FOTA: Fight of the Ages
A Tripe-A MOBA Fantasy Game
The 2021 GameFi Boom
This year has been an incredible time of innovation and expansion for blockchain gaming or what is popularly known as GameFi. GameFi is a play-to-earn business model within blockchain technology that integrates video gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing players to earn financial incentives like cryptocurrencies or in-game assets for playing games.
While blockchain games have been around for some time, the craze hit an all time high with Axie Infinity as players earned serious money for winning battles, selling monsters, as well as staking or lending their digital assets. Coming from almost two years of lockdown and economic hardships, this became the perfect landscape for GameFi to soar especially in developing nations where side hussles became a necessity. In fact, last month, almost 50% of active cryptocurrency wallets connected to decentralized applications were for playing games, according to crypto data tracker DappRadar, higher than the percentage of wallets linked to decentralized finance[1]. Additionally, the NFT market hit a record $2.5 billion in sales last July 2021, versus just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020 [2].
There are now about 1,200 blockchain games, with about 70 new ones added monthly. The appeal is obvious. The practical applications available through NFTs in GameFi allow users to both engage in entertainment and generate monthly income by combining finance mechanics with the game industry. This has led to the unique challenge of crafting blockchain games that are superior to what are currently on the offer. The concept of a metaverse is the answer to this challenge. Expectations are now much higher when it comes to realistic fantasy worlds that users can immerse themselves in. Investors are now convinced that GameFi has the potential to fuel mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, not to mention trigger further disruptions in gaming technology to possibly incorporate virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and extended reality (XR).
Leading the Pack
The challenge is no longer about whether GameFi will change the “game”, but really about which play-to-earn game will stand above the rest to take GameFi even further and expand the space to include more people and ideally bring about mass adoption.
One such game leading the pack of up and coming play-to-earn games is FOTA: Fight of the Ages. It is a triple-A multiplayer online battle arena game project owned by Meta DJINN PTE.LTD. It is set in a fantasy world inhabited by many races throughout the universe.
FOTA World
The world-building in FOTA is extensive and intricate. There is a rich history and mythology that anchor the entire storyline and characters within the game.
There are three main realms within FOTA:
- The Greenland, which is also known as the Land of Eternity, is considered heaven.
- The Earth is known as the Land of Superior Civilization and it was created from the remnants of the big bang.
- The Nightmare is considered a forbidden plane that is enchanted by dark magic and it is the polar opposite of the Greenland.
There are eight races that exist within the game:
- The Omni is one of the ancient and advanced races. Due to their extensive knowledge and mastery over magic, they are sometimes seen as gods.
- The Dragons are mystical creatures with enormous wings that soar over the Greenland. They possess elemental power and sometimes work together with the Omni.
- The Elves are a strong and highly civilized race who are able to access the power of nature.
- The Keens are beings of mechanical constructs with indestructible bodies. The most battle-hardened race on earth, they are experts in crafting the most advanced weapons.
- The Humans are the most populous race on Earth with high social skills and quick-witted intelligence.
- The Demons are dark creatures rumored to have originated from Omnis who were corrupted by dark magic while exploring the Nightmare.
- The Beasts are the first and native inhabitants of the Nightmare. They are wild creatures with outstanding endurance due to the harsh terrain they call home. The dark magic within their bodies give them uncontrollable ferocity and murderous brutality.
- The Ogres are monsters created by Demons to be a ferocious army serving the Demons’ selfish ambitions.
There are also eight classes:
- The Mage is a class that specializes in the use of magic that draws from special energy called “Aether.”
- The Priest is a class that worships Aether and focuses their skills in healing and defensive magic.
- The Warlock class can uniquely access pure dark energy that specializes in offensive magical attacks.
- The Warrior class is made up of elite fighters who are extremely skilled in weaponry and physical attacks.
- The Chemist class are master potion-makers that deal subtle but debilitating damage to opponents.
- The Hunter class are survivalists who have a strong affinity with nature.
- The Assassin class are dauntless killers who excel in covert physical and magical attacks helped by their lightning-quick reflexes.
- The Mech are considered the true heir of the Keens. They are technologically savvy and can create advanced weapons of destruction.
What FOTA Has to Offer
FOTA utilizes the Microsoft Mesh technology, the world’s first platform that fully supports Mixed Reality (MR) technology. Also known as hybrid reality, MR marries reality with the virtual world allowing for things in the real world and virtual world to interact with each other, mixing together both reality and fantasy. Here [3] is a glimpse of what this looks like. Additionally, FOTA is designed to optimize the Unity 3D Engine which will be used to enhance the smooth graphical experience of FOTA characters or worlds, so that users can easily immerse themselves in the metaverse.
What is even more incredible is FOTA’s vision of universalizing the metaverse for all audiences, leading to its simultaneous development on iOS, Android, WebGL, Windows, and macOS platforms right from the design process, allowing them to regularly receive the latest updates from the FOTA development team. The main platform for FOTA’s Metaverse is Binance Smart Chain which provides the advantage of lower transaction fees as well as universal NFT standards.
FOTA offers various NFT assets from heroes, items, land, and skin, all of which can be bought, traded and rented within a decentralized exchange platform called the FOTA marketplace. FOTA introduces a rent-to-play concept, which allows players with high level items or heroes to rent out their NFT properties. Additionally, FOTA utilizes a “hybrid farming” mechanism that allows users to claim profit everyday.
Faithful to the decentralized idea behind blockchain technology, FOTA uses a Decentralized Identity (DID) system so users have more control over their data. It also upholds an anti-inflation policy and developed a Treasury to allow a portion of the profits of the entire FOTA system to be used for the buyback and burn mechanism, minimizing the risk of increased Token supply or illiquidity on the entire system. Finally, the project has a reward mechanism to encourage the contribution of ideas as well as the importance of positive community feedback [4]. Important project decisions that affect the community will be decided through voting events. Check out their exciting teaser video below.
Bringing the A-Game in the Play-to-Earn Space
With thousands of blockchain games readily available in the market, it is hard for projects to stand out. They need to bring their A-game to really create something that is beyond the usual.
The team behind FOTA has extensive gameplay experience behind its belt and has put in the work to craft something with an expansive foundation not to mention a carefully thought out world building to enable a fully immersive metaverse experience. Through NFT technology, players can feel what it is like to own valuable digital assets in the game as well as take advantage of the economic mechanisms and DAO democracies to earn profits while enjoying the rich gameplay. Undeniably, blockchain games are partnering up with big names in order to level up at an incredible pace that is already causing disruptions within the traditional gaming space and FOTA stands at the fore of the action.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-07/play-to-earn-crypto-gaming-apps-surpass-defi-in-user-popularity
[2] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/play-to-earn-crypto-gamefi-nft-games-axie-infinity-huobi-2021-10
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZn1yz8ptwE
[4] https://docs.fota.io/12.-tokenomics/12.3.-establish-the-dao-mechanism-in-fota
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Ao3SL7dDk