”
Illuvium is expected to open its entire universe of games to the public in mid-2023.
Nothing in this article should be construed as financial advice.
This is not sponsored content, though for full disclosure, the author has some ILV tokens and four Illuvium Land patches, along with some ETH, BTC, and various other crypto assets that he has accumulated over time. Yeah, not exactly risk averse here.
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