Migh-Tea Games: Transitioning from Web2 to Web3 through fun and familiarity
Mighty Bear Games started out as Web2 studio, and we’ve shipped quite a few titles that have held their own throughout the years, whether they’re battle royales or battle arenas. Of course, we’re now developing the Web3 battle royale title, Mighty Action Heroes.
Now, minting an NFT or locking an asset is second nature for many in the team, but the initial shift to Web3 was more arduous than we thought it’d be. I think for many “non-natives”, the Web3 space is one mired in a healthy layer of scepticism, gatekeeping, and intentionally obtuse systems. How then, did we get our team interested in a space that some may harbour apprehension towards?
Enter Migh-Tea Games.
Getting invested in a common interest.
Migh-Tea games is a tradition that we have in the studio. At the end of each busy week, we take an hour out of our time to sit down and play a game together. The little pun on “tea” stems from this hour typically being scheduled around teatime! The whole affair is generally casual; it’s part research, part information sharing, and part just having some fun with friends.
As we began our transition to developing Mighty Action Heroes, the games that we played naturally began bleeding into Web3 games. There was no particular genre we were focused on — we were just trying to get people as familiar with the Web3 space as possible. We played Gods Unchained and discussed its similarities to Skyweaver, we played the Sandbox to discuss the restraints and wonders of NFTs in a virtual space, and lastly we played Panzerdogs… twice to see how major updates were implemented, and to blow each other up.
Before the what, here comes the why.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Sure, we played a bunch of Web3 games — but beyond the practical necessity of such, was there ever really a need to do so? I mean, what’s the difference anyway between Web2 and Web3 besides a simple number?
Now this is where a little context’s needed. A Web2 game differs so greatly from a Web3 game that the only thing that they truly have in common is the medium of a video game. The basic principles of game design still hold water in both spaces, but the nature of the beast couldn’t be more different.
A large part of Web3 gaming is the integration it has with Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and by extension, cryptocurrencies. To put it simply, these are resources that shape the experience that you have with the game. Therein lies one of the first differences — How do web3 games balance their player’s ecosystem? Where do players without tokens fit into a game that incentivises players to have tokens?
Furthermore, how do NFTs fit into the picture anyway? That’s not only a conceptual question that I’m asking — it’s a practical one. The very infrastructure and architecture that the programmers have to weave into the game are different from their Web2 counterparts. Crypto wallets are generally the medium in which players interact with this aspect of Web3 gaming, and that invites a whole new suite of issues to tackle. What wallets are used by the players? How would they use the NFTs from our game in the wider Web3 context? How do we even begin integrating NFTs anyway?
I could go on, but the point is that even before going into Web3, we as developers not only need to understand what makes the space unique,we also need to believe in the potential of the games in the space as well. Being such a nascent market, the onus is on us to learn from the shortcomings of our counterparts to better our game in the future as well as adapt to the shifting interests of such a volatile space.
Getting answers to questions. Some unasked, some obvious.
To that end, one of the main goals of Migh-Tea Games became to take a closer look not only at similar games, but also at other genres of Web3 games. Simply put, one of the easiest ways to see the appeal of a game is to play it.
Coming together as a team, playing a new Web3 game meant asking fresh new questions that I’ve already mentioned.
- How does this game integrate NFTs in a meaningful way?
- How does this game interact with their community, and what engages the player to play more?
- What’s fun about this game, and could it exist as a Web2 game?
There definitely was a healthy amount of hesitation to our Web3 transition initially, and so we elected to use what was most familiar to us to get us interested. By playing these games together, we not only got a better sense of what each of us wanted for our own game, but also for what the market would eventually expect from us.
Understanding what’s familiar, to see what needs to be changed.
The popularity, polish, and pomp of each game that we played tempered our expectations. That meant that we had a better idea going in on what we needed to work on and research, what pitfalls we needed or wanted to avoid, and exactly what made Web3 games fun and exciting.
Above all else, the main goal of Migh-Tea Games has and always will be to breed a sense of community within Mighty Bear Games. As the studio embarks on its relatively new journey, we want to get accustomed to the new market together by asking questions and getting invested, or even just by getting hyped on what fresh new ideas can come from games within the space.
And believe me, we’ve played some great games here, and we hope to contribute greatly to that. Keep your eyes peeled on our studio’s next release — I can guarantee it’s going to be a banger. WAGMI!
You can follow our development on Mighty Action Heroes here, and don’t forget to drop me some claps if you enjoyed this story!
