Community contributor, Luci Kelemen weighs in on the first week of the GU Marketplace...
It’s one small step for man but a giant leap for Gods Unchained. The Marketplace is the beating heart of the unique economy system behind the game, and its recent launch heralds the dawn of a new way to manage digital assets in a TCG (and beyond).
Here’s a quick rundown of everything you need to know and what everyone else said about this huge move, from a UI breakdown to the future plans of the Gods Unchained team.
Rare and divine treasures
If you’re a newcomer to the world of blockchain or, conversely, if you’re totally up-to-date on the tech but don’t have a lot of gaming experience under your belt, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about.
From the gaming side of things, this technology allows every iteration of a card to have unique, tangible value in the process. No longer can the developers nullify their value with a server-side change: your cards are truly yours to keep, as legitimate items even outside the world of Gods Unchained. Genuine digital asset ownership: regardless of how deeply you’re involved with the world of card games, you’ve got to say this is a game changer.
So how does it work? Basically, it’s exactly what you would expect, and if you’ve ever done any QA testing, you’ll know how big a deal that actually is. The UI is streamlined – and the art looks gorgeous! Mass-scale marketplaces are nothing new in the internet age, and even the world of gaming has a pretty ubiquitous example in Steam’s gargantuan portfolio of hats and crates and the like, but I was blown away by the responsivity and the aesthetics of the UI.
The lovely effects as you transition from menu to menu, the panel-based setup which translates well from the main page to the card descriptions… hats off. It doesn’t get much more convenient than this, though I can definitely sympathize with the community requests about further (and better highlighted) filter options, and the cries for browser support going forward.
Of course, the Marketplace has only just opened its doors for you all, and there will be more to come. Though Fusing is currently unavailable, it will return very soon – to quote the Marketplace preview post, it “enables you to upgrade the quality (and potential market value) of your cards by fusing duplicate versions. As an example, five Meteorite cards combine into one shadow card, five shadows into one gold, and (you guessed it!) five golds into one diamond.“
Basically, this means there’s a lot of room to expand on the scale of the current Marketplace. The commitment to the fully digital nature of Gods Unchained coupled with the aforementioned genuine digital asset ownership means there are many bells and whistles we can potentially expect in the future.
Personally, I’d love to see something similar to the Deck Radar from Vicious Syndicate, highlighting the different cards used alongside one another in the popular archetypes. (Hey, Hearthstone players, if you’re as tired of Quest Shaman as I am, welcome aboard!)
With such a robust system, elements like these can easily be incorporated into the client itself. Even something simple like a card recommendation tool could be a big help for newcomers. For example, players buying Ocular Fiend might also be interested in Anputian Magus – as recommended by the latest Meta Report, which you can check out here.
Of course, if you’re coming from the card game side of things, all this talk about blockchain and secondary marketplaces may seem somewhat daunting to you.
Well, we’re happy to highlight this video by Victor Von Hom which showcases a top ten deck with nothing but core cards from a little while ago.
So even if you didn’t get a head start on the competition with Genesis cards and you don’t yet feel ready to delve into the world of blockchain, you can do pretty damn well as a free-to-play, core card player.
Plans and thoughts for the future
The initial reception to the Marketplace opening was stunning. It took only 24 hours for Gods Unchained to reach the #1 spot among blockchain markets per nonfungible.com, with almost 34,500 transactions worth over $180,000 USD in total, recorded at the time of writing.
The tokenization of more than 6 million NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) also makes this the biggest-ever in the history of Ethereum games – in fact, more Gods Unchained cards were traded than every other card game put together that has ever existed on the blockchain.
We’re very excited to see what the future holds. As highlighted on Twitter, ERC-721 contracts as a whole are up by 350% this calendar year, suggesting great growth potential.
Also, in case you missed the live Q&A stream on Twitch – including the appearance of a definitely totally real rat (and absolutely not Chris Clay) thanks to the successful pre-sale of the Genesis set-, here are the key highlights from that discussion:
- Further down the line, cards will be automatically activated when you get a chest
- Boards, trinkets and other assets are coming very soon, allowing you to customize your gameplay experience that much further
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A37BWiYf_8
- UI preferences like filter hiding on the Marketplace and others are coming soon
- Buy orders, price history, quantity sold, and more will soon be available in the client
- Fusing and play-to-earn solutions are also high priorities. More information on their implementation isn’t too far down the line
- The current user experience flow with the back-and-forth between the marketplace and the wallet is a placeholder, and the developers’ ultimate goal is to enable players with zero understanding about the world of crypto to be able to seamlessly buy and sell cards
- The use of third-party marketplaces will be absolutely supported and encouraged going forward
And if you consider that all of this is just the beginning – or you could say… wait for it… the Genesis – of Gods Unchained’s story, with lots of exciting new features coming up in the near future. If you didn’t get on the hype train already… well, now is the time!
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Credit - Luci Kelemen (Twitter)
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