The Valley of Crypto Game Adoption and the Challenge of Value Creation Through Habituation: Alkemon
Hello, we’re double jump.frog. The other day at Crypto Lounge GOX located in Shinjuku, we announced the title of the new crypto game we’re making now. Today, we would like to try again to express what our game is all about, what we’re thinking about while developing the crypto game, and what we wish to achieve in the form of text with no time limit.
Crypto market current conditions and the future of crypto games
The crypto market is going up and down violently. These days, it’s actually in a slump, mostly due to the crash triggered by FTX’s bankruptcy.
However, this is a good opportunity for crypto games to start new things. Why? Because in a bull market, it’s just enough for good business simply to ride the market trend. The result, as you already know, is the games that are temporarily profitable but not fun at all. By contrast, successful games in a bear market will be fun, well-made, and rated not by how much money the players are making, but by what values the games create overall. And we are making the first generation of such crypto games.
Let’s explain the current market situation of crypto games. Many gaming companies are investing in crypto games and Web3 with great expectations.
Companies that announced their entry into the crypto game market or already entered:
Square Enix, SEGA, Bandai Namco Entertainment, GREE, DeNA, CyberAgent, LINE, GMO, DMM, Gumi, Drecom, KLab, Colopl, KADOKAWA, EpicGames, and UBISOFT
Companies that announced their entry into the Web3 market or already entered:
LINE, Mercari, Rakuten, Dentsu, Hakuhodo, Toppan, Tohan, Media Do, JR East, JR West, Shueisha, Kodansha, Shogakukan, Yoshimoto Kogyo, mixi
These companies perceive crypto games as follows:
- The crypto-gaming industry can grow to rival the social gaming industry, which also has grown 6 times the size of the consumer gaming industry
- Pre-sale of tokens allows early recovery of game development costs
- Play2Earn games can acquire users at a low cost
- Substantial gambling feature makes games entertainable
Based on these expectations, the companies are quietly developing crypto games.
The crypto game we’re now working on will lead the next generation of crypto games. We propose habituation-finance games, which publish NFTs liked to owners’ habits, cause competition in the trading of those NFTs, and ultimately make habituation more accessible.
Our new product: Alkenome Monsters
We announced the official title of the project that we’ve been calling “kaeru1.”
The title is Alkenome Monsters.
Alkenome Monsters: characters to be completed with AI-generated art
The title, Alkenome Monster, or Alkemon, hides three meanings: alchemy, aruke (walk in Japanese), and genome. The shortened version, Alkemon, represents health gained by walking.
Alkemons are completed by giving a soul to their unfinished body using crypto-alchemy (or AI art generation). That’s why they’re all in test tubes now.
What ALKEMON is all about
ALKEMON is an attempt to create value through the healthy habit of walking. Learning a lesson from STEPN as a negative example, we’re making huge improvements and new challenges.
In our game, players are playing not to earn, like in conventional crypto games, but to make healthy habits together. To encourage players to achieve this goal, the public commitment functionality enforces collective playing, and our token economics rewards persistent playing. Lastly, AI art generation helps players create their own values.
Habituation through public commitment and open communication
When our CEO won a pitch contest at Tokyo Game Show, he explained how public commitment works as follows:
As explained in the slide above, public commitment creates a new genre of entertainment and enforces persistent playing through interpersonal monitoring. Being watched will make people continue doing things. For example, the reason you study at school is that everybody else is studying as well. In our game, players will do the same on social media.
Read the previous article to learn about it more.
To clarify for STEPN players, we’ll explain our ideas here in STEPN terms. You can mint equipable items equivalent to GEM through public commitment. Depending on the result of the public commitment, the gained items may vary. You can also move to earn tokens, but we’ll talk about it later.
Newly devised locked habituation token economics
Referring to STEPN, splinterlands, and Bitcoin, we design our token economics that rewards players persistently engaging in healthy habits.
Let’s give a brief overview.
We use the one-token model with a limited number of deflationary tokens. When you mint an Alkemon NFT, the tokens spent to mint the NFT are locked into the NFT. Only after you accomplish making healthy habits, can you retrieve the locked tokens and gain in-game items or points.
Thus, the values of Alkemon NFTs are backed by the tokens locked into the NFTs.
As the number of players increases, the number of Alkemon NFTs increases, the number of locked tokens increases, and the number of liquidity tokens decreases. In this case, our tokens will rise in price as long as the demand remains constant. We will also supply fewer tokens to cause deflation as Bitcoin does. We stabilize the economy by increasing the price of our tokens, as is also done with Bitcoin.
In this way, we can raise the values of Alkemon NFTs as well as the price of our tokens while the values of NFTs are secured.
The move game of life
This game mode is equivalent to the move mode of STEPN. You can play this game mode while playing other move games such as Pokémon Go and Dragon Quest Walk.
This move mode is the most characterized by the visualization of other players walking around. This works in the same way with danmaku or bullet curtain comments in Nicoco, using a technique called pseudo-synchronization that displays actions taken at different times on a single timeline. It makes you feel as if you’re walking with friends.
Our game has stages where you advance to the next stage if you defeat a boss within a certain period. We then record when players roll a dice and what action they take. Their Twitter followers replay the record and play together. However, you should cut some percentage of the boss’s HP by yourself. Otherwise, you just need to rely on your strong followers.
Through this method, our players virtually experience walking together. And we plan to use Twitter profile pictures as player symbols so that NFT owners show off the NFTs as their profile pictures. By using Twitter in this way, players are encouraged to share their play, saying “thx for helping me!”
AI art generation based on pixel art allows players to create their own walking partners
Alkemon NFTs are unfinished. As owners walk, they grow and become complete. And their images are generated by AI.
In AI art generation, you can make whatever pictures you want to see by specifying prompt text. But this prompting requires years of experience like using a tool. So, the AI art generation isn’t fully democratic now.
Our ALKEMON will make the AI art generation far more accessible. We provide templates fine-tuned to generate beautiful pictures and words that players acquire during playing. We’ve named the words alkemic spells. To generate AI art, you simply need to combinate alkemic spells obtained from Alkemon NFTs and item NFTs. Alkemic spells aren’t consumed and can be used infinitely to generate AI art. Anybody can generate high-quality pictures.
In addition, certain NFTs have unique alkemic spells, adding to their value. Also, in collaborating with other NFT projects, owners of some specific NFTs are allowed to use alkemic spells related to the collaborating NFTs.
We’ve already spent one month researching the prompt engineering in AI art generation and are now able to generate high-quality pictures.
Players are granted AI art generation by walking over a particular distance on a daily basis. We expect players to keep their efforts to get better characters and consequently to become healthy.
The generated pictures will be tied with character NFTs and can be set as background skins. Moreover, pictures of NFT characters can also be used as profile pictures on Twitter, submitted to contests held in our official Discord, or swapped for money with anyone who wants them,
Let’s follow in detail how to generate AI art.
Owners of the above NFT can generate AI art of whales. We show examples below. These pictures were generated using a combination of alkemic spells: whale, dragon, and god. Even using the exact same combination, you still can see some variations there. You may choose any picture you like as your NFT background.
This is how to play ALKEMON: players walk with 5 Alkemon NFTs of their own creation.
Use your favorite alkemic spells to create your own characters! Alkemic spells can be obtained not only from Genesis NFTs but also through other means (we’ll announce it soon!). We hope you’ll enjoy creating your very own Alkemons.
ALKEMON Genesis NFT sales information
Before the release of our move game, we’ll first sell ALKEMON Genesis NFTs. The Genesis NFT is the first generation of Alkemon NFT. You can multiply Alkemon NFTs by bleeding 2 parent NFTs.
Further, we’ll offer many benefits inside and outside our game to those who purchase our NFTs before the release of our game.
Benefits of owning Genesis NFTs include:
- Eligibility to join our beta testing
- Premium pixel exclusive to Genesis NFTs
- More powerful parameters
- Move/Fight parameters
- 5 rare alkemic spells exclusive to Genesis NFTs (3 alkemic spells, normally)
- Free daily AI art generation
- Eligibility to participate in Alkemon character contests.
- Airdrop of Genesis NFTs at the release of subsequent products
- We’re convinced that public commitment will revolutionize many fields so planning to develop other games.
Benefits of owning multiple Genesis NFTs include:
- Role in our official Discord
- The more NFTs, the greater roles and the more votes in AI-generated art contests
- Can rate AI-generated art and propose themes in the contests and new alkemic spells
- As long as they comply with public order and morals, we’re happy to add them
- Early access to new features (e.g. public commitment)
- Priority airdrop of NFTs with new features
- Priority to get collaborating NFTs
We would like to give a fair return to those who are willing to purchase multiple NFTs despite the uncertainty of our project. We’re going to launch closed beta testing of the ALKEMON move game around March 2023. However, even before launch, you can use the pre-released AI art generation feature.
AI art generation is going to be pre-released around January 2023, let’s try to create your own Alkemon!
The AI art generation feature is going to be pre-released around January 2023. In the pre-released version, you can use alkemic spells in Alkemon pixel art and set AI-generated pictures as the background of the pixel art. Practice the AI art generation and look forward to using the feature in our upcoming product of ALKEMON, the move game of life.
We also plan to implement new Alkemon characters based on the characters winning the contests. If your character wins a prize, you’ll be awarded a special NFT; holding an NFT, you can get a portion of the proceeds from any sales of that character. To put it simply, this NFT is an entitlement to receive royalties on the characters created by you.
In this way, ALKEMON will establish a new scheme in which players actively extend the game to the world and are rewarded according to their contributions to the game. If you find our idea interesting, join us right away!
Summary
- ALKEMON is the move game of life
- Our game features:
- AI art generation through walking
- AI-generated character contests
- Opportunities for influencers to make playing active on social media through public commitment
- Gradual deflation in our locked habituation token economics
- Our ALKEMON game is going to be released around March 2023
- AI art generation feature is going to be implemented around January 2023
- Alkemon Genesis NFTs are going to be sold in Matic (Polygon)
- Owners of the Genesis NFTs will receive benefits in the game
- Owners of multiple NFTs will receive benefits in the community
We’ll make ALKEMON a platform where everyone has fun and builds healthy habits!!!
For those interested in ALKEMON
We’re doing a giveaway campaign! If you RT our tweets or follow our official accounts, in return, we’ll raffle off NFTs, the priority to purchase our Genesis NFTs, and cryptocurrencies ($OAS).
Join our campaign!
And we’re looking for marketing partners and collaborators in crypto games and collective NFT projects. If you’re, please send a direct message to our Twitter account!
