Thanks to Stranger Things, D&D has become more popular than ever before. In between the 1st and 2nd season of Stranger Things, “dnd” was a major trending search term. Wizards of the Coast (WoC) and their digital gaming segment revenue increased 42% in 2021, exceeding $1B in revenue, successfully doubling its revenue two years ahead of target. A similar gaming company, Games Workshop (GW), also experienced a huge resurgence in popularity, and has been enjoying incremental revenue since the release of Warhammer 40k, from $158M in 2017 to $353M in 2021.
To boost tabletop gaming sales even further, passionate hobbyists on social media have been showcasing new games, builds, and tutorials to the masses, attracting old and new community members to design and build new tabletop games with WoC and GW assets.
During the pandemic, WoC/GW fans have been restricted to playing tabletop games with only their trusted inner circle of friends. Pre-COVID, swarms of players would frequently congregate at their local GW shop. Unfortunately, many of these stores have been closed down due to the pandemic. Some hobby shops remain open, but foot traffic is still lower than pre-COVID days. I recently visited Game Kastle – Westgate in San Jose, California and I asked the store manager if he’d heard of Tilt Five. Sadly, he had no idea about the company’s exciting future, or any other AR tabletop gaming companies, like Mirrorscape. Recently, Mirrorscape’s Creative Director, Joe Manganiello, took to Twitter to promote ARcana and is seeking backers through their Kickstarter page here.
It’s great to see Joe, a famous American Actor and avid D&D player, get involved in new & innovative AR technology. He and his team have raised $418k to date with 3,719 backers, and have partnered up with Fat Dragon Games, Dwarven Forge, Reaper, Hero Forge, and Apotheosis Studios.
In 2020, Tilt Five raised $7.5M to focus on developing content and push AR tech to the next level. The Tilt Five headset has been through many iterations and improvements. More importantly, the CEO, Jeri Ellworth, has been deeply involved in the AR market for over a decade at Valve and CastAR, and has a keen understanding of what makes sense/what doesn’t- in terms of product design, manufacturing, supply chain, cost structures, corporate culture, and is open to improving the technology & approach where/when possible.
The Tilt Five headset offloads processing power to Android/Windows platforms, so the company is able to focus R&D on the optics and reprojection of supported games. Based upon a very insightful interview with Jeri Ellworth and Brad Lynch, Tilt Five is now working with ~40 partners and 22 games are available now or coming soon. The full game list can be found at Tilt Five’s website here.
Regardless of the platform, players like to personalize their in-game virtual avatars, weapons, armors and environments. That should be consistent with consumers interested in ARcana, where hobbyists can merge physical board games with virtual expansion sets, as we see below. The left-hand side shows the virtual board, and right-hand side shows the real physical board, along with real figurines that can move seamlessly between the two boards.
This creates a lot of value and opportunity for hobbyists that have already invested in physical figurines that are compatible with AR tabletop platforms, like ARcana. NFTs in board games have already become popular alternatives to standard cryptocurrency, as they have functional applications in XR games. Below is a collection of figurines that were handmade by a seller named, Mifel via OpenSea, the largest digital marketplace for crypto collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Supported wallets are MetaMask, Coinbase, WalletConnect, Phantom, and Glow.
Another interesting cryptocurrency exchange is Binance NFT. It is one of the largest exchanges in the world in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies, founded in 2017. In 2021, Binance was put under investigation by both the US on allegations of money laundering. In 2021, Binance shared client data, including names and addresses, with the Russian government. Today, it offers a platform for Initial Game Offers (IGO) for games like Prometheus, one of the first multichain NFT game to hybridize war chess and card play based on world mythology.
Before you can start playing Prometheus, players must connect with their MetaMask account, which is a crypto wallet & gateway to blockchain apps on Web3. It is currently available as a browser extension and mobile app on both Android and iOS devices.
Prometheus has an anime art style, isometric landscapes and has beautiful music. However, it plays like a stripped down version of Final Fantasy Tactics. It features turn-based, cards and role-playing game components with some elements of action and basic strategy. Basically, players can enjoy the pleasure of playing and collecting NFTs.
Players may sell NFTs within the game. Professional institutions take the initiative to acquire NFTs in bulk from the players. Simultaneously, the community developers help to improve the value of Prometheus NFTs across various platform exchanges through NFT pledge mining, helping to lower the entrance barrier for large-scale game guilds.
Prometheus-GodNFT is just 1 of 20 IGO projects on Binance. The NFT platform has a total volume of $1B and $43M in total amount staked, with 300k participants. These assets are exclusively available on Binance NFT. IGOs are purely for gaming and all content drops consist of in-game assets such as early-access passes, weapons, items, cosmetics, skins and much more.
This is just the beginning. Once NFT games reach the same standard of quality as popular non-NFT games, NFTs may become more common place. Right now, it seems tailored made for consumers already involved in crytocurrency, but new games like Prometheus might help the community attract casual gamers and new investors.