Dec 8, 2022
Why Cradles: Origin of Species will be better than Axie Infinity
The blockchain-based gaming industry has not been taking any time off. As the saying might go for some in this line of work, the devil may work hard, but gaming developers work harder. For us at Cradles, we can confirm our devs work with a certain sense of demon possession-like intensity!
It’s probably no more different outside of Cradles and the proof is in the fact that more and more games have been joining the lengthening list of blockchain games.
However, one name from 2021 continues to find life in the discussion and there’s no lack of respect from us if we say their title: Axie Infinity. A year ago, the game in question experienced a rapid rise with their token surging 469% in July 2021. Claiming that Axie’s economy has been booming became an understatement for the game’s development on the market.
The play-to-earn model (and you know we prefer a more sustainable play and earn model) has especially taken over the Philippines and other countries with similar economies — with average players reportedly able to earn over $1,200 a month. Axie Infinity managed to attract even more players via a technical castling by migrating the game from Ethereum main net to an Ethereum-linked sidechain, Ronin. So the P2E world’s most famous title did a really good job in taking over the market and managed to rapidly attract support from a number of large investors.
Pretenders to the crown
However, such competitive environments are constantly changing making it hard to stay active in the market, and other market participants have been staking their claim to the throne by expressing a decent degree of quality. Needless to say, when it comes to games, in the long run, quality always gets to beat quantity.
On the other hand, we do want to talk about our own game Cradles: Origin of Species, a prehistoric metaverse encompassing an immersive gaming experience along with many novel technical traits that firmly puts us on the long and winding road towards quality.
From the beginning, Cradles opted to be as genuine as possible by deciding not to copy any traditional type of gameplay and not to manufacture any NFT-related garbage or use the token price to earn income (sorry Axie, but the lack of interest in markets now prove that token price is never sustainable).
Cradles wants to do it the way you make a good game, with good technology bringing out innovation. And we believe it will be better than Axie Infinity. And while it’s not easy to remain objective, we’ll take a look at development in terms of gameplay, use of NFTs and NFT tech, costs of playing, and technical complexity along with future developments to see if Cradles is a better choice than Axie.
Round One: Gameplay
Axie Infinity has been best described as a fusion of the RPG Pokemon game and Hearthstone, the digital card game or Crypto Kitties. The gameplay per se has been illustrated as a combo of breeding, battling and trading centered around interesting characters under the name Axies. You can breed and sell Axies on the marketplace, participate in quests or engage in PvP battles. As mentioned in some reviews, the feel of the game along with the graphical user interface is quite simple, while the most interesting point is the play-to-earn trait.
Examining the gameplay specifically, Axie Infinity has an innovative design encompassing a fast-expanding open-source universe of digital pets with many options for players to earn rewards. One of Axie’s main drawbacks is that most people were using it for its earning potential, and not primarily for the sole joy of gaming as the fundamental driver of adoption in the long run.
Cradles couldn’t be more different. We begin from its positioning as a next-generation blockchain MMORPG. As the popular Latin maxim goes, we may say that there can be no disputes in matters of taste.
In Cradles, the idea is to provide an immersive gaming experience in a virtual world divided into a main city and adventure zone. In the adventure zone, gamers have the opportunity to encounter extinct creatures that once used to roam the Earth, observe unique traits of these creatures, and even inject themselves with their traits to experience it more directly.
Under the hood, the main unique experience Cradles provides is the sense of time passing via entropy-increasing worlds. As players build towns and achieve higher degrees of governance, the in-game environment evolves and advances through an era progression.
But perhaps most importantly, the developers have kept in mind that the joy of players and their desire to play comes first. Hence, the Cradles world is built on a detail-oriented and community-friendly approach with endless possibilities, all the while striking a strong resemblance to real-world laws of time and physics — something no game virtual world has managed to successfully deploy.
Round Two: Use of NFTs
One of the main highlights of the game Axie Infinity is the point that those cute Axies are in fact non-fungible tokens. When a player owns a few of those Axies, he or she actually has a collection of digital assets that have a particular monetary value. These NFTs can be then traded in the marketplace or bred to produce more NFTs. Axie was built on the narrative that players can earn money from activities they would do in their spare time anyway and for free. The suggestion is that instead of collecting Pokemons for free, we can collect Axies that have monetary value.
Axie may have introduced a specific narrative, yet Cradles expanded that narrative and enriched the gameplay through the use of NFTs. Namely, gamers can use the materials freely obtained in-game (themselves NFTs) to create their own NFTs that can be traded with other players. Uniquely, users can even stake their tokens into active NFTs, making them more powerful and sharing in the extra rewards of players wielding those souped-up NFTs — a new twist on the meaning of passive income.
And all this is made possible by proposing a brand new technical standard for existing NFTs, with Cradles developers inventing a new NFT standard called EIP-3664 to define massive and complex operations on game NFTs.
Innovative. Creative. Ground-breaking. Isn’t that what blockchain gaming is supposed to be?
Round Three: Costs of Playing
It has been determined that one of Axie’s biggest disadvantages is the initial cost which may, for the average user, turn out to be really expensive. Like all P2E games, players need to invest initial capital to even play the game. For Axie Infinity, you need to buy three Axies to start, and those creatures have price tags!
Strip away the game and it really is like a typical investment structure as you have to give something in before kicking it off.
On the other hand, Cradles was built on the premise of making it easier for players to join, opting instead for a new tokenomics model to develop the economy. All materials are free to harvest, to build your own NFTs, with 0% in-game transaction fees.
Much like modern MMORPGs, Cradles will also be the very first subscription-based blockchain game that can be entered on the basis of purchasing a monthly access card.
Round Four: Technical Complexity & Future Developments
The developers behind Axie explained that it is structured as an open-ended digital pet universe, meaning that it would extend further its functionality and gameplay when the time comes. Obviously, as discussed in particular reviews, there is an existing attempt to create an immersive digital ecosystem. Sky Mavis, the company responsible for the creation of Axie is currently working on developing Ronin — an Ethereum-linked sidechain created specifically for the game. Ronin brings particular advantages to the blockchain table such as rapid transactions with almost instant confirmation; a broad reduction of gas fees; the ability to withdraw Axie digital assets back to Ethereum Mainnet; a simplified onboarding for novel users, and others.
While the tech presented by Axie Infinity is new and smacks of blockchain utility, Cradles is in no way lagging behind. In fact, Cradles brings to the table new and useful perks that will revolutionize blockchain-based gaming and NFTs in general.
To sum it up, Cradles introduces the above-mentioned innovative EIP-3664 NFT standard by extending ERC-1155 abilities. This results in unique gameplay enriched with entropy-increasing worlds, along with a community-driven tokenomics and governance model, and many more. By providing the in-game FAIR-G model of governance, the game incentivizes players to participate in server governance and bring new props and materials that could add interest to the main gameplay.
And if the Discord action is anything to go by, it’s pretty clear that mass community participation and ownership can result in a living, breathing, evolving game filled with user-inspired design and game developments.
Doesn’t that sound like a better game than anything out there in the Play-to-Earn world?
As always, feel free to reach out to us or join the conversation with Cradians on the following channels:
Linktree: @cradles_official | Linktree
Website: http://www.cradles.io/
Cradles Official Forum: https://forum.cradles.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cradlesio
Discord: https://discord.gg/cradles
Telegram Group: https://t.me/cradles_official_group
Telegram Channel: https://t.me/cradles_official
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