First heard of Pegaxy
About a month ago I was talking to a friend of mine who runs a busy dental clinic chain. He has dozens of people working for him and was ranting with me about how some of his employees were distracted at work, playing a “horse racing” game from which they make more money than my friend was able to pay them full time.
Troublesome for the business indeed, but as an analyst in Crypto specialized in GameFi, the story was music to my ears. I knew immediately this “horse racing” game was something worth learning about.
Amidst a bustling and prolific P2E landscape with thousands of titles fiercely competing for players, I found a familiar name. The three-month-old game with a captivating design, simple gameplay (which we will explore later), and an interesting earning capacity was trampling all over the GameFi sphere since its launch. The name: Pegaxy.
Futuristic design inspired by mythology
Pegasus, the flying horse in Greek mythology, stood out with its blazing white color, silver hoofs, and a magnificent pair of wings that allow it to reach the house of Gods — Mount Olympus. The winged creature, born from the blood of the infamous Medusa, was raised and by the Goddess of war Athena herself, and later fought alongside the great Greek hero Bellerophontes in the battle with Chimera.
Inspired by the heroic figure of the Pegasus, the focal point of Pegaxy is a robotic metal horse with an elaborate pair of wings and sharp glowing eyes. The modernistic design of Pega — how the creature is named — scratches the right itch for many sci-fi fans out there.
It is safe to say that the team has nailed the design aspect of the game right off the bat. However, given how crowded the GameFi market is at the moment, enticing design is merely the very first step to lure picky gamers with an abundance of options out there. What Pegaxy has done right is making it extremely easy to start for new gamers, and allowing anyone who takes part in the game to earn with it right away.
Ease to enter
To start, players do not have to create an account in order to play. Pegaxy will automatically register your wallet address as your ID, making it a breeze for players to log in and actually increasing overall security. Once logged in, one can immediately play the game at zero cost, using their in-game trustless rental platform. The feature helps both sides of the game:
- Pega owners: can comfortably rent out their assets without sweating on transaction security
- New, skeptical players: can test out the game for themselves completely free, even earning at the same time with zero dollar upfront.
If you are serious about playing the game and earning with it, buying your own Pega(s) is the way to go. The horse owner can race the Pega themselves to enjoy 100% of the earning, they can also put the horse up for rent using the same built-in rental system, or they can build their own horse barn capitalizing on the breeding feature in the game. As two horses of opposite genders can make a new foal, breeding has become a lucrative way to earn with Pegaxy.
Now you have had your horse secured, it is only a few clicks away until your Pega is on the course, racing for your victory and earning those juicy Vigorus $VIS (the in-game utility token).
The missing dopamine hit
Once starting to race, players can choose either 2D or 3D mode. However, I can’t imagine why one would opt for the 2D option when the 3D view is much more fulfilling. Choosing the former setting of the game, players pretty much watch 12 Pega symbols moving along separate straight rows resembling the race tracks — quite an uneventful few minutes of waiting and doing nothing.
And then, I went 3D and find myself in a different game!
12 grandiose Pegas with different colors are in full view, in the middle of a futuristically-inspired race-course. Each of those shiny racing machines is eager to burst to full speed all at once. The animation work has done a great job capturing the beauty of these virtual creatures, even adding an air of drama to the race with suspenseful slow-motions.
Many horses are also built-in with breakout characters, allowing them to speed up significantly in the last few seconds of the race. Racers hold their breath until the last mili-second of racing, as the table could turn any time. Such experience creates a real emotional connection between racers and the race, a phenomenal achievement considering all they have is the minimal real estate on a web browser.
As good as the graphics is, however, player engagement is sorely missed: there isn’t a whole lot to do in a Pegaxy race besides enjoying the theatrics of an equine competition. Winning or losing is pretty much based on the Random Number Generator — AKA, pure luck. The lack of player-controlled mechanisms is equal to a shortage of skilled players. Although project roadmap has pointed to upcoming development of player-controlled mode, much remains to be seen for the gameplay loop aspect of Pegaxy.
Comparative: Pegaxy vs. Zed Run
Before Pegaxy, Zed Run was one of the distinguished names that had once claimed its share in the P2E market, only to see the title gradually fade in popularity as time goes by. This poses the question for its successor Pegaxy, will it go through the similarly sharp rise and fall like Zed Run?
TL;DR: Pegaxy has decisive differentiators
Despite being the first mover, Zed Run’s initial rise to popularity is easier obtained than maintained. After years of its establishment, Zed Run is still without a native token that can be used to transact, limiting developers’ ability to manage in-game economy. Instead, people had to make do with utilizing the expensive Ethereum blockchain which costs an arm and a leg in gas fee. Compared to that, Pegaxy has facilitated in-game tokens from day one for their players.
Ethereum, even though famous for its security, doesn’t provide sufficient speed for complex game data with its limited bandwidth. This would inevitably entail scalability issues for the game in the long run. In contrast, Pegaxy is leveraging on the faster and cheaper Polygon blockchain, allowing it to process thousands of data points every second.
Slow development pace from Zed Run might have created a gap in the lucrative horse racing market that Pegaxy has successfully capitalized on.
Further down the road
It’s increasingly looking like Pegaxy’s horse might be outpacing its predecessor. The adoption rate of the game is among the highest in the GameFi industry, at time surpassing that of Axie Infinity.
Not yet satisfied with their current pace, Pegaxy is planning ambitious ramp-ups in their roadmaps with new features that could rapidly expand its user base.
- Fiat on-ramp: allows players to buy Pegas using their local fiat money. The move targets non-P2E player market.
- Mobile race: brings its racecourse to the ever-growing smartphone real estate, making the game even more accessible than it already is.
- Skill-based racing: let players showcase their skills to influence the result of the race and level up, attracting more players and increasing in-game transaction volume.
An evolving economy coupled with player-controlled potentials
Even though the game still has a few wrinkles that need to be ironed, Pegaxy has secured a solid foothold in the GameFi world by having a simple, streamlined earning mechanism in a very accessible P2E title.
Instead of resting on their laurels, the team understands that only their current edges on Pegaxy would not be sufficient for a sustainable GameFi ecosystem in the long run. This thinking reflects in their ambitious roadmap for the game going forward.
What are these incoming features, how would they affect the gaming experience and earning capacity? A more in-depth look regarding economic design will be discussed and reveal on the second part of Pegaxy’s series. Stay tuned!
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The “Fi” in Gamefi is M3TA’s opinion series on the economic design of a variety of blockchain games. M3TA team provides reviews of our first-hand experience as a player in the games. We believe this enables other players to have better understanding of the economy, and empowers their choice to participate in the fast-growing Gamefi world.
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