Supporting the development and global adoption of Web3 Gaming with Community, Investments, Esports & Media.
Supporting the development and global adoption of Web3 Gaming with Community, Investments, Esports & Media.
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Partnership & Investment update
1-year — Aug 2021- Aug 2022
Tl;dr Total Projects visited: 250+ Total Projects reviewed: 182 Private Rounds: 27 Public purchase: 15 Advisorships: 3
gm!
We felt that we should welcome you all into the Ready Player community and how better to do that than to walk you through what we have accomplished in the last year? An organization is composed of its various parts, its people, and the interests held by its membership. As such, we felt it was prudent to walk you through our various investments to date, what has grabbed our interest, and where our attention lies in the web3 gaming space.
After spending so much time assessing projects we feel we should begin sharing this perspective with you all. We would love to hear your thoughts on our ever growing portfolio and which projects you are most excited about. Which founders are you dying to be connected with? We hope to continue to drive deeper ties between RPD, our community, and our portfolio companies. Again, welcome.
Investment — Equity
What it is: LifeForce Games brings together gaming veterans and established web3 founders to make a gaming metaverse for the traditional gamer. With a focus on a no code, drag and drop game generator, gamers will be able to create a portfolio of games, including arena shooters, tower defense, battle royale and more. Players (and LFG partners) will have multiple ways to play, create, own, and monetize within the LFG metaverse.
Why we like them: LifeForce Games is devoted to gaming functionality, utilizing curated immersive and aesthetically pleasing visuals that traditional gamers have come to expect of traditional studios, with none of the typical gating factors of current games such as high cost nft purchases or even the current cost of a traditional game. They are building a gaming universe that seamlessly integrates blockchain utility in a way that all gamers can both access and incorporate into their gaming experience. The combination of the founder’s web3 experience along with the core team’s decades of experience in traditional gaming make what LifeForce Games is building the experience we believe will bridge the gap between web3 and traditional gamers.
Investment — Equity/Advisory
What it is: Midnight Society is a new kind of AAA game studio and publishing model over a decade in the making. We are a group of ambitious game industry veterans who see a future in which developers no longer create experiences in a vacuum and players share in a game’s success. Midnight Society is currently developing a Vertical Extraction Shooter (VES) called Deadrop.
Why we like them: Dr. Disrespect has been working towards starting a game studio for the better part of a decade and the result of those efforts is Midnight Society. His experience in gaming, his audience, and his background in level design makes Deadrop one of the most highly anticipated web3 games. We are working closely with the team as one of our members is an active advisor to the Midnight Society team on their web3 strategy.
Investment — Token
What it is: An immersive multiplayer experience and strategy game enabling you to craft your own unique adventure within a shared medieval universe. By participating in different engaging play styles including farming, fighting, resource management and ruling, your decisions and skills will impact the same open economy.
Why we like them: Similar to Crusader Kings, Civilization, and the Total War franchises, Blocklords is building a strategy game that involves politics, dynasty, and careful management of empires. Resource and inventory management will lean heavily towards the management of resources on chain. We are excited to see how the game develops into an open market.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Respct is revolutionizing what it means to be a web3 gamer through their “Unified gamer tags for web3”, they are also working on assisting gamers with game discovery, a lending protocol, and a questing platform.
Why we like them:
We believe an on chain reputation system for gamers is coming and we are excited about what that means for improving web3 gaming for all participants. The ability for gamers to find games they enjoy, being able to signal their stats or accomplishments, and take that reputation from project to project is exciting. This also enables projects to find their audience by perusing on-chain data and will simplify their marketing process. Finally, these achievements can be meta achievements across entire genres of games.
Investment — Equity & Token
What it is: Internet Game is an assortment of mini games with high value rewards. They combine this with branded activations and a casual gaming market approach. Their Season 2 of competition is coming soon.
Why we like them: The Internet Game team understands their market and how to market to them. They are approaching the casual gaming market and building hype through both influencer marketing and high value NFT prizes. Geared towards casual gamers with low bandwidth playtimes it hits a new web3 target market. We are also excited about Internet Game as a service, and how we will be able to partner with them going forward.
Investment — Token
What it is: MatchboxDAO is a collective of developers, artists, and designers building the infrastructure of on-chain games with StarkNet.
Why we like them: Beyond web3 gaming, we aim to also invest in infrastructure and technology that can drive global adoption of web3. This includes Layer-2 solutions like Starkware. MatchboxDAO is helping bring web3 Gaming to Starkware, which will permit cheaper and faster transactions alongside improved privacy. We believe that making web3 Gaming faster, cheaper and increasing privacy will help drive global adoption.
Investment — Token
What it is: Mighty Bear is the leading multi-platform game developer in Southeast Asia. They create accessible multiplayer experiences with the ambition to become future billion dollar IPs.
Why we like them: Founder Simon Davis has been developing games in the web2 space for years and has shifted his focus to web3 gaming. With a team of over 60 and a well thought out tokenomics design combined with off-chain resources and rewards we are very excited to be backing this team.
Investment — Token
What it is: Ascenders combines a story-driven open world with a fully decentralized, player-driven crypto economy to deliver a totally new ARPG experience. The Ascenders ecosystem is complex, with lots of opportunities for trade, cooperation, and competition.
Why we like them: With an already fun and intriguing mini-game released including beautiful art, immersive scenery, and impressive character movement we are excited for what’s to come from the Ascenders team. The leadership has a direct vision of pushing a zelda inspired open world concept with benefits from blockchain through an open marketplace and a leaderboard driven through individual PvE skill. This unique direction is hitting a target market we have not seen many teams target to date.
Advisorship/Investment — Equity
What it is: Armored Kingdom is a multimedia entertainment universe encompassing comic books, an animated series and an NFT-based card game. It’s designed to attract a wide audience and keep them engaged with all aspects of the evolving storyline.
Set on a medieval fantasy world, Armored Kingdom is a genre-blending, character-driven story of conflict, treachery and mystery. Three warring factions — the anthropomorphized jungle animals from the Kingdom of the Horn, the sea-dwelling creatures known as the Costraca and the humans of the Veldt — are about to enter a critical battle that could leave all three armies decimated.
Why we like them: A game, a comic book, an animated series all created by Mila Kunis and her team. We believe the success behind gaming media giants like Mario and Pokémon are due in part to their multi-media approach. We feel Mila and her team’s entertainment experience will be a major differentiator for this project.
Investment — Token
What it is: An independent studio creating Off The Grid (OTG), A cyberpunk Battle Royale 2.0 where you shape the story and the gameplay. Unfolding on a dystopian tropical island, OTG sends you on head-spinning assassination and sabotage missions to the greater glory and market share of your chosen faction.
Why we like them: Gunzilla’s studio is launching Off the Grid, which will be the first globally distributed title with an optional and abstracted away blockchain back end. Their GunZ platform is intended to solve the fact that today’s F2P games don’t permit for actual ownership for the players. We like that Off the Grid will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, which in combination w/ their blockchain integrations and GunZ platform, will enable scaled distribution of web3 gaming.
Investment — Token
What it is: Avalon is a MMORPG universe where players earn tokens by playing the game, making contributions to the ecosystem and by creating original content. Players can explore new worlds, conquer dungeons, craft equipment, battle in PVP, level up, collect rare items, and craft new experiences for others to participate in.
Why we like them: Currently the team is in stealth, but from our conversation with the team and their history & experience, we are excited for what’s to come
Investment — Equity
What it is: Web3-Native, Decentralized Data Warehouse powering low-latency queries and tamperproof analytics across web3.
Why we like them: We aim to also invest and support infrastructure and technology that can drive global adoption of web3. This includes data management solutions that can facilitate the development of web3 games and the scope of available data that can help drive superior experiences for all market participants. As Layer 2 solutions will help create less friction and more privacy for developers and gamers, data management solutions like Space & Time will help enhance global adoption and improvement of web3 gaming.
Investment — Token
What it is: Derby Stars is a horse racing metaverse game where players can breed, grow, build and trade. Players can train their horses over a long period of time through the in-game training system, and race against other players using the stats, talents and skills of each horse.
Why we like them: The Derby Stars team is addressing the anime gaming market by developing a game with a similar look and feel to popular game Uma Musume. We are excited to see popular games from other regions break into web3. The team is also well versed in web3 and has a deep understanding of building a game with proper tokenomics and external gameplay to add more to simply horse racing.
Investment — Token
What it is: Political Strategy Game powered by blockchain. A fully on-chain browser based gaming experience pushing the limits of game theory with strategy, plotting, and backstabbing to keep players on their toes.
Why we like them: A team of focused individuals who understand what is necessary for a fully on-chain game to work. With their concept of “threat of wipe” they have created a complex game theory of how players will have to work together, backstab, strategize, and defend their resources to secure victory.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Set on a mission to build a new category of competitive games everyone can enjoy in short snackable sessions — introducing Lunchtime Esports.
Fableborne is an isometric play-to-own multiplayer game where you embark on a journey to explore the Shatterlands. Built to be accessible and mobile-first, a perfect blend of Action RPG and Base Building where you fortify your island while attempting to raid other players’ base for gold and glory.
Why we like them: A highly experienced team that understands the data behind creating a fun game. The team has worked through multiple iterations of development and feedback loops to finally arrive at Fableborne. They are focused on short mobile sessions focused on strategy and decision making with in-game rewards given to tournament winners during their “Lunchtime Esports”.
Investment — Token
What it is: Enter Caerras, the world of Legends of Venari, where you will be able to catch, train, and trade powerful Venari along your adventures.
Why we like them: A game-first team focused on building an enjoyable experience while testing their game loops before adding tokens into those loops. Legends of Venari is building a Pokémon-esque catch, collect, battle game with public iterative feedback loops and seems very in touch with their community. The battle pass system and season cycle is one we think will come naturally to gamers.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Mona spaces are beautiful social worlds for you to collect, show your art, and gather with others. Mona is working to bridge the digital art gallery with the social gathering space.
Why we like them: Mona’s team is composed of dedicated and earnest builders working to bring deeper metaverse experiences to the masses. The tools they have made available have attracted many builders to develop their own spaces in the metaverse. We felt that being able to turn the spaces in which people gather in the blockchain into art was simply inspired. As such, RPD felt that this should be our second metaverse play.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Petaverse Network is building an open standard for digital pets — interoperable digital companions to be by your side, across the metaverse.
Why we like them: Building the web3 nintendogs, we think digital pets you actually own are an awesome concept. The team is extremely knowledgeable, experienced and aiming to build the cross-IP metadata standard for their Petaverse to be multi-chain and multiverse. VR and AR capabilities bring the project to life.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: Big Time is a free-to-play, multiplayer action RPG game that combines fast-action combat and adventure through time and space.
Explore ancient mysteries and futuristic civilizations as you battle your way through history.
Why we like them: Big Time comes with a slew of experienced devs looking to build the first web3 MMORPG. The team has shown competence in their development and marketing efforts. They have also created a tough party and leveling system that will keep even the top grinders logged in to chase their desired loot and levels. However, it strikes with the right balance of between both on-chain and off-chain items.
Investment — Token
What it is: Galaxy Fight Club is a cross-IP P2E PvP game for the NFT Universe.
The Galaxy Fight Club (GFC) is not just an avatar project, it is a real-time PvP game to bring together all the other different NFT collections into one single platform, this means you can ‘log-in’ with a NFT you have already bought and battle with that character.
Why we like them: The web3 Brawl Stars with proper tokenomics and cross-IP functionality. Galaxy Fight Club is working closely with many projects in the NFT space to bring your favorite pfp to battle.
Investment — Token
What it is: Mojo Melee is Planet Mojo’s upcoming player vs. player (PvP) auto chess battler game, reimagined for the blockchain.
Players will have the ability to own their in-game playable 3D characters as NFTs and compete in ongoing play-and-earn tournaments with crafted Battle Stone NFTs made in Biome (Land) play. Over time, players will be able to take their customized teams into a suite of interconnected games and experiences set inside the Planet Mojoverse.
Why we like them: An auto battler with “groot”-like characters with a tie into land gameplay that will feed your characters on the battlefield, this is the web3 rendition of TFT. The team has strong game development chops and brings that to bear in one of the hottest genres of the past few years.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Fan Controlled Football (FCF) is a new category of interactive entertainment that blurs the line between traditional sports and video games, with a fan-controlled league that puts owners (you!) in control of everything from real-time play calls to jersey designs.
Why we like them: We believe that sporting in web3 is under penetrated but carries with it great promise. Gamified and interactive sports entertainment is a large opportunity. Fan Controlled football has had great results in their early growth and execution of their strategy. They have a deep commitment to building with fans and athletes in innovative ways. We are excited for the upcoming FCF season and for the expansion of Fan Controlled holdings into Fan Controlled Hoops.
Investment — Token/Equity
What it is: Alliance is the leading Web3 accelerator and founder community.
Why we like them: A web3 incubator focusing on connecting founders to investors, advisors, and mentors. RPD has realized a number of opportunities and introductions from Alliance’s demo days where they let their developers pitch Alliance’s investors.
Investment — Token
What it is: Genopets is a Free-to-Play, Move-to-Earn NFT mobile game that makes it fun and rewarding to live an active lifestyle. A Genopet is your digital pet whose evolution and growth is inextricably linked to your own. The steps you take every day power your journey through the Genoverse as you explore, battle, and evolve — earning crypto while you play.
Why we like them: Gamified move-to-earn built like a web3 tamagotchi with farming elements. We are excited to see new genres continue to emerge in the web3 gaming space.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: Build your base, grow your army and earn Ruby by conquering enemy bases throughout Mavia.
Why we like them: Clash of clans has made it to web3 through Heroes of Mavia. It feels like a natural fit to have a Clash style game in the web3 space and we look forward to watching Heroes of Mavia rise to the occasion.
Investment — Token
What it is: The game is a turn-based battler with RPG elements (character progression, artifact upgrades, and crafting). Players obtain and upgrade wizards and use them to do battle — PVE and PVP — in the Arena.
Why we like them: A turn based battler with trading cards in the mix, the team is deep in the lore, art, and mystery of battling wizards looking to bring peace to the realm. The art direction of the wizard NFTs themselves is quite compelling. The wizards represented by NFTs will be used to battle in 3s to take down foes in PvP and PvE.
Investment — Token
What it is: Treasure is the decentralized video game console connecting games and communities together through imagination, $MAGIC, and NFTs.
Why we like them: Treasure is building an ecosystem of games on arbitrum. Through core games, partner games, and a marketplace they are proving to be building something very valuable. This is one of the more robust ecosystems of games we have encountered.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: MetaSoccer is a football management game where you can create your own club and generate income while you run it.
Why we like them: A web2 studio with successful Soccer (Football) games already live and hundreds of thousands of DAU they were looking to develop a game that could provide the freedom to transact for those players as well as tokenized benefits
Purchase — Mint
What it is: Altered State Machine is a platform to build, train and trade AI agents using NFTs. A world-first decentralized platform for developers and NFT owners. Create, Train and Own Non Fungible Intelligence™ (NFI) ASM is ushering in a new generation of gaming and finance, where AI bots compete and interact with each other.
The core ASM ecosystem consists of their protocol, NFT Brains, and their own Web3 Soccer game built on the protocol, called AIFA Allstars. The AIFA all star characters are NFTs which interact with the ASM Brains in a process called training, which will allow for a much deeper and more competitive gaming environment powered by AI.
Why we like them: We believe that Artificial intelligence protocols will be a major unlock for web3 Gaming. Having AI come to web3 gaming from a decentralized open protocol is something we are culturally aligned with and believe will be a necessary component if Web3 Gaming is going to reach its potential. We are excited for Altered State Machine, AIFA allstars and the broader ASM ecosystem and the innovation they are driving.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Axie Infinity is a game universe filled with fascinating creatures, Axies, that players can collect as pets. Players aim to battle, breed, collect, raise, and build kingdoms for their Axies. The universe has a player-owned economy where players can truly own, buy, sell, and trade resources they earn in the game through skilled-gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem.
Why we like them: Axie Infinity is the game that brought web3 gaming to the world and empowered our original guild community. With their recent pivot to a mix of on-chain and off-chain resources required for battle we believe the Axie Infinity team is beginning to turn around their initial flawed tokenomics design. We hope to see them continue in the direction they have been going and to continue their efforts to add more stability to their chain.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Crypto Unicorns is a new blockchain-based game centered around awesomely unique Unicorn NFTs which players can use in a fun farming simulation and in a variety of exciting battle loops.
Why we like them: A unicorn breeding and farming simulator that will have a slew of other mini games mixed in that players will look to optimize their unicorns to compete with one another.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Guild Of Guardians is a multiplayer, fantasy, action RPG where players build their dream team of Guardians and compete in a guild to earn epic rewards.
Why we like them: Guild of Guardians is the web3 mobile-first dungeon crawler that feels like it came from web2 and has a quality that lives up to par. With a guild structure that incentivizes collaboration and gamifies the cooperative experience, we think they have it right with their web3 approach.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Parallel is a trading card game that can most easily be described as Magic the Gathering and Starcraft having a blockchain integrated baby, with AR components..
Why we like them: The Parallel team has some of the most high fidelity experiences and art work in the entire ecosystem. The lore they have built and the community they have gathered around this game is a stand out in the space. We appreciate the patience, thought and diligence the team has displayed to ensure that the product they deliver is best in class, and their deployment of crypto into the game is sustainable. We are aligned with Parallel’s focus on making sure that their game can be easily adopted by anyone, even those who don’t know anything about web3 games or mechanics. By having a premium high fidelity product, a model that can encourage easy access to traditional gamers, while also having key elements that permit ownership for gamers who choose to use NFT based decks, we believe Parallel has the opportunity to achieve scaled adoption.
Purchase —Mint & Secondary
What it is: Rumble Kongs are a set of 10,000 programmatically generated and unique NFTs that will be playable avatars in the Rumble Kong League video game. Rumble Kong League is built to bring thrilling basketball matches to web and mobile, giving anyone a chance to compete for the title.
Why we like them: Backed by heavy hitters from the NBA like Steph Curry and a deep level of strategy behind designing a team that’s better than the rest, there is a great amount of intrigue to Rumble Kong
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: We build end-to-end, chain-agnostic, bespoke experiences for the world’s largest brands and IP. Our goal is to make NFTs accessible for fans and brands with seamless, easy-to-use, and secure experiences built and Powered by RECUR.
Why we like them: We are excited for the future of digital collectibles in the NFT and web3 space. We look forward to the communities that will arise from the Recur project.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel ASSETS and gaming experiences on the blockchain
Why we like them: Sandbox has been seen as the leading metaverse in the space acquiring many partnerships and having 6 and 7 figure land sales. We at Ready Player DAO acquired land to build out a home and headquarters for ourselves and our community. What web3 organization’s build would be complete without some virtual experiences? We cannot wait to share them with you soon.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Sipher is a multiplayer looter shooter ARPG, set in a dream-like universe of alien worlds, vibrant characters, and dangerous mysteries.
Embark on the saga of a virtual universe created by a god-like artificial intelligence, where the future of humanity has been reborn and must fight to explore and protect their new home.
Why we like them: Sipher is the web3 ARPG that is led by a well respected thought leader in Tin Nguyen. With their collection of NFT classes, well designed levels, and wide array of weapons gamers will always find enjoyment in Sipher.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Treeverse is a top-down open-world classless MMORPG built for mobile with social features and an emphasis on cooperative gameplay.
Why we like them: Loopify and Endless Clouds are building a gorgeous looking MMORPG and have consistently provided more value back to holders of the project than anticipated. Known to underpromise and overdeliver we are excited to be along for the journey. If you need any convincing go check out their most recent trailer!
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: A free to play interoperable MMORPG Metagame on Ethereum.
Why we like them: Worldwide Webb has been creating partnerships and building interoperability and could emerge as the pixelated metaverse for those without the pc power to run high graphic experiences.
Investment — Secondary Purchase
What it is: Discover Frontier: a skills-and-strats 1v1 Battle Game set in the mysterious universe of Watcher S/N 404.
Why we like them: While the details around Missing Frontier are vague, they are backed by Ubisoft and have an impressive team. We purchased a small amount of their NFTs to be along for the journey
Investment — Secondary purchase
What it is: Aavegotchi is a DeFi-enabled crypto collectibles game developed by Singapore-based Pixelcraft Studios that allows players to stake Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) avatars with interest-generating tokens and interact with the Aavegotchi metaverse. It is a unique combination of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and NFTs.
Why we like them: A casual defi gaming experience that encapsulates the GameFi genre. The Aavegotchi team has been gradually building their lore encapsulated world of GameFi for well over a year and has a collection of loyal frens.
Investment — Secondary Purchase (Degens)
What it is: Nifty League is bringing competitive gaming to web3 — moving away from play-to-earn (P2E) into a new era of play-and-earn (P&E) by offering a fun and engaging gaming ecosystem.
The Niftyverse, an online world for Nifty League gamers, is centered around nostalgia where builders, players, and owners spend time connecting, gaming, and earning in web3.
Why we like them: A nostalgic experience of mini games similar to super smash and wii sports incorporating NFTs and tokens in a way that makes sense
Partnership
What it is: NOR is a platform for play. It’s a fully-realized universe with its own history, its own future, its own economy, and its own natural laws. This is where players compete for coin and glory — and where death truly matters.
Why we like them: We like Nor’s big vision, unique approach and commitment to the gamers and to fun. By separating the game and the players from the economy, Nor has the opportunity to build something very innovative and transformative. We like how they are structuring the Platform, separating the gaming experience from the economy and connecting them together again in their ecosystem. We like their commitment to games built around high skill ceilings, which focuses on “easy to learn, hard to master”, drawing inspiration from games like “Counter-Strike and Starcraft, but other titles like Lethal League, Tetris, Rocket League, and Titanfall 2.
Partnership
Niftyisland.com**What it is: **Nifty Island is an open social gaming platform and virtual world being developed by Nyft Studios. It will be the centerpiece and first title in what we call the Nyftverse: a set of interoperable games, a marketplace, play-to-earn protocol, game developer tools and infrastructure — all powered by web3 to realize the dream of a truly open and player-owned metaverse.
**Why we like it: **This team is taking the anti-thesis approach to digital scarcity and inviting any and all to join and build out fun experiences on their island.
Partnership & Investment update
1-year — Aug 2021- Aug 2022
Tl;dr Total Projects visited: 250+ Total Projects reviewed: 182 Private Rounds: 27 Public purchase: 15 Advisorships: 3
gm!
We felt that we should welcome you all into the Ready Player community and how better to do that than to walk you through what we have accomplished in the last year? An organization is composed of its various parts, its people, and the interests held by its membership. As such, we felt it was prudent to walk you through our various investments to date, what has grabbed our interest, and where our attention lies in the web3 gaming space.
After spending so much time assessing projects we feel we should begin sharing this perspective with you all. We would love to hear your thoughts on our ever growing portfolio and which projects you are most excited about. Which founders are you dying to be connected with? We hope to continue to drive deeper ties between RPD, our community, and our portfolio companies. Again, welcome.
Investment — Equity
What it is: LifeForce Games brings together gaming veterans and established web3 founders to make a gaming metaverse for the traditional gamer. With a focus on a no code, drag and drop game generator, gamers will be able to create a portfolio of games, including arena shooters, tower defense, battle royale and more. Players (and LFG partners) will have multiple ways to play, create, own, and monetize within the LFG metaverse.
Why we like them: LifeForce Games is devoted to gaming functionality, utilizing curated immersive and aesthetically pleasing visuals that traditional gamers have come to expect of traditional studios, with none of the typical gating factors of current games such as high cost nft purchases or even the current cost of a traditional game. They are building a gaming universe that seamlessly integrates blockchain utility in a way that all gamers can both access and incorporate into their gaming experience. The combination of the founder’s web3 experience along with the core team’s decades of experience in traditional gaming make what LifeForce Games is building the experience we believe will bridge the gap between web3 and traditional gamers.
Investment — Equity/Advisory
What it is: Midnight Society is a new kind of AAA game studio and publishing model over a decade in the making. We are a group of ambitious game industry veterans who see a future in which developers no longer create experiences in a vacuum and players share in a game’s success. Midnight Society is currently developing a Vertical Extraction Shooter (VES) called Deadrop.
Why we like them: Dr. Disrespect has been working towards starting a game studio for the better part of a decade and the result of those efforts is Midnight Society. His experience in gaming, his audience, and his background in level design makes Deadrop one of the most highly anticipated web3 games. We are working closely with the team as one of our members is an active advisor to the Midnight Society team on their web3 strategy.
Investment — Token
What it is: An immersive multiplayer experience and strategy game enabling you to craft your own unique adventure within a shared medieval universe. By participating in different engaging play styles including farming, fighting, resource management and ruling, your decisions and skills will impact the same open economy.
Why we like them: Similar to Crusader Kings, Civilization, and the Total War franchises, Blocklords is building a strategy game that involves politics, dynasty, and careful management of empires. Resource and inventory management will lean heavily towards the management of resources on chain. We are excited to see how the game develops into an open market.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Respct is revolutionizing what it means to be a web3 gamer through their “Unified gamer tags for web3”, they are also working on assisting gamers with game discovery, a lending protocol, and a questing platform.
Why we like them:
We believe an on chain reputation system for gamers is coming and we are excited about what that means for improving web3 gaming for all participants. The ability for gamers to find games they enjoy, being able to signal their stats or accomplishments, and take that reputation from project to project is exciting. This also enables projects to find their audience by perusing on-chain data and will simplify their marketing process. Finally, these achievements can be meta achievements across entire genres of games.
Investment — Equity & Token
What it is: Internet Game is an assortment of mini games with high value rewards. They combine this with branded activations and a casual gaming market approach. Their Season 2 of competition is coming soon.
Why we like them: The Internet Game team understands their market and how to market to them. They are approaching the casual gaming market and building hype through both influencer marketing and high value NFT prizes. Geared towards casual gamers with low bandwidth playtimes it hits a new web3 target market. We are also excited about Internet Game as a service, and how we will be able to partner with them going forward.
Investment — Token
What it is: MatchboxDAO is a collective of developers, artists, and designers building the infrastructure of on-chain games with StarkNet.
Why we like them: Beyond web3 gaming, we aim to also invest in infrastructure and technology that can drive global adoption of web3. This includes Layer-2 solutions like Starkware. MatchboxDAO is helping bring web3 Gaming to Starkware, which will permit cheaper and faster transactions alongside improved privacy. We believe that making web3 Gaming faster, cheaper and increasing privacy will help drive global adoption.
Investment — Token
What it is: Mighty Bear is the leading multi-platform game developer in Southeast Asia. They create accessible multiplayer experiences with the ambition to become future billion dollar IPs.
Why we like them: Founder Simon Davis has been developing games in the web2 space for years and has shifted his focus to web3 gaming. With a team of over 60 and a well thought out tokenomics design combined with off-chain resources and rewards we are very excited to be backing this team.
Investment — Token
What it is: Ascenders combines a story-driven open world with a fully decentralized, player-driven crypto economy to deliver a totally new ARPG experience. The Ascenders ecosystem is complex, with lots of opportunities for trade, cooperation, and competition.
Why we like them: With an already fun and intriguing mini-game released including beautiful art, immersive scenery, and impressive character movement we are excited for what’s to come from the Ascenders team. The leadership has a direct vision of pushing a zelda inspired open world concept with benefits from blockchain through an open marketplace and a leaderboard driven through individual PvE skill. This unique direction is hitting a target market we have not seen many teams target to date.
Advisorship/Investment — Equity
What it is: Armored Kingdom is a multimedia entertainment universe encompassing comic books, an animated series and an NFT-based card game. It’s designed to attract a wide audience and keep them engaged with all aspects of the evolving storyline.
Set on a medieval fantasy world, Armored Kingdom is a genre-blending, character-driven story of conflict, treachery and mystery. Three warring factions — the anthropomorphized jungle animals from the Kingdom of the Horn, the sea-dwelling creatures known as the Costraca and the humans of the Veldt — are about to enter a critical battle that could leave all three armies decimated.
Why we like them: A game, a comic book, an animated series all created by Mila Kunis and her team. We believe the success behind gaming media giants like Mario and Pokémon are due in part to their multi-media approach. We feel Mila and her team’s entertainment experience will be a major differentiator for this project.
Investment — Token
What it is: An independent studio creating Off The Grid (OTG), A cyberpunk Battle Royale 2.0 where you shape the story and the gameplay. Unfolding on a dystopian tropical island, OTG sends you on head-spinning assassination and sabotage missions to the greater glory and market share of your chosen faction.
Why we like them: Gunzilla’s studio is launching Off the Grid, which will be the first globally distributed title with an optional and abstracted away blockchain back end. Their GunZ platform is intended to solve the fact that today’s F2P games don’t permit for actual ownership for the players. We like that Off the Grid will launch for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, which in combination w/ their blockchain integrations and GunZ platform, will enable scaled distribution of web3 gaming.
Investment — Token
What it is: Avalon is a MMORPG universe where players earn tokens by playing the game, making contributions to the ecosystem and by creating original content. Players can explore new worlds, conquer dungeons, craft equipment, battle in PVP, level up, collect rare items, and craft new experiences for others to participate in.
Why we like them: Currently the team is in stealth, but from our conversation with the team and their history & experience, we are excited for what’s to come
Investment — Equity
What it is: Web3-Native, Decentralized Data Warehouse powering low-latency queries and tamperproof analytics across web3.
Why we like them: We aim to also invest and support infrastructure and technology that can drive global adoption of web3. This includes data management solutions that can facilitate the development of web3 games and the scope of available data that can help drive superior experiences for all market participants. As Layer 2 solutions will help create less friction and more privacy for developers and gamers, data management solutions like Space & Time will help enhance global adoption and improvement of web3 gaming.
Investment — Token
What it is: Derby Stars is a horse racing metaverse game where players can breed, grow, build and trade. Players can train their horses over a long period of time through the in-game training system, and race against other players using the stats, talents and skills of each horse.
Why we like them: The Derby Stars team is addressing the anime gaming market by developing a game with a similar look and feel to popular game Uma Musume. We are excited to see popular games from other regions break into web3. The team is also well versed in web3 and has a deep understanding of building a game with proper tokenomics and external gameplay to add more to simply horse racing.
Investment — Token
What it is: Political Strategy Game powered by blockchain. A fully on-chain browser based gaming experience pushing the limits of game theory with strategy, plotting, and backstabbing to keep players on their toes.
Why we like them: A team of focused individuals who understand what is necessary for a fully on-chain game to work. With their concept of “threat of wipe” they have created a complex game theory of how players will have to work together, backstab, strategize, and defend their resources to secure victory.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Set on a mission to build a new category of competitive games everyone can enjoy in short snackable sessions — introducing Lunchtime Esports.
Fableborne is an isometric play-to-own multiplayer game where you embark on a journey to explore the Shatterlands. Built to be accessible and mobile-first, a perfect blend of Action RPG and Base Building where you fortify your island while attempting to raid other players’ base for gold and glory.
Why we like them: A highly experienced team that understands the data behind creating a fun game. The team has worked through multiple iterations of development and feedback loops to finally arrive at Fableborne. They are focused on short mobile sessions focused on strategy and decision making with in-game rewards given to tournament winners during their “Lunchtime Esports”.
Investment — Token
What it is: Enter Caerras, the world of Legends of Venari, where you will be able to catch, train, and trade powerful Venari along your adventures.
Why we like them: A game-first team focused on building an enjoyable experience while testing their game loops before adding tokens into those loops. Legends of Venari is building a Pokémon-esque catch, collect, battle game with public iterative feedback loops and seems very in touch with their community. The battle pass system and season cycle is one we think will come naturally to gamers.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Mona spaces are beautiful social worlds for you to collect, show your art, and gather with others. Mona is working to bridge the digital art gallery with the social gathering space.
Why we like them: Mona’s team is composed of dedicated and earnest builders working to bring deeper metaverse experiences to the masses. The tools they have made available have attracted many builders to develop their own spaces in the metaverse. We felt that being able to turn the spaces in which people gather in the blockchain into art was simply inspired. As such, RPD felt that this should be our second metaverse play.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Petaverse Network is building an open standard for digital pets — interoperable digital companions to be by your side, across the metaverse.
Why we like them: Building the web3 nintendogs, we think digital pets you actually own are an awesome concept. The team is extremely knowledgeable, experienced and aiming to build the cross-IP metadata standard for their Petaverse to be multi-chain and multiverse. VR and AR capabilities bring the project to life.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: Big Time is a free-to-play, multiplayer action RPG game that combines fast-action combat and adventure through time and space.
Explore ancient mysteries and futuristic civilizations as you battle your way through history.
Why we like them: Big Time comes with a slew of experienced devs looking to build the first web3 MMORPG. The team has shown competence in their development and marketing efforts. They have also created a tough party and leveling system that will keep even the top grinders logged in to chase their desired loot and levels. However, it strikes with the right balance of between both on-chain and off-chain items.
Investment — Token
What it is: Galaxy Fight Club is a cross-IP P2E PvP game for the NFT Universe.
The Galaxy Fight Club (GFC) is not just an avatar project, it is a real-time PvP game to bring together all the other different NFT collections into one single platform, this means you can ‘log-in’ with a NFT you have already bought and battle with that character.
Why we like them: The web3 Brawl Stars with proper tokenomics and cross-IP functionality. Galaxy Fight Club is working closely with many projects in the NFT space to bring your favorite pfp to battle.
Investment — Token
What it is: Mojo Melee is Planet Mojo’s upcoming player vs. player (PvP) auto chess battler game, reimagined for the blockchain.
Players will have the ability to own their in-game playable 3D characters as NFTs and compete in ongoing play-and-earn tournaments with crafted Battle Stone NFTs made in Biome (Land) play. Over time, players will be able to take their customized teams into a suite of interconnected games and experiences set inside the Planet Mojoverse.
Why we like them: An auto battler with “groot”-like characters with a tie into land gameplay that will feed your characters on the battlefield, this is the web3 rendition of TFT. The team has strong game development chops and brings that to bear in one of the hottest genres of the past few years.
Investment — Equity
What it is: Fan Controlled Football (FCF) is a new category of interactive entertainment that blurs the line between traditional sports and video games, with a fan-controlled league that puts owners (you!) in control of everything from real-time play calls to jersey designs.
Why we like them: We believe that sporting in web3 is under penetrated but carries with it great promise. Gamified and interactive sports entertainment is a large opportunity. Fan Controlled football has had great results in their early growth and execution of their strategy. They have a deep commitment to building with fans and athletes in innovative ways. We are excited for the upcoming FCF season and for the expansion of Fan Controlled holdings into Fan Controlled Hoops.
Investment — Token/Equity
What it is: Alliance is the leading Web3 accelerator and founder community.
Why we like them: A web3 incubator focusing on connecting founders to investors, advisors, and mentors. RPD has realized a number of opportunities and introductions from Alliance’s demo days where they let their developers pitch Alliance’s investors.
Investment — Token
What it is: Genopets is a Free-to-Play, Move-to-Earn NFT mobile game that makes it fun and rewarding to live an active lifestyle. A Genopet is your digital pet whose evolution and growth is inextricably linked to your own. The steps you take every day power your journey through the Genoverse as you explore, battle, and evolve — earning crypto while you play.
Why we like them: Gamified move-to-earn built like a web3 tamagotchi with farming elements. We are excited to see new genres continue to emerge in the web3 gaming space.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: Build your base, grow your army and earn Ruby by conquering enemy bases throughout Mavia.
Why we like them: Clash of clans has made it to web3 through Heroes of Mavia. It feels like a natural fit to have a Clash style game in the web3 space and we look forward to watching Heroes of Mavia rise to the occasion.
Investment — Token
What it is: The game is a turn-based battler with RPG elements (character progression, artifact upgrades, and crafting). Players obtain and upgrade wizards and use them to do battle — PVE and PVP — in the Arena.
Why we like them: A turn based battler with trading cards in the mix, the team is deep in the lore, art, and mystery of battling wizards looking to bring peace to the realm. The art direction of the wizard NFTs themselves is quite compelling. The wizards represented by NFTs will be used to battle in 3s to take down foes in PvP and PvE.
Investment — Token
What it is: Treasure is the decentralized video game console connecting games and communities together through imagination, $MAGIC, and NFTs.
Why we like them: Treasure is building an ecosystem of games on arbitrum. Through core games, partner games, and a marketplace they are proving to be building something very valuable. This is one of the more robust ecosystems of games we have encountered.
Private Sale — Token (NFT)
What it is: MetaSoccer is a football management game where you can create your own club and generate income while you run it.
Why we like them: A web2 studio with successful Soccer (Football) games already live and hundreds of thousands of DAU they were looking to develop a game that could provide the freedom to transact for those players as well as tokenized benefits
Purchase — Mint
What it is: Altered State Machine is a platform to build, train and trade AI agents using NFTs. A world-first decentralized platform for developers and NFT owners. Create, Train and Own Non Fungible Intelligence™ (NFI) ASM is ushering in a new generation of gaming and finance, where AI bots compete and interact with each other.
The core ASM ecosystem consists of their protocol, NFT Brains, and their own Web3 Soccer game built on the protocol, called AIFA Allstars. The AIFA all star characters are NFTs which interact with the ASM Brains in a process called training, which will allow for a much deeper and more competitive gaming environment powered by AI.
Why we like them: We believe that Artificial intelligence protocols will be a major unlock for web3 Gaming. Having AI come to web3 gaming from a decentralized open protocol is something we are culturally aligned with and believe will be a necessary component if Web3 Gaming is going to reach its potential. We are excited for Altered State Machine, AIFA allstars and the broader ASM ecosystem and the innovation they are driving.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Axie Infinity is a game universe filled with fascinating creatures, Axies, that players can collect as pets. Players aim to battle, breed, collect, raise, and build kingdoms for their Axies. The universe has a player-owned economy where players can truly own, buy, sell, and trade resources they earn in the game through skilled-gameplay and contributions to the ecosystem.
Why we like them: Axie Infinity is the game that brought web3 gaming to the world and empowered our original guild community. With their recent pivot to a mix of on-chain and off-chain resources required for battle we believe the Axie Infinity team is beginning to turn around their initial flawed tokenomics design. We hope to see them continue in the direction they have been going and to continue their efforts to add more stability to their chain.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Crypto Unicorns is a new blockchain-based game centered around awesomely unique Unicorn NFTs which players can use in a fun farming simulation and in a variety of exciting battle loops.
Why we like them: A unicorn breeding and farming simulator that will have a slew of other mini games mixed in that players will look to optimize their unicorns to compete with one another.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: Guild Of Guardians is a multiplayer, fantasy, action RPG where players build their dream team of Guardians and compete in a guild to earn epic rewards.
Why we like them: Guild of Guardians is the web3 mobile-first dungeon crawler that feels like it came from web2 and has a quality that lives up to par. With a guild structure that incentivizes collaboration and gamifies the cooperative experience, we think they have it right with their web3 approach.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Parallel is a trading card game that can most easily be described as Magic the Gathering and Starcraft having a blockchain integrated baby, with AR components..
Why we like them: The Parallel team has some of the most high fidelity experiences and art work in the entire ecosystem. The lore they have built and the community they have gathered around this game is a stand out in the space. We appreciate the patience, thought and diligence the team has displayed to ensure that the product they deliver is best in class, and their deployment of crypto into the game is sustainable. We are aligned with Parallel’s focus on making sure that their game can be easily adopted by anyone, even those who don’t know anything about web3 games or mechanics. By having a premium high fidelity product, a model that can encourage easy access to traditional gamers, while also having key elements that permit ownership for gamers who choose to use NFT based decks, we believe Parallel has the opportunity to achieve scaled adoption.
Purchase —Mint & Secondary
What it is: Rumble Kongs are a set of 10,000 programmatically generated and unique NFTs that will be playable avatars in the Rumble Kong League video game. Rumble Kong League is built to bring thrilling basketball matches to web and mobile, giving anyone a chance to compete for the title.
Why we like them: Backed by heavy hitters from the NBA like Steph Curry and a deep level of strategy behind designing a team that’s better than the rest, there is a great amount of intrigue to Rumble Kong
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: We build end-to-end, chain-agnostic, bespoke experiences for the world’s largest brands and IP. Our goal is to make NFTs accessible for fans and brands with seamless, easy-to-use, and secure experiences built and Powered by RECUR.
Why we like them: We are excited for the future of digital collectibles in the NFT and web3 space. We look forward to the communities that will arise from the Recur project.
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel ASSETS and gaming experiences on the blockchain
Why we like them: Sandbox has been seen as the leading metaverse in the space acquiring many partnerships and having 6 and 7 figure land sales. We at Ready Player DAO acquired land to build out a home and headquarters for ourselves and our community. What web3 organization’s build would be complete without some virtual experiences? We cannot wait to share them with you soon.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Sipher is a multiplayer looter shooter ARPG, set in a dream-like universe of alien worlds, vibrant characters, and dangerous mysteries.
Embark on the saga of a virtual universe created by a god-like artificial intelligence, where the future of humanity has been reborn and must fight to explore and protect their new home.
Why we like them: Sipher is the web3 ARPG that is led by a well respected thought leader in Tin Nguyen. With their collection of NFT classes, well designed levels, and wide array of weapons gamers will always find enjoyment in Sipher.
Purchase — Mint & Secondary
What it is: Treeverse is a top-down open-world classless MMORPG built for mobile with social features and an emphasis on cooperative gameplay.
Why we like them: Loopify and Endless Clouds are building a gorgeous looking MMORPG and have consistently provided more value back to holders of the project than anticipated. Known to underpromise and overdeliver we are excited to be along for the journey. If you need any convincing go check out their most recent trailer!
Purchase — Secondary
What it is: A free to play interoperable MMORPG Metagame on Ethereum.
Why we like them: Worldwide Webb has been creating partnerships and building interoperability and could emerge as the pixelated metaverse for those without the pc power to run high graphic experiences.
Investment — Secondary Purchase
What it is: Discover Frontier: a skills-and-strats 1v1 Battle Game set in the mysterious universe of Watcher S/N 404.
Why we like them: While the details around Missing Frontier are vague, they are backed by Ubisoft and have an impressive team. We purchased a small amount of their NFTs to be along for the journey
Investment — Secondary purchase
What it is: Aavegotchi is a DeFi-enabled crypto collectibles game developed by Singapore-based Pixelcraft Studios that allows players to stake Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) avatars with interest-generating tokens and interact with the Aavegotchi metaverse. It is a unique combination of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and NFTs.
Why we like them: A casual defi gaming experience that encapsulates the GameFi genre. The Aavegotchi team has been gradually building their lore encapsulated world of GameFi for well over a year and has a collection of loyal frens.
Investment — Secondary Purchase (Degens)
What it is: Nifty League is bringing competitive gaming to web3 — moving away from play-to-earn (P2E) into a new era of play-and-earn (P&E) by offering a fun and engaging gaming ecosystem.
The Niftyverse, an online world for Nifty League gamers, is centered around nostalgia where builders, players, and owners spend time connecting, gaming, and earning in web3.
Why we like them: A nostalgic experience of mini games similar to super smash and wii sports incorporating NFTs and tokens in a way that makes sense
Partnership
What it is: NOR is a platform for play. It’s a fully-realized universe with its own history, its own future, its own economy, and its own natural laws. This is where players compete for coin and glory — and where death truly matters.
Why we like them: We like Nor’s big vision, unique approach and commitment to the gamers and to fun. By separating the game and the players from the economy, Nor has the opportunity to build something very innovative and transformative. We like how they are structuring the Platform, separating the gaming experience from the economy and connecting them together again in their ecosystem. We like their commitment to games built around high skill ceilings, which focuses on “easy to learn, hard to master”, drawing inspiration from games like “Counter-Strike and Starcraft, but other titles like Lethal League, Tetris, Rocket League, and Titanfall 2.
Partnership
Niftyisland.com**What it is: **Nifty Island is an open social gaming platform and virtual world being developed by Nyft Studios. It will be the centerpiece and first title in what we call the Nyftverse: a set of interoperable games, a marketplace, play-to-earn protocol, game developer tools and infrastructure — all powered by web3 to realize the dream of a truly open and player-owned metaverse.
**Why we like it: **This team is taking the anti-thesis approach to digital scarcity and inviting any and all to join and build out fun experiences on their island.
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