MetaSports Basketball：An open basketball metaverse and P2E video game
Jan 20th, we invited Nico Poggi, COO from MetaSports Basketball to jointly have an AMA in the ICP League community. MetaSports Basketball is an open basketball metaverse, built on the Ethereum & Internet Computer blockchains, where NFT players of all shapes, species, and origin can compete to become basketball superstars on teams owned and managed by the players.
Q:
Hi Nicolas, welcome to the ICPL community. To start the AMA, can you give us an intro about you and the MetaSports Basketball team?
A：
MetaSports is being built by a three team collaboration, Psychedelic (builders of Fleek, Plug, and other IC products), Laguna Labs (game devs and builders of the XREngine ), and Bubba Dutch (an NFT and art production studio). Getting together with our experiences of Ethereum, the Internet Computer, and blockchain in general to build this game. I’m Nico, COO of Psychedelic.
Q:
What is the open basketball metaverse and P2E game and its worldview? According to your blog post, basically it is run on Ethereum, StarkNet, IPFS, and the IC. Can you tell us the multichain deployment strategy?
A:
MetaSports Basketball is an open metaverse in the sense that it will not only allow external NFT collections to come into the game and be used to play, but eventually, we want to encompass all aspects of regular basketball (stadiums, coaches, leagues, etc…) into the metaverse experience!
We use Ethereum as the base asset layer for MBA NFT’s and tokens; Starknet as the orchestration layer and game rewards layer to provide flexibility and optionality in terms of what chain users decide to receive their assets on; and the Internet Computer for low-value transactions related to the game, as well as the gameplay and game logic, and IPFS as a storage redundancy layer and unique content identified for the game assets.
Q:
There are multiple P2E games so far, ppl first get control of their assets in games, and with a good token economy, the games can grow rapidly. What is the token economy behind MetaSports Basketball?
A:
The token economy of MetaSports Basketball is focused on providing a competitive and accessible experience for everyone. The cost of minting players and playing will be super low, but players rise in value over time as they play and train and grow.
Teams will be able to play in different tiers and leagues depending on their team’s skill/cost. The higher the tier, the higher the reward pools. The game has a constant rotation of player NFTs with in-game mechanics to earn new players, and $BALL token to keep building your team as you play tournaments and leagues. Therefore the game will have a very accessible economy with chances of constantly raising the value of your players, exchanging and trading them, loaning them, among other P2E mechanics.
Q:
According to the blog post, with the help of the Terabethia bridge it can be successfully running on IC, can you tell us about the Terabethia bridge?
A:
With the help of Terabethia, we will be able to bring tokens and NFTs from Ethereum to the IC, or vice versa in the future. The Terabethia bridge is a communication protocol that (to start) connects the Internet Computer to Ethereum (in the future it can expand to other chains).
This allows two thing, to have contracts across both chains communicate through the bridge, and then another feature of the bridge will be automatically bridging ERC20 (and in the future ERC721, ERC1155) assets onto the Internet Computer so that they can be used in a low-transaction environment (the Internet Computer).
$BALL will be the main utility and earn token of the platform, and $MBA will be the game’s governance token.
Q:
We have interviewed multiple developers so far, a big issue for them to release tokens as there is not a token standard yet. What do you think of this issue and your solutions?
A:
We will use the DIP20 token standard used by Sonic, Terabethia, and Dank; it mimics ERC20 with some IC-specific features. Other token standards are following a similar route being ERC20 friendly, and many of them are building towards being compatible with DIP20.
Q:
The button, the consensus mechanism of IC is totally different from any other blockchain networks. We can run fully on chain decentralized dapps on IC, which is revolutionary. The team is very experienced on Ethereum before, on IC is a new space. Tell us a bit about your experience on devs on IC.
A:
We’ve been developing on the Internet Computer since before its mainnet release, and so far it has come a long way in its first year going live. Its differences present challenges in the sense of having to ideate new ways of solving problems (like building auto-scalable canister architectures!) but after a year we feel confident on how to navigate these and leverage the most out of the IC.
Q:
Now there are some 3A games moving off from steam as they have tokens. How do you think the next generation of games, if we want to run a 100% game on chain, can dfinity support it? What infrastructures do we still need?
A:
Games with tokens can move to independent publishers/distributors, and others like Epic are open to these.
As for running games on-chain, it is possible on the Internet Computer. The building blocks for a game might not be standardized yet but with time, and as new games and projects like MetaSports appear, these tools will start to appear too.
Right now the challenge is building these pieces of infrastructure from scratch, but it is very much possible to have a online experience run fully on it.
Q:
How do players earn by playing this game, compared with other similar games like NBA2K, what are the major benefits?
A:
Players earn while playing seasons and tournaments in the game. There are free seasons (no entry fee) where players can train their teams, earn small rewards and NFTs for their team, and “salary” leagues, where players pay an entry fee depending on the skill/cost of their team (higher level team, higher league), and participate in a league where these fees are pooled into bigger rewards! Tournaments will happen on a daily basis with a different elimination-based format.
Q:
A major problem of most of the P2E games, including Axie Infinity, they are not interesting enough to play, but good to earn. Once the NFTs and token price dump heavily, ppl may leave. So how do you keep a balance between them?
A:
We avoid that byy focusing on really building a game, not just an interface on top of tokenomics. MetaSports will start as a team management game, and we will add features continuously to keep the experience changing and evolving. Our goal is to reach a 3D live simulation of matches with live control of your team.
Extra questions.
Q:
What parts of the game are deployed on IC? What unique advantages does this bring to the game?
A:
Most of the game’s logic, interface and token/NFT oriented pieces are deployed on the IC to ensure we can offer low-cost minting, low-fees, and fast transactions in a game that will have constant rewards flowing in and out.
Q:
When will the first batch of players NFT be released? Is there a whitelist plan? What interesting gameplay will be online for the follow up games? Please give us your roadmap.
A:
You can find our roadmap in https://docs.metasportsbball.xyz/welcome/roadmap
Our idea is to have an NFT Starter Pack sale in this Q, before the game’s launch, so that people can get ready by buying a pack with all the things they need to get started (MBA NFT Athletes, Morph Cards to bring external NFTs, and some $BALL!). Then we want to open up the in-game marketplace for players to redeem their packs and start trading to build and ideal team, and after release the game with its tokens so players can start playing of course!
Q:
I see that other NFTs like BAYC can also join the game as players, how interesting, what other NFTs are currently supported and why are they designed this way?
A:
We will announce more collections that we will support in the upcoming weeks! The whole idea of allowing external NFTs to be used is to give them new utility and truly start allowing them to be used in metaverse experiences, rather than just holding them.
Q:
Can you introduce us to the basic gameplay, modes and rules of the game?
A:
The core gameplay is building an NFT basketball team, and managing it to compete in seasons and tournaments against other players in live-match simulations.
Q:
So about the functionality, do you mind make intro
A:
Your team will grow with each season in skill, and a player will have to optimize their team depending on each match to get the best chances against each player! You can play seasons, which simulate an entire basketball season really fast, or elimination-based tournaments.
As you earn rewards and your team ages and retires, you earn new players by participating in seasons and tournaments, buying packs with $BALL, or trading/buying them on the in-game marketplace! Where other players can sell, loan, or buy players.
The NFTs in this game grow and evolve over time, they are not static. They have stats related to basketball/sports and as they play seasons they grow in age, skill, and eventually retire. There will be future features for playing with all-star retired teams on exhibition matches, or bring them back as coaches, giving them different uses depending on what stage they are in.
