This article dives into the latest iteration of the Wolf Game saga; The “Full Game”.

It briefly recounts the game’s origins but will focus on the latest iteration of the game and key points for players to achieve economic dominance, while also looking at the future risks and novel game mechanics for the project.

• Background

• Full Game: What’s changed?

• The New Game Mechanics

• The Revised Economy

• Risks and Challenges

• Closing Remarks

The video dropped by The Shepherd (below) grabs the imagination of the player base.

The music, phrasing and animations help players immerse themselves in the gameplay. An overwhelming sense of belonging arrives.

The reference to “My friends” pulls on those nostalgic heartstrings as if we’ve all been on the same journey together for the past 12 months.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1605926077099954176

It’s been a long and arduous voyage. From the Play to Earn (“P2E”) Ponzi connotations for the entire NFT gaming space, at the end of 2021, to realizing gameplay that makes the greatest of minds challenge their strategies to solve the novel game theory.

The project started with memetic internet culture issuing a mint price of 0.069420ETH and 6.9% royalties, on secondary. Since then intellect and execution have added more layers to the project to deepen the interest of its audience.

The high volume and reasonable floor price have bolstered the bear market war chest, where other project treasuries are dwindling. At the time of writing the project has amassed 25,240ETH in sales volume, which equates to 1,742ETH ($2.1m USD). Adding this to 692ETH ($0.8m USD) from the 10,000 Gen 0 NFTs minted, means a total treasury of 2,436ETH ($2.9m USD). So long as the treasury isn’t mismanaged then this should help maintain their runway for some time to come.

This video from @mr_intuition provides a good recap to date.

https://twitter.com/mr_intuition/status/1588276419934982144?s=20&t=GeQDlMAXYarZGeUhSmILEw

Since then, the Alpha Game has come to a head and the Full Game has launched.

The “Full Game” is a cross between a digital “Settlers of Catan” and a huge interactive game of chess. Those that have played Catan will know that this will be etched into the history of the evolution of blockchain gaming.

So what’s changed, and what’s novel about this final iteration?

The full game builds the ecosystem out with land, farmers and resources akin to building materials. It sets the foundations for a much larger ecosystem, ready to capture the attention of a wider audience. Could this be the building blocks of an active mass multiplayer online role-playing game (“MMORPG”)?

The new NFT assets help deliver several additional layers to the mind-boggling game theory. It’s important to highlight that while the land and farmers offer new means of economic advantage, the wolves remain the dominant force.

The Wolf Game loop TL;DR is illustrated as follows:

These mechanics help drive additional gaming niches for players to master. Selecting and collaborating with your community will help you and your community to reap the highest rewards.

There will be many competing for the top spot. It could be perceived as the “Alpha Game” on steroids which was won by the Alpha/tier 8 (“A8”) pack led by Gmoney. The community won 20% of the 500m $WOOL prize for placing first.

Rather than 14 communities, led by the 14 Alpha wolves, the full game is 101 communities spread over 20,000 land parcels. Community 0 (Mountain below) is where the wolves breed on 400 genesis land parcels within the dens built on specific parcels. Breeding wolves is costly, but rewarding as we will see later on under the breeding mechanics section.

A7 wolf breeding will be the most resource-intensive, while sheep are on the other end of the spectrum. A8 wolves will remain grails, which probably explains the recent 75 WETH acquisition of an A8 wolf by Snowfro (founder of Chromie Squiggles). After all, owning the original 14 of a piece of web3 gaming history could be invaluable - A collector’s item.

If we get up in our helicopter, the aerial view is looking similar to a mix of Age of Empires mixed with George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Except for this time, it’s wolves and not the pigs taking charge. One should remember:

“All animals are equal, except some are more equal than others.”

So what are these mechanics?

Continuing this theme from the Gems in the prior alpha game, this rewards those who play the game will likely receive the rarest of assets, or be rewarded handsomely.

The wolves that attack the sheep will be required to go head to head in a game of “sheep’s dilemma”. You will need to choose wisely to mitigate losses.

This is a classic game of Prisoner’s dilemma. The optimal outcome for both parties would be to share, but we know this will be contingent on the risk appetite of both parties playing the game. Those degenerates looking to maximize on their returns through risky means could walk away with no spoils.

Unexpectedly, the whales have initially spread their assets so they lack large community allegiances. However, this enables them to have voting power over the tax rate. A surefire way of accumulating more of those valuable resources.

Again an interesting element of game theory that impacts player strategies. The level of tax also drives the amount of grass produced, required for sheep breeding so will be interesting to see how the tax rates adjust in the event of a shortage of grass plays out.

Progress too quickly, accumulate too many resources and you will become a juicy target for several wolves. Current tax rates appear to be tracking between 10 and 20% for most communities.

Land generates resources depending on its terrain. The farmers positioned on the land can act as a multiplier to expedite resource extraction. Instead of the settlements, roads and cities in Catan, there are Barns and Bathhouses in Wolf Game.

• Barns built with wood and stone - Sheep breeding.

• Dens - Wolves breeding.

• Bathhouses built with water and stone - Sheep and wolves (peak only) energy Replenishment.

So do you go for a larger Gen 2 herd, but risk losing some in the process or focus on replenishing your existing assets and maximizing your community’s land? But wolves could also sabotage buildings to set community fortifications back and minimize progression.

Again agility and iterative approaches will likely do well while collaborating with other community members to expedite optimal breeding and replenishment strategies. Stockpiling too many resources could leave you open to attack from packs of wolves, thus encouraging resource usage.

Initially, players appear to be draining their energy to maximize production. There will be mass energy shortages.

Will strategic planning around optimal energy consumption yield long-term benefits? Aesop’s fable, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ rings true here. Every individual and community are playing a different strategy so it’s difficult to predict the optimal approach. As is the case with Chess, the strategy will need to iterate as the game progresses, depending on the approach taken by other players.

Cool-down times are aligned with the activity of the in-game asset, so balancing this with the cost of using a bathhouse will be required. Should players focus on:

1. Building barns to grow their herd so that their resource collection is expedited with more hands making light of work, or;

2. Build bathhouses to replenish existing high-performing Gen 0 and 1 assets.

Or if you do not have land, then $WOOL can be paid to rent the bathhouse to replenish.

Breeding happens in pairs, so those single asset owners will need to collaborate.

There is a risk that these new Gen 2 assets will be stolen. Protection from farmers or high-level wolves should be used to prevent loss.

Barns (sheep) and dens (wolves) are required to breed. Buildings can only be built on specific land parcels - approximately 12.9% of land have this ability. As expected these are more expensive, currently with a floor price of 2.2 ETH ($2,230 USD) compared to another resource-intensive land parcel price of 0.35 ETH ($355 USD).

Owners can charge a tax to provide the service. Those with high-level barns will prosper, could the development of optimal breeding spots be a strategy in its own right? Players will be able to breed different levels of wolves depending on their parents, as follows:

As expected the newly bred Omega wolves (A7) will be the best to breed given the higher maximum energy and faster replenishment times. Alpha (A8) are grails and cannot be created anymore.

There are some novel mechanics around the use of farmers to expedite the courting process or improve the efficiency of nurturing the sheep to full energy. Yet this could make prime targets for wolves yet again.

It’s clear that wolf breeding will be significantly more expensive compared to sheep breeding. This is intentional to maintain the value of wolves. In fact, we are seeing some astronomical den breeding fees being accepted.

https://twitter.com/brydisanto/status/1606296190244442118?s=20&t=BpOItOtMNQr1N0MXoY0lOA

The current market value of 502k $WOOL is priced at $15k USD. The current price of A7 wolves is 19 ETH ($23k USD), with the most recent A7 sale being sold for 21.9 ETH ($26.7k USD) earlier today.

So it’s clear that the wolf breeding game is valuable, holding the dens built to breed them could be a very lucrative play. The current floor on peak 1, 2 and 3 genesis land is 7 ETH, 14 ETH and 21 ETH, respectively.

The weather, tax and decisions of other players impact the level of grass production. The grass is required to breed sheep.

Establish the best times to maximize your grass yield depending on the weather.

The lore is brought to life through the animations. The ability of the 14 Alpha wolves to lead communities brings a sense of hierarchical structure. Will they form an effective chain of command to dominate over the other communities? Or will the players act in silos, ultimately driving chaotic incoherent but slow growth, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack from the well-formed legions?

The revised economy has added several new layers to the “onion”. Don’t be hasty and peel the first layer, you could cry when the game mechanics play out down the line.

$WOOL will remain the lifeblood of the ecosystem. The other items are peripheral and contingent on the in-game actions of the players and their communities. Their value will likely spike when scarcity hits, as is the case for real-world supply/demand flows. Stockpiling resources will enable more actions but this will be limited by the amount of $WOOL available.

As seen in Settlers of Catan, players can be stuck with an abundance of a single resource and unable to upgrade or build certain structures that would give them a strategic advantage. Trading with the merchant will allow for a more fluid game, although doing so at the wrong time could see adverse economic activity if forced to trade when prices are high.

The Merchant brings in a new automated market maker (“AMM”) that enables liquidity with resources. While Ether Orcs provides an external marketplace to trade crafting materials, this solution is internal thus capturing a more typical web2 gaming feel. Could we observe some similarities to the Runescape Grand Exchange?

The Ether Orcs (“EO”) potion vendor is arguably the first iteration of this and possibly drove inspiration. However, the key difference here is that the merchant has an open market price, dictated by demand. The EO potion vendor provided a “bot offer” floor of 1 $ZUG per consumable while also offering the external marketplace for the open market. This Wolf Game solution attempts to combine these mechanics.

It will certainly be interesting to see how a free market dictates the price for resources, and whether this is dominated by whales within the game.

Most NFT gaming ERC-20 tokens received criticism for poor balancing/sink mechanics that caused hyper-inflationary valuations; $WOOL was no different.

The price went parabolic, reaching a height of $0.47 on January 20th, 2022, as players entered a frenzy to acquire more sheep to produce more $WOOL at a greater rate. The issue was there was minimal use for the token at this point in time so the supply was unleashed on the market causing the price to tank.

We can see that there was a slight deflationary pressure since the Cave / Alpha game launched in mid-2022, driven by several burn mechanisms around switching packs and accumulating resources to optimize gameplay around the caves and uncover hidden gems or merchandise.

The market subsequently priced the $WOOL unlock on the market as players pre-empted the final alpha game reward distribution in November.

The $WOOL pouch was an early, novel, mechanic that was borne from the contract issues early on in the project. The $WOOL production and mint stopped early. The remaining $WOOL needed to be distributed somehow so this novel mechanic was introduced and is similar to the traditional finance (“tradFi”) concept of a fixed-term deposit with the yield being distributed over a four-year period.

The $WOOL price now sits at the $0.03 mark, but liquidity could be a concern if there is not sufficient depth to the ETH/WOOL pairs. There are small movements in volume causing significant spikes in prices around announcements, as liquidity is drained from the pools.

So how will these new mechanics impact the price of $WOOL?

We could look at the individual mechanisms and pull spreadsheets to forecast burn rates. But there are a huge number of variables that will drive this, contingent on player behaviours.

It’s likely that the team will have some models to monitor this, but having worked at EY myself, with actuaries and modelling with listed clients for a decade, it’s likely these models are not on par with these companies with billions of $USD in their war chests. I could be wrong, they do say not to underestimate “The Shep”.

Ultimately the burn rate will come down to the fun and addictive gameplay. If the players enjoy creating and immersing themselves in the ecosystem, then they will continue to burn $WOOL and resources, to enhance the structures on their land and the activity within them.

But as is the case with any game, attention spans are short. Retaining this attention is a challenge, so the team will need to develop at a faster rate to keep the community engaged while managing their own burnout. It’s why the full game will start off slow, with relatively low rates of building construction and resource gathering. Then as the game approaches a more mature state this rate will speed up. By this point, the team will hopefully have more engaging content in the pipeline.

If the price of $WOOL rises too quickly, then fewer players will be able to afford to play the game. Whales wanting to play the long game will take advantage and use this to build the structures for optimal breeding and replenishment strategies. Many whales are prioritizing their tax yield as if to pre-empt a squeeze on resource availability and pricing, alleviated through stockpiling their own stacks.

Those that are in it for the money will want to see the price of $WOOL increase and layer out of the game at the expense of internal progression. It’s a balancing act.

Do you have a long-term conviction in the Wolf Game ecosystem to continue accumulating the assets? Is there an expectation that the game will be even bigger in the future, and that owning the genesis assets will be invaluable?

This ultimately comes down to the health of the project and the remaining runway for development. It could create the next behemoths akin to Axie Infinity whales, or bigger.

How will the team maintain player engagement and retain their attention? They will need to ensure they know their target market/audience.

It’s clear that Wolf Game executes this well. The audience is currently geared towards a mature, slightly opulent target market. Realistically, most of those that will be able to afford to play will be adults with reasonable purse strings, given the initial financial outlay to enter the ecosystem.

The top 100 individual wallets each own in excess of $215k in assets at spot value, while the largest wallet (CryptoCorey) has a spot portfolio valuation of $2.4m USD as of December 23rd and Seedphrase with the largest valuation of Community 0 land, which will be imperative for continued A7 wolf breeding. It is likely that there are several VaynerMedia/GaryVee wallets containing a significant number of assets given there were two representatives who led communities in the Alpha game.

Adult audiences are not unusual for web3 gaming, as pointed about by Jonah:

https://twitter.com/RealJonahBlake/status/1605595350902771712?s=20&t=X8vCKtrpAxCqOIFWw2C8XQ

In fact, many games are geared towards adults as the primary user. The rise in eSports has made this a viable career option, with platforms such as Twitch, enabling users to stream and earn advertising revenue or subscriptions.

It will be interesting to see how this grows with disintermediation from web3 rivals, such as Valhalla. Revenue-sharing models could entice more users into the web3 gaming ecosystem and make gaming an even more viable career option.

It’s clear there are several large whales in this game. But the collaborative communal gameplay and reward allocation, correlated proportionally with individuals’ contributions, allows for a mechanism whereby the little man isn’t “screwed”. That is in my opinion what makes this game innovative - collaborative, multiplayer games are fun.

It’s difficult for the game statistics to be analyzed given the off-chain gameplay. It would be great to have an analytics dashboard built out, similar to the Spy dashboard for Ether Orcs.

This would then provide more transparency over how the game is tracking which would help with the decision-making process for players.

Analysis around token (ERC-721, ERC-1155 and ERC-20) burn, and player activity (unique active wallet, most active players and associated actions in the game) would be useful insights.

If the burn mechanics mentioned are insufficient to offset the supply then the price will fall (assuming demand remains constant).

Alternatively if the price spikes then in-game actions may be limited due to affordability.

A consistent token price at a predictable level is necessary for affordable gameplay and also allows users to better predict and manage their cashflows more reliably.

The game is using off-chain gaming and is predominantly reliant on a single anonymous founder. The Shepherd has delivered to date, with minor hiccups which shows resolve and ability to deal with curve balls. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the project will continue. The track record is good, but if the adoption doesn’t reach the required levels and becomes too expensive to run then this could lead to going concern risks rising. It’s good that the core assets are maintained on Ethereum to lower the risk of the assets being lost indefinitely.

We’ve seen several large projects struggle through mismanaged treasuries and strategies that are reliant on royalty models. Finding alternative sources of revenue, or capital, may be required for longer-term growth.

Acquisition of wolves and sheep partway through the game could mean energy has been used, requiring additional resources to replenish. This could create barriers to entry for new players who aren’t as familiar with the ecosystem.

It’s clear the objective is to continue to scale.

There will be headwinds to greater adoption and scaling Wolf Game. Many other NFT games are ahead on player-base scaling.

However, doing this organically will be the best way to maintain sustainable growth. Scaling too quickly, too soon, will be detrimental to a boom/bust style collapse.

The game theory fails to factor in human elements such as loyalty, honesty and empathy. Nash equilibrium also needs considering and is difficult to factor into the game theory, depending on the social context and who the players are. This all adds to the complexity of the gameplay, ultimately making it more difficult for those balancing the levers on the in-game economy.

The past year has been a roller coaster for the Wolf Game ecosystem with some very high early benchmarks to follow, and it has exceeded this with the Full Game.

The new land, farmers and resources enable several new layers of game theory to be unleashed on the web3 gaming sector. There will be no one strategy fits all. Players will need to adapt, collaborate, iterate and play several rounds of chess ahead of their opposition to prosper.

But what’s innovative is that the smaller players can compete equally as effectively as the whales, promoting collaboration as a means of getting ahead. This will bring a stronger sense of community, encourage knowledge sharing and arguably drive the development forward at a faster rate.

It doesn’t come without its risks. Key person risk and execution risk are my biggest concerns. The web3 space is unforgiving, particularly when large sums of money are thrown around and a bear market is in full force. When times are good, it’s great but in hardship, we’ve seen many turn on each other.

Nonetheless, this is a risk for most projects, but with a $2.9m USD war chest from mint and royalties, and a strong track record of exceptional delivery the Wolf Game is well positioned to trail blaze and push the boundaries of NFT technology and web3 gaming.

At OriginsNFT we leverage data-driven decision-making, educational resources, and proprietary analytics to remain ahead of the curve with respect to blockchain tech and specifically NFTs. To find out more, please visit our website or Twitter.

To purchase a pass, please visit our Opensea page.

This article dives into the latest iteration of the Wolf Game saga; The “Full Game”.

It briefly recounts the game’s origins but will focus on the latest iteration of the game and key points for players to achieve economic dominance, while also looking at the future risks and novel game mechanics for the project.

• Background

• Full Game: What’s changed?

• The New Game Mechanics

• The Revised Economy

• Risks and Challenges

• Closing Remarks

The video dropped by The Shepherd (below) grabs the imagination of the player base.

The music, phrasing and animations help players immerse themselves in the gameplay. An overwhelming sense of belonging arrives.

The reference to “My friends” pulls on those nostalgic heartstrings as if we’ve all been on the same journey together for the past 12 months.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1605926077099954176

It’s been a long and arduous voyage. From the Play to Earn (“P2E”) Ponzi connotations for the entire NFT gaming space, at the end of 2021, to realizing gameplay that makes the greatest of minds challenge their strategies to solve the novel game theory.

The project started with memetic internet culture issuing a mint price of 0.069420ETH and 6.9% royalties, on secondary. Since then intellect and execution have added more layers to the project to deepen the interest of its audience.

The high volume and reasonable floor price have bolstered the bear market war chest, where other project treasuries are dwindling. At the time of writing the project has amassed 25,240ETH in sales volume, which equates to 1,742ETH ($2.1m USD). Adding this to 692ETH ($0.8m USD) from the 10,000 Gen 0 NFTs minted, means a total treasury of 2,436ETH ($2.9m USD). So long as the treasury isn’t mismanaged then this should help maintain their runway for some time to come.

This video from @mr_intuition provides a good recap to date.

https://twitter.com/mr_intuition/status/1588276419934982144?s=20&t=GeQDlMAXYarZGeUhSmILEw

Since then, the Alpha Game has come to a head and the Full Game has launched.

The “Full Game” is a cross between a digital “Settlers of Catan” and a huge interactive game of chess. Those that have played Catan will know that this will be etched into the history of the evolution of blockchain gaming.

So what’s changed, and what’s novel about this final iteration?

The full game builds the ecosystem out with land, farmers and resources akin to building materials. It sets the foundations for a much larger ecosystem, ready to capture the attention of a wider audience. Could this be the building blocks of an active mass multiplayer online role-playing game (“MMORPG”)?

The new NFT assets help deliver several additional layers to the mind-boggling game theory. It’s important to highlight that while the land and farmers offer new means of economic advantage, the wolves remain the dominant force.

The Wolf Game loop TL;DR is illustrated as follows:

These mechanics help drive additional gaming niches for players to master. Selecting and collaborating with your community will help you and your community to reap the highest rewards.

There will be many competing for the top spot. It could be perceived as the “Alpha Game” on steroids which was won by the Alpha/tier 8 (“A8”) pack led by Gmoney. The community won 20% of the 500m $WOOL prize for placing first.

Rather than 14 communities, led by the 14 Alpha wolves, the full game is 101 communities spread over 20,000 land parcels. Community 0 (Mountain below) is where the wolves breed on 400 genesis land parcels within the dens built on specific parcels. Breeding wolves is costly, but rewarding as we will see later on under the breeding mechanics section.

A7 wolf breeding will be the most resource-intensive, while sheep are on the other end of the spectrum. A8 wolves will remain grails, which probably explains the recent 75 WETH acquisition of an A8 wolf by Snowfro (founder of Chromie Squiggles). After all, owning the original 14 of a piece of web3 gaming history could be invaluable - A collector’s item.

If we get up in our helicopter, the aerial view is looking similar to a mix of Age of Empires mixed with George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Except for this time, it’s wolves and not the pigs taking charge. One should remember:

“All animals are equal, except some are more equal than others.”

So what are these mechanics?

Continuing this theme from the Gems in the prior alpha game, this rewards those who play the game will likely receive the rarest of assets, or be rewarded handsomely.

The wolves that attack the sheep will be required to go head to head in a game of “sheep’s dilemma”. You will need to choose wisely to mitigate losses.

This is a classic game of Prisoner’s dilemma. The optimal outcome for both parties would be to share, but we know this will be contingent on the risk appetite of both parties playing the game. Those degenerates looking to maximize on their returns through risky means could walk away with no spoils.

Unexpectedly, the whales have initially spread their assets so they lack large community allegiances. However, this enables them to have voting power over the tax rate. A surefire way of accumulating more of those valuable resources.

Again an interesting element of game theory that impacts player strategies. The level of tax also drives the amount of grass produced, required for sheep breeding so will be interesting to see how the tax rates adjust in the event of a shortage of grass plays out.

Progress too quickly, accumulate too many resources and you will become a juicy target for several wolves. Current tax rates appear to be tracking between 10 and 20% for most communities.

Land generates resources depending on its terrain. The farmers positioned on the land can act as a multiplier to expedite resource extraction. Instead of the settlements, roads and cities in Catan, there are Barns and Bathhouses in Wolf Game.

• Barns built with wood and stone - Sheep breeding.

• Dens - Wolves breeding.

• Bathhouses built with water and stone - Sheep and wolves (peak only) energy Replenishment.

So do you go for a larger Gen 2 herd, but risk losing some in the process or focus on replenishing your existing assets and maximizing your community’s land? But wolves could also sabotage buildings to set community fortifications back and minimize progression.

Again agility and iterative approaches will likely do well while collaborating with other community members to expedite optimal breeding and replenishment strategies. Stockpiling too many resources could leave you open to attack from packs of wolves, thus encouraging resource usage.

Initially, players appear to be draining their energy to maximize production. There will be mass energy shortages.

Will strategic planning around optimal energy consumption yield long-term benefits? Aesop’s fable, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ rings true here. Every individual and community are playing a different strategy so it’s difficult to predict the optimal approach. As is the case with Chess, the strategy will need to iterate as the game progresses, depending on the approach taken by other players.

Cool-down times are aligned with the activity of the in-game asset, so balancing this with the cost of using a bathhouse will be required. Should players focus on:

1. Building barns to grow their herd so that their resource collection is expedited with more hands making light of work, or;

2. Build bathhouses to replenish existing high-performing Gen 0 and 1 assets.

Or if you do not have land, then $WOOL can be paid to rent the bathhouse to replenish.

Breeding happens in pairs, so those single asset owners will need to collaborate.

There is a risk that these new Gen 2 assets will be stolen. Protection from farmers or high-level wolves should be used to prevent loss.

Barns (sheep) and dens (wolves) are required to breed. Buildings can only be built on specific land parcels - approximately 12.9% of land have this ability. As expected these are more expensive, currently with a floor price of 2.2 ETH ($2,230 USD) compared to another resource-intensive land parcel price of 0.35 ETH ($355 USD).

Owners can charge a tax to provide the service. Those with high-level barns will prosper, could the development of optimal breeding spots be a strategy in its own right? Players will be able to breed different levels of wolves depending on their parents, as follows:

As expected the newly bred Omega wolves (A7) will be the best to breed given the higher maximum energy and faster replenishment times. Alpha (A8) are grails and cannot be created anymore.

There are some novel mechanics around the use of farmers to expedite the courting process or improve the efficiency of nurturing the sheep to full energy. Yet this could make prime targets for wolves yet again.

It’s clear that wolf breeding will be significantly more expensive compared to sheep breeding. This is intentional to maintain the value of wolves. In fact, we are seeing some astronomical den breeding fees being accepted.

https://twitter.com/brydisanto/status/1606296190244442118?s=20&t=BpOItOtMNQr1N0MXoY0lOA

The current market value of 502k $WOOL is priced at $15k USD. The current price of A7 wolves is 19 ETH ($23k USD), with the most recent A7 sale being sold for 21.9 ETH ($26.7k USD) earlier today.

So it’s clear that the wolf breeding game is valuable, holding the dens built to breed them could be a very lucrative play. The current floor on peak 1, 2 and 3 genesis land is 7 ETH, 14 ETH and 21 ETH, respectively.

The weather, tax and decisions of other players impact the level of grass production. The grass is required to breed sheep.

Establish the best times to maximize your grass yield depending on the weather.

The lore is brought to life through the animations. The ability of the 14 Alpha wolves to lead communities brings a sense of hierarchical structure. Will they form an effective chain of command to dominate over the other communities? Or will the players act in silos, ultimately driving chaotic incoherent but slow growth, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack from the well-formed legions?

The revised economy has added several new layers to the “onion”. Don’t be hasty and peel the first layer, you could cry when the game mechanics play out down the line.

$WOOL will remain the lifeblood of the ecosystem. The other items are peripheral and contingent on the in-game actions of the players and their communities. Their value will likely spike when scarcity hits, as is the case for real-world supply/demand flows. Stockpiling resources will enable more actions but this will be limited by the amount of $WOOL available.

As seen in Settlers of Catan, players can be stuck with an abundance of a single resource and unable to upgrade or build certain structures that would give them a strategic advantage. Trading with the merchant will allow for a more fluid game, although doing so at the wrong time could see adverse economic activity if forced to trade when prices are high.

The Merchant brings in a new automated market maker (“AMM”) that enables liquidity with resources. While Ether Orcs provides an external marketplace to trade crafting materials, this solution is internal thus capturing a more typical web2 gaming feel. Could we observe some similarities to the Runescape Grand Exchange?

The Ether Orcs (“EO”) potion vendor is arguably the first iteration of this and possibly drove inspiration. However, the key difference here is that the merchant has an open market price, dictated by demand. The EO potion vendor provided a “bot offer” floor of 1 $ZUG per consumable while also offering the external marketplace for the open market. This Wolf Game solution attempts to combine these mechanics.

It will certainly be interesting to see how a free market dictates the price for resources, and whether this is dominated by whales within the game.

Most NFT gaming ERC-20 tokens received criticism for poor balancing/sink mechanics that caused hyper-inflationary valuations; $WOOL was no different.

The price went parabolic, reaching a height of $0.47 on January 20th, 2022, as players entered a frenzy to acquire more sheep to produce more $WOOL at a greater rate. The issue was there was minimal use for the token at this point in time so the supply was unleashed on the market causing the price to tank.

We can see that there was a slight deflationary pressure since the Cave / Alpha game launched in mid-2022, driven by several burn mechanisms around switching packs and accumulating resources to optimize gameplay around the caves and uncover hidden gems or merchandise.

The market subsequently priced the $WOOL unlock on the market as players pre-empted the final alpha game reward distribution in November.

The $WOOL pouch was an early, novel, mechanic that was borne from the contract issues early on in the project. The $WOOL production and mint stopped early. The remaining $WOOL needed to be distributed somehow so this novel mechanic was introduced and is similar to the traditional finance (“tradFi”) concept of a fixed-term deposit with the yield being distributed over a four-year period.

The $WOOL price now sits at the $0.03 mark, but liquidity could be a concern if there is not sufficient depth to the ETH/WOOL pairs. There are small movements in volume causing significant spikes in prices around announcements, as liquidity is drained from the pools.

So how will these new mechanics impact the price of $WOOL?

We could look at the individual mechanisms and pull spreadsheets to forecast burn rates. But there are a huge number of variables that will drive this, contingent on player behaviours.

It’s likely that the team will have some models to monitor this, but having worked at EY myself, with actuaries and modelling with listed clients for a decade, it’s likely these models are not on par with these companies with billions of $USD in their war chests. I could be wrong, they do say not to underestimate “The Shep”.

Ultimately the burn rate will come down to the fun and addictive gameplay. If the players enjoy creating and immersing themselves in the ecosystem, then they will continue to burn $WOOL and resources, to enhance the structures on their land and the activity within them.

But as is the case with any game, attention spans are short. Retaining this attention is a challenge, so the team will need to develop at a faster rate to keep the community engaged while managing their own burnout. It’s why the full game will start off slow, with relatively low rates of building construction and resource gathering. Then as the game approaches a more mature state this rate will speed up. By this point, the team will hopefully have more engaging content in the pipeline.

If the price of $WOOL rises too quickly, then fewer players will be able to afford to play the game. Whales wanting to play the long game will take advantage and use this to build the structures for optimal breeding and replenishment strategies. Many whales are prioritizing their tax yield as if to pre-empt a squeeze on resource availability and pricing, alleviated through stockpiling their own stacks.

Those that are in it for the money will want to see the price of $WOOL increase and layer out of the game at the expense of internal progression. It’s a balancing act.

Do you have a long-term conviction in the Wolf Game ecosystem to continue accumulating the assets? Is there an expectation that the game will be even bigger in the future, and that owning the genesis assets will be invaluable?

This ultimately comes down to the health of the project and the remaining runway for development. It could create the next behemoths akin to Axie Infinity whales, or bigger.

How will the team maintain player engagement and retain their attention? They will need to ensure they know their target market/audience.

It’s clear that Wolf Game executes this well. The audience is currently geared towards a mature, slightly opulent target market. Realistically, most of those that will be able to afford to play will be adults with reasonable purse strings, given the initial financial outlay to enter the ecosystem.

The top 100 individual wallets each own in excess of $215k in assets at spot value, while the largest wallet (CryptoCorey) has a spot portfolio valuation of $2.4m USD as of December 23rd and Seedphrase with the largest valuation of Community 0 land, which will be imperative for continued A7 wolf breeding. It is likely that there are several VaynerMedia/GaryVee wallets containing a significant number of assets given there were two representatives who led communities in the Alpha game.

Adult audiences are not unusual for web3 gaming, as pointed about by Jonah:

https://twitter.com/RealJonahBlake/status/1605595350902771712?s=20&t=X8vCKtrpAxCqOIFWw2C8XQ

In fact, many games are geared towards adults as the primary user. The rise in eSports has made this a viable career option, with platforms such as Twitch, enabling users to stream and earn advertising revenue or subscriptions.

It will be interesting to see how this grows with disintermediation from web3 rivals, such as Valhalla. Revenue-sharing models could entice more users into the web3 gaming ecosystem and make gaming an even more viable career option.

It’s clear there are several large whales in this game. But the collaborative communal gameplay and reward allocation, correlated proportionally with individuals’ contributions, allows for a mechanism whereby the little man isn’t “screwed”. That is in my opinion what makes this game innovative - collaborative, multiplayer games are fun.

It’s difficult for the game statistics to be analyzed given the off-chain gameplay. It would be great to have an analytics dashboard built out, similar to the Spy dashboard for Ether Orcs.

This would then provide more transparency over how the game is tracking which would help with the decision-making process for players.

Analysis around token (ERC-721, ERC-1155 and ERC-20) burn, and player activity (unique active wallet, most active players and associated actions in the game) would be useful insights.

If the burn mechanics mentioned are insufficient to offset the supply then the price will fall (assuming demand remains constant).

Alternatively if the price spikes then in-game actions may be limited due to affordability.

A consistent token price at a predictable level is necessary for affordable gameplay and also allows users to better predict and manage their cashflows more reliably.

The game is using off-chain gaming and is predominantly reliant on a single anonymous founder. The Shepherd has delivered to date, with minor hiccups which shows resolve and ability to deal with curve balls. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the project will continue. The track record is good, but if the adoption doesn’t reach the required levels and becomes too expensive to run then this could lead to going concern risks rising. It’s good that the core assets are maintained on Ethereum to lower the risk of the assets being lost indefinitely.

We’ve seen several large projects struggle through mismanaged treasuries and strategies that are reliant on royalty models. Finding alternative sources of revenue, or capital, may be required for longer-term growth.

Acquisition of wolves and sheep partway through the game could mean energy has been used, requiring additional resources to replenish. This could create barriers to entry for new players who aren’t as familiar with the ecosystem.

It’s clear the objective is to continue to scale.

There will be headwinds to greater adoption and scaling Wolf Game. Many other NFT games are ahead on player-base scaling.

However, doing this organically will be the best way to maintain sustainable growth. Scaling too quickly, too soon, will be detrimental to a boom/bust style collapse.

The game theory fails to factor in human elements such as loyalty, honesty and empathy. Nash equilibrium also needs considering and is difficult to factor into the game theory, depending on the social context and who the players are. This all adds to the complexity of the gameplay, ultimately making it more difficult for those balancing the levers on the in-game economy.

The past year has been a roller coaster for the Wolf Game ecosystem with some very high early benchmarks to follow, and it has exceeded this with the Full Game.

The new land, farmers and resources enable several new layers of game theory to be unleashed on the web3 gaming sector. There will be no one strategy fits all. Players will need to adapt, collaborate, iterate and play several rounds of chess ahead of their opposition to prosper.

But what’s innovative is that the smaller players can compete equally as effectively as the whales, promoting collaboration as a means of getting ahead. This will bring a stronger sense of community, encourage knowledge sharing and arguably drive the development forward at a faster rate.

It doesn’t come without its risks. Key person risk and execution risk are my biggest concerns. The web3 space is unforgiving, particularly when large sums of money are thrown around and a bear market is in full force. When times are good, it’s great but in hardship, we’ve seen many turn on each other.

Nonetheless, this is a risk for most projects, but with a $2.9m USD war chest from mint and royalties, and a strong track record of exceptional delivery the Wolf Game is well positioned to trail blaze and push the boundaries of NFT technology and web3 gaming.

At OriginsNFT we leverage data-driven decision-making, educational resources, and proprietary analytics to remain ahead of the curve with respect to blockchain tech and specifically NFTs. To find out more, please visit our website or Twitter.

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