Gunzilla is launching its $GUN token on Binance as a method for its Off the Grid battle royale sport neighborhood to commerce their gaming gadgets.
The transfer is a part of Gunzilla‘s dream of creating Off the Grid, a hybrid Web2 and Web3 sport, into the primary mainstream success for Web3 gaming. (Gunzilla made headlines final week by shopping for Recreation Informer and reviving the sport journalism website that was shut down final yr by GameStop).
Theo Agranat, director of Web3 at Gunzilla, mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat that the $GUN token can be used to entry the GUNZ platform, which affords affords blockchain-native infrastructure for sport builders. The $GUN token has different utility as effectively, reminiscent of buying in-game gadgets from the in-game market, paying for personalisation gadgets and expendables, and protecting Hex decoding charges (which we’ll describe under). Gamers can earn the $GUN tokens within the sport or purchase them.
Gunzilla’s Off the Grid sport has generated greater than 14.5 million wallets so far on Avalanche and it has an estimated 500,000 day by day lively customers. It has had 431 million transactions, with two million to a few million transactions occurring day by day.
Up to now, all of that has been occurring in what Web3 gaming corporations name the testnet. Now the mainnet is able to launch. By including Binance’s Web3 community, Gunzilla hopes to achieve much more avid gamers. The sport is accessible on the Epic Video games Retailer, not on Steam, as Valve has a ban on Web3 video games.
The GUNZ ecosystem would be the first Avalanche L1 integrating with Binance, and the $GUN token would be the first Web3 gaming token to launch on Binance since Pixels debuted within the first quarter of 2024.
Off the Grid can be the primary Web3 sport to get on consoles (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X/S) and to get main streamers concerned (Timthetatman, Shroud, and many others).
The present variety of day by day lively customers is under the spike of 900,000 day by day lively customers, which was excessive partially as a result of Gunzilla introduced in influencers like Ninja to play the sport for a restricted time. It dropped to round 400,000 gamers after which began climbing again up once more.
“We fully expected a drop off to happen. And we also know that we have only 20% of the game live, and it’s early access, so we’re just going to continue building,” Agranat mentioned.
“We feel that we have been able to become the largest Web3 triple-A gaming ecosystem in the world, and we’ve launched the biggest Web3 gaming project that has ever existed and that has been adopted by mainstream,” Agranat mentioned. “We launched a game where we have mainstream gamers commenting that they’re playing exclusively Off the Grid. And so we felt that the correct thing was to build enough to launch on the leading exchange in the world, which is Binance, with [250 million users].”
Off the Grid debuted in October 2024 in early entry. Whereas it has Web3 options gamers can choose into, non-Web3 gamers can select to play the title as a free-to-play sport the place they don’t have to interact in Web3 options in any respect.
The GUNZ platform is made for sport builders, eliminating the necessity to make deep investments in customized blockchain structure. It affords straightforward to combine SDKs, enabling any studio to launch community-driven Web3 economies.
The ecosystem’s blockchain pockets, companion app, non-fungible token (NFT) market, NFT minting engine can be found on the Avalanche blockchain. The corporate plans to white label these instruments for different tasks to onboard their gaming mental property to Gunzilla’s platform.
Gameplay
The sport is about in a dystopian sci-fi future crafted by Neill Blomkamp, artistic director for Off the Grid and the creator of movies like District 9, Elysium and Chappie. Additionally contributing is Richard Okay. Morgan, identified for the Netflix collection Altered Carbon.
On this future, the battle royale individuals are enticed to combat one another for his or her lives on an island the place the survivor will get $100 million. Earlier than they be a part of, their limbs are sawed off in surgical procedure they usually’re changed by cybernetic limbs. If they’re killed in battle, they are often revived to combat one other day via futuristic medical procedures.
Blomkamp and Gunzilla rounded up a crew of gaming veterans to concentrate on a triple-A expertise. And up to now, Agranat mentioned that solely 20% of the sport has been rolled out for early-access gamers.
Gamers begin out in a three-play squad. Very often the gamers are coming from different hardcore battle royale video games like Apex Legends and Name of Obligation: Warzone.
“We are very happy with the current performance that we’ve had in terms of onboarding, which has led to a steady increase of our user base. With every update, we’ve had an increase in retention and conversion rates,” Agranat mentioned.
For instance, the newest replace that Gunzilla launched made it simpler for newcomers to play in opposition to AI non-player characters, leading to a 35% retention fee for the second sport. In lots of different video games, newcomers are killed shortly they usually get pissed off. Over time, different enhancements will embrace ranked mode and skill-based matchmaking and different instruments to be sure that gamers, whereas nonetheless being challenged, have a rewarding expertise, Agranat mentioned.
The Web3 angle
In a gaming session, gamers transfer into the atmosphere and discover a Hex Dice, which they will carry round on a belt till they discover an extractor. As soon as they put the dice into the extractor, they need to defend the positioning whereas others can assault them to cease the extraction and steal the Hex Dice.
In the event that they succeed with the extraction, whether or not they win or lose the sport, they may get the Hex Dice of their stock system after the sport. They click on to decode the Hex Dice, pay a small transaction price (the gasoline price, or value of doing the transaction on the blockchain) after which get the precise in-game merchandise.
That merchandise might be a cyber limb or a weapon or an attachment. They will additionally get beauty gadgets or skins. In the event that they don’t want these gadgets, they will listing them on {the marketplace} and promote it to another person. Agranat mentioned that is the true distinction between Web2 and Web3. In Web2 video games, you’ll be able to’t resell the merchandise for actual cash. The worth gamers get for promoting Web3 gadgets is determined by the rarity of the gadgets. One distinctive merchandise — a considered one of a form rarity — may promote for $2 million. However many extra gadgets are stand, reminiscent of weapons that may promote for $5.
As the true $GUN token launches, Gunzilla will burn the testnet tokens. Nevertheless, the gadgets that had been minted — tens of millions upon tens of millions of things that individuals personal and traded or purchased — can be migrated from the testnet to the mainnet. Gamers will finally be capable of take gadgets out of the sport and promote them on OpenSea.
“People will retain all of the items that they’ve worked hard for, and they can resell those as they wish,” Agranat mentioned.
On Monday, the $GUN token is launching on the Binance change. Gamers will be capable of use Ethereum to pay to finish transactions and take their tokens into the sport and buy issues on {the marketplace}. Gamers can buy tokens on the change and use them within the sport. As an illustration, gamers should buy a seasonal Battle Go for the sport for $12 a month. Binance will finance a launch pool of tokens that represents about 4% of whole tokens and can make these out there to patrons.
You possibly can grind within the sport and earn tokens via successful the sport and thru finishing missions, after which purchase one thing on {the marketplace}. Or it can save you your self the time by shopping for the token on the change after which purchase one thing on {the marketplace}. From an Off the Grid perspective, it’s merely a time saving mechanism, Agranat mentioned. If you’d like some cosmetics, and also you don’t need to grind 10 hours to buy tokens within the sport to purchase the cosmetics, then you should purchase it different participant who’s has already completed that grind.
Sooner or later, the utility of the GUNZ ecosystem and its tokens is anticipated to develop, Gunzilla plans so as to add different video games and tasks into the ecosystem. Gamers who need to transact sooner or later video games will accomplish that with the $GUN tokens that they personal.
Conversion of Web2 to Web3 gamers could also be good for enterprise, however Agranat mentioned the true objective is to entertain gamers.
“Our goal is to just give the best possible, most immersive, most engaging gaming experience,” he mentioned. “Having said that, we’re not trying to convert anyone to anything. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to say, ‘This is better. We’re building things. Here is how you can own your assets.’ Now, if you want to learn about how to set up a wallet, take actual ownership of your assets, self custody, you can. You can keep it even if the service shuts down and then you can sell it on OpenSea. But this is still about how we deliver the best possible gaming experience and we use [Web3] tools that give players a better experience.”
Origins
Again in 2019, Vlad Korolov, CEO, cofounded Gunzilla with Alexander Zoll, chief technique officer and Neill Blomkamp, chief artistic officer. Korolov and Zoll are based mostly in Frankfurt, Germany, whereas Blomkamp’s base is in his movie studio in Vancouver, Canada.
Korolov and Zoll are veterans of the sport trade. They hailed from Blackwood Video games, which constructed Warface, the free-to-play first-person shooter navy sport that amassed greater than 145 million gamers and over $1 billion in lifetime income. Whereas engaged on Warface, they proposed a option to construct a Web3 sport, but it surely didn’t get accepted. So that they left to begin their very own firm, Gunzilla.
“They wanted to give players true asset ownership and a peer-to-peer marketplace, and that was even before they found blockchain technology as the best way to accomplish that,” Agranat mentioned. “They simply had the desire to give gamers a better experience.”
The corporate has now constructed as much as 420 staff. Gunzilla raised $46 million in 2022 and $30 million extra in 2024, with a complete of $76 million raised so far. And it so occurs they selected to construct the sport on the Avalanche blockchain.
“Gunzilla is at the forefront of a gaming revolution where people realize that blockchain isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s how you utilize blockchain that matters. People will start demanding asset ownership from other games as well because it just makes sense,” Agranat mentioned. “If I spend money on something and I buy a cosmetic item, I should be able to own it. And that means I should be able to gift it to a friend. I should be able to loan it out to a friend for a week. I should be able to sell it on a marketplace and buy something else that I want. So that is our focus. It’s not about Web2 versus Web3. It’s not about being the best Web3 game. It’s about being a good game and giving people the best possible experience.”
Agranat feels blockchain is at its early phases, like the online when it was younger. Again then, folks didn’t know why they wanted to personal websites. However those that did constructed the know-how to do it and plenty of turned huge corporations. Finally the know-how turns into normal and fades away, to get replaced by different improvements.
“One of my favorite analogies to say, ‘Nobody walks across Times Square and points in the pavement and says, I wonder what fiber optic cable is under my feet and what its speed is.’ Nobody ever does that. But people say this game has blockchain and it’s bad. It shouldn’t matter. As long as it’s in the background and the user does need to interact with it directly, which is our core thesis, then it doesn’t matter as long as you’re doing the right things for the gamer and the gamer has a good experience. That’s all that matters.”
The Recreation Informer deal
Agranat mentioned that the Korolov and Zoll had been huge followers of Recreation Informer, they usually had been shocked when GameStop determined to close down Recreation Informer in August 2024 after 33 years of publication as a gamer’s journal and site. Final week, Gunzilla introduced it had acquired Recreation Informer and resurrected it as a brand new publication, with the entire authentic employees returning.
However Recreation Informer is just not a part of the Web3 ecosystem. Agranat mentioned it’s a utterly separate, standalone firm with full journalistic autonomy and independence. It can have a separate administration workforce actually has nothing to do with the principle firm, he mentioned.
