Tectonicus Muto — Metaverse Esports: The Next Frontier
2020, anno domini. The favelas, an obliterated terra on the outskirts of the metropolitan city of Rio de Janeiro, a land where 200 men, women, and children are taken away from us, as victims, to first-degree killings, cottidianus.
In these, far away lands of the south, we meet Damião Silva. A scrawny 12-year-old boy, dressed in a dirty white tank top with a big hole on the right side, fake Adidas shorts with four stripes, and ruptured flip flops, that are barely protecting his small feet, from the smashed glass, sharp bullet shells, and HIV infected needles, covering the streets, of the place that he calls home.
Damião, like many children living in the favelas, never knew his biological father, and asking his mother about him, leads to nothing, but the arisal of fear, she quickly changes the subject, every time, with a deep shiver in her voice, just as if, he was asking her about infernum daemonium, a demon from hell.
Being the only child to an unemployed 24-year-old young mother, with addiction problems, never made anything in life, easy for him. Damião, like many children in the favelas, earned his first phone from the local drug dealer, as a gift for being a reliable and honest messenger.
So already, at the age of five, he found his sanctuary, his place where he could be the champion, the hero of the story, in an alternate reality, in the virtual worlds of mobile games.
Back in 2017, when he was only nine years old, Damião invested, on average, more than 6 hours every day on mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, and Free Fire, from the Singaporean game developer Garena. For our main character, playing these mobile games, was never just for the fun of it, this was serious business, regarded by many, in the favelas and slums all over the world, as a potential ticket out from the terrible shantytowns, and into a better world.
These mobile games, developed and owned by monolithic Krakens, were and still are, larger than anything anyone could ever imagine, with PUBG Mobile having more than 750 million downloads and 50 million daily active users, and Free Fire surpassing 1 billion downloads in one single month and peaked at 150 million daily active users.
Billions, if not trillions, of hours, are spent on only these two mobile games, and PUBG Mobile alone, grossed more than 2.6 billion USD in revenue, in 2020. In the ocean of preposterously humongous numbers, where do we find the gamers' value? Where is the value generated for an avid, and fantastic gamer, like Damião? Where do all of these trillions of hours and billions of dollars go?
It is most certainly not, in any sense, generating a certain entry into the world of elitist, boastful, and pompous electronic sports. The world of professional esports is today limited to the top 0.01 percent of all gamers. The world of esports is systematically architectured in such a fashion, that it actively excludes 99.99 percent of all, more than a billion gamers, playing, right now.
Why are the gamers, the children of man, and our future generations, suppressed and abolished in such a monstrous, egregious, and nefarious way. And the slave-like usage, and disintegration, of these young gamers, is impending, from all directions.
The number of child psychologists hired by game developers is happening now, and increasing as we speak. Game developing packs are not satisfied with a young child playing only 2 hours a week, they need to make it 20 hours, or more.
The majority of esports teams are, in some sense, hegemonic, and have actively closed all the entry doors for what they call grassroots gamers, and when asked, why don’t you embrace these young gamers, and offer them training, coaching, and mentoring? The short answer, and the vivid lie, is that they want to stay exclusive. The real, and dark answer, is that they can’t figure out how to make money on them.
If there is no money involved, then 90 percent, or more, of all esports teams, are assuredly not sympathetic in nurturing these young grassroots gamers.
As a direct result, from this malfunctioning and wedged, to say the least, the reality of esports, we clearly see, how nine out of ten esports teams, are suffering from the total lack of stable and recurring creeks of revenue.
More than 97 percent of the money entering an esports organization, is solely based on undependable and sluggish sponsorship deals. These trades are very often consorted with force majeure clauses, that furthermore apprehend the already ambiguous, and onliest, source of honorarium, for the majority of esports teams.
This actual, total lack, of infrastructure and framework, that should be able to elevate gamers, and squads of gamers, that in essence, constitute the very foundation of many esports teams today, is directly, yet again, empowering the game developing conglomerates, even more, leaving a billion young children and tens of thousands of gamer squads, in the cold and dark sewers, searching, with nothing but a candle, for any residual dough, that might have, by misstep, fallen down.
The prohemium is, sane verus.
The one billion adolescent gamers are very much real. The thousands of gamer squads, forged into the image of esports teams, are real. Their perpetual adversity and anguish are real.
Monday, November 1st, 6:30 am. Damião is awakened, from a powerfully lucid dream, by his old phone, making that terrible beeping noise when the speakers are cracked. He reaches for the phone, and can barely read, with his newly woken eyes, a message from his best friend, Fernanda Oliveira. At first, when reading the message, he is certain, that he is still dreaming, because the content of the message could never be real, and thus never a part of, reality. While reading the message, for the third time, just to make sure that he is reading it properly, the phone starts to vibrate in his hands. Fernanda is calling him.
He answers the call, but can barely hear her voice, due to the screaming and shouting, coming from the crowd in the background. Did you click the link I sent you! Fernanda asks him, with a loud and excited voice. No, he answers, with an equal tone in his voice, I still did not click on the link, because I can’t believe that it’s real. But it is real! Fernanda responds, MIBR, Furia, and INTZ have just launched their portals to the metaverse! What does that even mean? Damião, asks. Come to Escape 60, the gaming center on the other side of town, you need to come now! I just got here, and it’s insane, the place is packed, crowded with more than 1,000 kids from all over town! Okay, I’m coming now! Damião answers, with an even more eager and loud voice.
He puts on his favorite shirt, an esports jersey that his mother gave him on 11th birthday, and the only shorts he owns, and the wretched flip flops, and then he bolts out from the bedroom window, without any consideration to the speeding cars, on the tiny street, just outside his home.
Damião is running. He runs, faster than ever before, because of that strong feeling, he now so clearly feels, in his whole body, and the vivid memory from his lucid dream, that what’s about to happen, very soon, will transform his life and the life of the people he loves, his beloved mother, forever.
After running for twenty minutes straight, he finally sees the crowds gathered outside Escape 60, the gaming center, where Fernanda is waiting for him. He slows down, and approaches the crowd that is trying to get inside the center, after trying for a couple of minutes without success, he starts to shout out her name. Fernanda, I’m here! Come out Fernanda, I can’t get inside! A minute, or two, passes, and he can finally get a glimpse of Fernanda, fighting herself out from the center, and trying her best, to avoid falling to the ground, and getting stomped upon. He finally manages to grab her hand and pulls her out from the violent and wild pack of hyenas trying to get inside the gaming center.
Fernanda, what’s going on? Who is inside the center? No one, let’s just go to Miguel’s Coffee shop, and I will explain everything once we get there. Miguel’s? asks Damião with a surprised voice. But, he only accepts crypto or cash? I don’t have any cash on me, so how… Damião gets interrupted by Fernanda, saying, It’s okay, I have ether, I can buy soda for us! Hahaha, sure, you have crypto, right… how? asks Damião with a very questioning tone. I’m going to tell you soon, Fernanda responds, with an impatient voice.
As they walk towards the cafeteria, Damião notices how Fernanda is laughing and twisting her head, with tears in her eyes, as if she has really been subjected to something unreal, and out of this world. But at the same time, he feels the happiness, joy, and excitement, from her vibrating body.
They finally arrive, and Fernanda orders two sodas, fake Coke, they call it Colidas. She pays for them with her phone, using a crypto mobile wallet, that is spreading rapidly among the young gamers of the slums. When Fernanda arrives at the table, Damião asks her to tell him everything, and she finally does tell him, something that he could never imagine, will ever become a reality. Not for him, a forgotten and worn soul, from the deep corridors of the Brazilian favelas.
Tectonicus muto, the tectonic shift, begins.
Fernanda, tells the shocking story of their childhood friend, Eduardo Santos. She overheard her older brothers talking about how Eduardo joined MIBR, as a junior, division 12, Fortnite player, and has already, in less than a week, made €1,000 EUR. A sum of money, that is only available in the meta realm, for these favela kids. €1,000 EUR? That’s impossible! How? Damião replied.
Eduardo, being a devoted MIBR fan, since many years back, saw the invite to their newly launched team portal, on MIBR’s Discord server for team fans, along with more than a million other fans on that same server. What is a team portal and how does it work? Damião asks.
The team portal, of MIBR or any other team, in essence, enables anyone to join their team, no matter how good you are, you can join in any role, as a fan, content creator, streamer, influencer, ambassador, amateur, or junior player, and aspiring professional team player. Once inside the team portal, and a portal program, you will be tokenized, tracked, ranked and rewarded, automagically! What is a program, and what do you mean by tokenized? Damião asks with a very surprising tone in his voice.
A program is essentially a custom-made set of milestones, missions, tasks, and daily contracts, some call it “the path to pro”, and everything is tracked in real-time. So if you join the PUBG program, basically every match, every shot, every kill, every win, and every step, you take in the game, will be tracked, inside the program. You will be ranked, based on your actions, skills, time, and progression, in any program you choose to join. Your rank, in the portal, will basically be manifested as a digital twin, a digital collectible, a game character, living, and playing, in the metaverse! And that digital twin of yours, is of course, an NFT! What! Damião asks, with a surprised and excited voice. So you mean that anyone in the world can start to trade my digital twin, as soon as I join a team, via their portal? Yes! Fernanda, replies, that’s exactly what happened with Eduardo!
He signed up for MIBR last week and joined the Free Fire program, was invited to an event, placed high in the event, and then from nowhere his card starts to get traded on the team's marketplace! So where did he get the €1,000 from? Damião asks. Well, the first €100 came from placing top 10 in the event, an event joined by more than 50,000 other team members, via the team portal. The remaining €900 or so, came from revenues, collected in real-time, in the form of transaction/trade fees, from each and every trade being made with any of his metaverse characters, on any marketplace.
Me Hercule! Damião utters, with a stunned voice.
Another amazing thing with all of this, Fernanda continuous, is that the company behind the whole platform actually sponsors all the teams, that have onboarded, thus enabling them to invest in 10,000 of their own team members, by purchasing their NFTs, from day one. Eduardo told me, that they do this, to support grinding young gamers, all over the world, and promote and highlight these skillful, hard-working, yet forsaken, gamers.
Just imagine, Fernanda continues.
If all, the countless hours, we played PUBG Mobile, and all of the progress we made, would have been directly reflected on our personal gamer avatar in the metaverse, and stored in the form of a nonfungible token on the blockchain. What if all the money that we spent on skins and items in the game, would have been invested in our avatar in the form of merchandise and items, all in the form of NFTs.
I mean, Fernanda says with a pause, do you comprehend the insanity with the fact that we buy something, that we never really own? Meaning you can’t trade, sell nor destroy the skins and items you buy, in these games we played for so many years. Everything is still owned and controlled by the same company that sold you the in-game items. You think that you are making a purchase, but what you are really doing, is leasing the items. Because you can only use it, as long as play, and stay, in that game.
You are messing up my mind now Fernanda, Damião says with a low and pondering tone. Where did all the time and money go? Damião thinks for himself.
Did you say that Furia also opened a team portal? Damião asks. Yes they have, I think it was in the same week as MIBR opened their portal. I checked their portal data on Dune Analytics, and they have been growing with more than 1,000 new team members, every single day since then. Meaning that they are adding more than 1,000 team player NFTs, to their team on a daily basis.
Don’t tell me that teams also earn money on this? Damião, asks with his eyes wide open. Of course, they do, Fernanda replies, while shaking her head and smiling. You see, the vivid financial incentive for all teams to grow, as much as possible essentially, in terms of team members, lies in the fact that every single team member, is from now on, a potentially massive source of revenue.
How do you mean? Damião asks. Well, as long as you are a member of a team, and you are enrolled in one of their programs, every trade being made, with your digital twin, on any marketplace, will give the team a portion of the trade value, just like the gamer.
From now on, every team is becoming their own form of OpenSea, with a marketplace populated by real people. A team with a million team members, and with every team member having more than 100 versions of their digital twin, their marketplace will contain more than 100 million gamer avatars, all in the form of tradeable NFTs.
Check all the teams' social media channels, they are all swiping the whole world for every single gamer, in every corner on the planet! Fernanda, replies with a passionate expression on her face.
Deus. Damião says with awe in his voice.
Can we check the value of Eduardo now, on the MIBR marketplace? Damião asks. Yeah, just go to this address, and search for his in-game nickname, I think it’s “Ed000”, as in three zeros. Fernanda, instructs.
Holy Mother of God! Damião, shouts out in reaction to what he is witnessing on the small cracked mobile screen, drawing the attention of everyone in the small cafeteria towards their table.
Is this real? 3.22 ETH? Damião asks. Yeah, that’s his value right now. Fernanda replies. And what are these graphs showing? Damião, asks with an agitated, surprised, and questioning bodily expression. That’s showing his overall performance as in gaming mechanics, the division and tiers he is in, and you also see his gaming journal, aim training, physical activity, and sleeping patterns. Based on all of this data, they are able to produce these estimated future values, bull and bear prices, and so on.
This is beyond crazy. Damião utters, with a whispering voice.
You have really shocked me, Fernanda. Damião says, with a smile on his face. So what was happening at Escape 60? Why the crowd? Damião asks. Well, you know INTZ? Yeah, what about them? They announced yesterday, that they will have an exclusive Leagues of Legends cup today, running on their portal, with a prize pool of €5,000. Ah, that explains a lot. Damião replies, agreeing.
Damião kisses Fernanda goodbye and starts to walk home slowly, looking down at the things he walks upon. He can’t even see the street because of all the garbage. After walking for a couple of minutes, he hears someone shouting his name. Oh no, it’s the local drug dealer. Do you want to make quick money! The dealer shouts. No thanks, I’m good! Damião replies, while thinking for himself, that he really needs to get out of this place and bring his beloved mother with him.
He finally arrives at his home. His mother is still sleeping, from working all night, as a prostitute. Damião goes into his room, shuts the doors slowly, and sits down on the thin and dirty mattress lying on the floor, his bed. He looks up to the ceiling and starts to pray with a whispering voice while holding his barely functioning mobile in his hands. As if he is preparing for something big to happen.
A battle is coming.
May 1st, 2022. Six months have now passed since Damião joined Furia and their Free Fire program. He stands by the window, in his new room, with a big smile on his face. There is no screaming, no shouting, no gunshots, no hookers on the streets, anymore. And the best thing is that his mother is home, lying on the big comfortable sofa in the living room watching TV with her boyfriend, who is actually a doctor.
He jumps up on his continental bed, again staring at the ceiling when his dreamy state is interrupted by a notification from his shining new phone. He picks up the phone, not in a hurry, but more with confidence, power, and control. The notification reads.
Greetings Portal Master! Your Free Fire, Division 7 Character, just won a match in the metagame “Deadly Contract”. Your victory bonus, €29,480, was just deposited into your wallet.
Tectonicus muto. The ground beneath our feet is moving. Tsunamis and volcanoes are coming, to every corner, of the known world.
