Weekly GameFi Picks #3: Shrapnel — The Flagship of Avalanche Gaming

By Brando_28 | Greener Candles | 20 Dec 2023

Greetings, fellow blockchain gamers and degens!

One of the biggest narratives of the upcoming bull market should be GameFi if you believe all those influencers on X (and why shouldn’t you? 😅). Of course, there have been talks and anticipation around the play-to-earn sector before but it was brutally cut short by the crypto winter before it even truly began.

As the next bull market is now getting closer, I feel the timing for play2earn to boom will be much better this time. Interestingly enough, I am currently doing some research for another project on GameFi so I thought why not share some of these findings in my blog as well?

A couple of weeks I started publishing this weekly blog post series covering games, platforms, chains, etc. You can check out the previous articles at the end while in this post, I am going to take a closer look at the highly anticipated game on Avalanche — Shrapnel.

The Game

Developed by Neon Machine, Shrapnel is a first-person shooter(FPS) extraction game built on Avalanche and set to launch in 2024.

In the near future, after a semi-apocalyptic event in which our moon got hit by an asteroid, the players are now competing against each other to extract valuable materials in a hostile place called The Zone.

Besides being “just a shooter”, perhaps the most intriguing part is how the game experience can be modified through player-created content. For example, players can create weapons skins and even maps and thanks to the blockchain tech, these objects can be minted into NFTs, truly owned and traded on the market.

Another rather unique aspect of the game comes when a player dies in the Zone. A sad event like that becomes even sadder as the NFTs are dropped upon death. That will surely add an extra layer of nerve-racking excitement!

GAM3 Awards

I mentioned Shrapnel briefly in my previous GameFi post but decided to take an even closer look after GAM3 Awards 2023 where Shrapnel won in two categories — Best Graphics and Most Anticipated Game.

That alone would have probably caught my eye but I also took part in the voting process and what do you know, I won some prizes! One of them was an Extraction Pack that is sort of a key to the game, pretty much like the Summoner’s Spellbook in Splinterlands.

This entitles me to early access, playable character, daily item drops for six weeks and some consumable items. The game should be out in mid-January and to be honest, I can’t wait!

Reasons To Feel Bullish

First of all, FPS games are huge “in the real world” and in esports, there is some serious money circulation around them. That obviously means there is a lot of competition in that sector especially if the team is targeting those traditional PC players as well, and I believe they are.

To make an AAA game you would need an AAA team and the fully doxxed Neon team has some impressive merits. According to their website, they have been involved with titles such as HALO, Call Of Duty, Westworld and more.

For me, the support for players’ creations, players owning those and the other features seen in the pic above, should put Shrapnel on the wishlist of those no-coiner players also.

$SHRAP Tokenomics

The price of SHRAP has been making that ever-so-familiar curve. After the swift surge after its release, the price has been declining which is normal as early investors are taking profits.

It’s obviously difficult to predict the SHRAP token movement at this point since the game isn’t out yet and there aren’t use cases for the token(except one). Investing now would be a risky business even though the token might see a surge when the game goes live as there should be some use cases right away.

SHRAP is used as a medium of exchange in the marketplace.
All player-created content will be published on-chain using the SHRAP token.
One interesting aspect of SHRAP is its governance properties. For example, SHRAP holders can promote or vote for content such as maps for example to increase their discoverability.
Promoters will then receive a portion of rewards based on the popularity of the content.
Also, the Shrapnel platform is implemented to enable systematic payment of validators in the subnet, giving Players and Creators a gasless experience.
There’s also gonna be DAO and the SHRAP holder will be able to participate in decision-making considering aesthetics, design and even roadmap.

Distribution

The total supply of $SHRAP is 3 billion which is also the maximum supply as this will never increase. Also, according to Shrapnel’s white paper, no other tradeable tokens are planned to be created or minted.

Callsigns

Even though there isn’t much to do at the moment but eagerly wait for the game, there is an option to create Callsigns using SHRAP.

If I understood correctly, Callsigns are these unique name tags, NFTs, for players, curators and creators. Early creators will receive some exclusive in-game perks and Callsigns are also tradeable on the marketplace once that is open.

I just asked on their Discord channel how much SHRAP I would need to create one and the answer was 250 for a 4-letter sign or longer and 500 SHRAP for a 3-letter word Callsign.

The price of $SHRAP is currently at $0.291556 so a 4-letter sign would be $72.8.

I’m not yet creating one but this might be a good opportunity if the SHRAP price should come down a bit as the Callsigns might hold a lot of future value when the game picks up. I need to do more research on the possible benefits of holding a sign but right now, it’s just a good reason to keep an eye out for the SHRAP price.

Conclusion

To be honest, I have never been much of a fan of first-person shooter games but instead, I’ve always liked strategic building games.

It will be interesting to see how much the curating and creating sides of the game will offer. Would be awesome to see Shrapnel evolve into a metaverse kinda platform with something to offer for everyone. Shrapnel being a Web3 game and having a DAO, it isn’t even that far-fetched idea.

Sure, the competition is very tough in the FPS genre but if I had to bet on a Web3 game to break the barrier between us and the traditional gaming world, I would put my money on this flagship of Avalanche blockchain gaming.

Thank you for reading!

Important Links

Previous GameFi Picks

All pictures are screenshots from the Shrapnel game.

Thumbnail image made with canva.