Why Build on Ethereum?
Yesterday, we announced our debut title, Legions & Legends. It’s been the singular focus of a small, devoted team of builders for the last 3 months. We also announced that we’ll be minting our Genesis Collection of NFTs on Ethereum.
Since our first AMA, our message has been consistent: Azra Games exists to build fun, rewarding, ferociously addictive games that are enhanced with blockchain experiences. We see a future where wallets, bridges, and decentralized exchanges will mesh together an experience that abstracts away the underlying blockchains.
Games are on a journey from off-chain → on-chain → multi-chain → chain irrelevant.
Why Ethereum?
With this in mind, we have chosen to release our Genesis Explorer NFT collection, which we call our Play Forever Passes, on Ethereum, a battle-tested and reliable layer-one blockchain that lets us reach the largest possible community. Ethereum has the most developers, an extensive distributed app ecosystem, and EVM technology that will allow us to become multi-chain sooner, rather than later.
Ethereum has become the nexus of the cryptoverse, making it the best home base for the intrepid explorers of the Genesis Collection to launch their missions and explorations from.
How will you build a game on Ethereum?
To be clear, this does not mean Ethereum will be the home for our games. It is not well-optimized for game development, so we’ve designed Ethereum-based NFTs that will give us the ability to build our games anywhere, and will unlock the potential for our Genesis Explorers to be both Play Forever Passes, and Play Anywhere Passes.
Soon, we will be announcing a partnership with an EVM compatible L2 blockchain for our first game, Legions & Legends.
You may have heard about or experienced high gas fees on Ethereum. We are aware of this issue and track it closely, and would like to assure you that in recent months, it has not been as much of a problem as it once was. Even still, we are building our games to minimize the number of times our players will need to transact with the Ethereum chain, so as to reduce any potential fees. If you own one of our Play Forever Passes you will be able to enjoy all of its benefits without being regularly subject to difficult choices about gas.
Our Genesis Explorer Play Forever Passes are designed to be valuable assets that appreciate in value over the long term — blue chip NFTs that are owned and cherished by passionate gamers who want to be co-creators of a new universe.
They are our love-letter to both gamers and degens. They will be the first project to bring true AAA art to an NFT gaming collection and unmatched utility that appreciates over time.
After much research and passionate internal debates we concluded that Ethereum is the best place for this one-of-a-kind collection.
Why not other chains?
We know that many members of our community assumed that we would be building on Solana, and may feel disappointed by this announcement. We understand. Over the last few months, we’ve built strong ties with influential and passionate users of Solana, and have enjoyed sharing whitelist spots, Discord stages, and Twitter spaces with Solana-focused pundits, DAOs and NFT projects. Some of us at Azra are also passionate Solana owners and gamers ourselves. But while we love the Solana community and have great respect for the talented team of builders that is building the chain, we ultimately concluded that Ethereum is the better home for our Genesis Explorer Collection. We still believe in a future where Azra Games brings a game to Solana, but it won’t be the first stop on our long journey.
Our Motivation
We are a game studio building blockchain-enabled games, rather than a blockchain company building games. This subtle but important distinction shapes our worldview. In the same way players of console games have no idea or care if the games they play are powered by AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure, we see the horizon of a future world where permissionless ownership exists with the wallet of your choice — one in which you aren’t even aware of the chain(s), pool(s) or bridge(s) each transaction hopped through.
In the end, experience matters most
One day, we’ll look back on this time and reflect on how the focus of developers and communities should be on the unique value and experiences their project creates, instead of which platform and partnership they’ve chosen.
Golden Krishna wrote that “the best interface is no interface”.
Magic happens when technology and interfaces are undetectable.
Thank you for coming. We hope you enjoy the show. 🧙
