Shrapnel an NFT Shooter - An Avalanche based NFT Game

Overview

The “Dark Zone” mode from The Division and the popular games Escape from Tarkov served as inspiration for Shrapnel’s innovative, extraction-based first-person shooter. In this game, players fight and hunt for exclusive drops in a hyper-aggressive arena called The Zone using NFT weapons and equipment. The UGC (user-generated content) tool created by Shrapnel and based on Unreal 5 can be used to create and alter vanity items, cosmetics, and maps. Shrapnel provides a wide variety of NFTs aimed at different stakeholders, including gamers, artists, curators, and investors.

The game features a single token economy. The $SHRAP coin will see less selling pressure because the only extra rewards for stakes are popular player-created maps or vanity products. The game might balance supply and demand for $SHRAP if the content-generating mechanism is done well and has a huge user base.

The crew behind the video game Shrapnel has won BAFTA and Emmy awards and has previously worked on successful series like HALO, Call of Duty, Star Wars, Hawken, Skylanders, etc. Mark Long, CEO of Shrapnel, formerly oversaw publishing at HBO and Xcloud at Microsoft. One of the most well-known Twitch streamers, Ali “Myth” Kabbani, works as a consultant. Myth has used his Fortnite prowess to amass over 21 million fans on social media. The team is quite the powerhouse but will need a bit of time to live up to its AAA billing.

Gameplay

Extraction-based gameplay

Players enter Shrapnel’s battlefield as “Operators” to fight against other players and extract resources in The Zone. However, they must compete with other Operators and bots, creating an ultra-aggressive battleground within The Zone.

Operators can equip gear (in the form of NFTs) to enable a variety of play styles, each with different strengths and limitations. However, when a player dies, these items might be lost and plundered by other players; thus, players must be vigilant and use the ideal strategy to increase their success rate. Also, strange “Compound Sigma” can be gathered during the game. The looted equipment and resources are safely kept in the players’ inventories and are only owned by the best players who manage to survive long enough.

Shrapnel enhances the strategic component of the game by offering 3 Operator classes of Assault, Survivalist, and Infosec, with different strengths and weaknesses for players to choose from and develop their playstyle.

Players can equip their operators with the right gear for their playstyle before they approach the battlefield. When a player dies, equipment (in the form of NFTs) is dropped, compelling them to take the constantly changing odds of success into account when making every choice.

Successfully obtained loot (NFTs) is kept in the player’s persistent inventory, where it can be used to create loadouts during subsequent gameplay sessions. As the player pool shrinks and extractions become riskier, every choice becomes more crucial.

UGC (User-Generated Content) Tool

The Shrapnel crew has made it very obvious that they want the game to be run by the community. The ability to create vanity things, mint them on the blockchain, and sell their creations on the internal market will allow players to monetize their creations. All NFTs and coins earned in-game can also be staked to cast a vote on proposals for game governance or maps.

In a race to the top system, new maps will enter a competition and eventually face off against rivals once enough players have staked their NFTs or tokens to vote for them.

Winning maps will be developed and integrated into the game.

Players will be able to create unique experiences and build their own matches to capitalize on their skills regardless of which maps from the race are chosen.

Internal tournaments, fantastic awards for the most devoted players, and a market with unique “visibility” settings will all be included in the game. Players with higher NFT stakes will have greater exposure than new players.

Game Economy

A single-token economy will be present in Shrapnel, with $SHRAP being the only coin in circulation. The token will be used to conduct transactions in the marketplace, generate in-game prizes, and stake it to obtain airdrops. It has a total fixed supply of 3,000,000 and a 33% commitment to community incentives.

Airdrops could provide NFT, tokens, or other benefits (eg. discord roles for players).

When the game is fully decentralized and needs node validators in the ecosystem, $SHARP will also be the coin used to award network validators. They’ll take a similar approach to what Splinterlands did with SPS validator nodes to make it more understandable.

With its governance token, $SHRAP, which will first be issued as an ERC-20 token and be moved to the Avalanche Network in the near future, Shrapnel adopts the single token paradigm for its economy.

Staking and Rewards

Interview with Ed Chang

Checkout episode 11 of bullish on gaming with Ed Chang (head of gaming avalabs) to learn more about web3 and Play Shrapnel.

Wrapping It Up

With over 30 talented individuals and decades of combined expertise creating first-person shooter games, Shrapnel has solid concepts. They hold all the necessary cards to create the first moddable, independently developed AAA shooting and extraction game, which would be quite the task in the web3 gaming genre.

The game, however, is still in its very early stages. According to the developers, it’s still in the pre-production phase. You can read the full whitepaper here and follow their Twitter, but don’t expect a real game to come out any time soon, especially due to the current market conditions. Bear in mind that it takes years for massive AAA games to release, and that taking a chance by investing in something this early is not always a good idea. We’re bullish on Play Shrapnel but remain cautious given how long games take. What are your thoughts?

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Shrapnel an NFT Shooter on Avalanche