GM

Welcome to the 10 new subs who joined yesterday.

Not bad except 8 of those were family members I pressured to sign up. I'm running out of Aunties.

In today’s edition:

• Should you buy this Gamestop NFT?

• The Mint & Watch Lists

• New drops

More info on Mint/Watch lists HERE.

Should you buy this Gamestop NFT?

Context

Illuvium, a web 3 game studio, announced they were partnering with Gamestop for an upcoming NFT collection.

The details:

• This collection is part of Illuvium’s Illuvium Beyond title

• Launching June 12th

• Supply: 20k loot packs (D1SKs) with random hand-drawn items

• Price: $50, based on a recent interview

• The NFTs will live on Immutable X, a layer 2 on Ethereum

Our Take

Let’s go down memory lane. A little Throwback Thursday, but on a Tuesday.

I want you to think about all those games you’ve loved throughout your life. Halo, Clash of Clans, Super Smash Bros, FIFA, Rainbow Six, Grand Theft Auto.

Admittedly I went with a pretty safe set of picks there, maybe your list looks quite different with a few more deep cuts, maybe some indie JRPGs or hipster PS1 titles. You do you.

Regardless, despite how different some of these games are from each other, they were all created in more or less the same way. 

They were all made by companies, which in turn were governed by shareholders who owned part of the underlying equity and had claims on any future revenue. You might’ve heard of some of these: Ubisoft, Nintendo, Rockstar Games, Microsoft.

Nothing crazy – that’s just how games always worked, until recently.

Illuvium is pioneering a new path.

Here’s a quick refresher

Illuvium is a decentralized game studio. It runs as a DAO with its own token ($ILV), with holders receiving revenues from their games. There are regulatory questions here, especially considering everything happening elsewhere – I’ll go with the easy way out and simply say that I’m not a lawyer.

Their main title is Illuvium Overworld. The team wants to make this the first AAA blockchain game to go mainstream. It's been in development for three years now. You can check out a recent clip here.

But they’re working on other games. There’s Illuvium Zero, Illuvium Arena, and Illuvium Beyond – all tied to the main game in some way. They also recently raised $10M to expand faster, which is impressive given the market we’re in.

The Gamestop partnership is for Illuvium Beyond, so let’s get into that.

Illuvium Beyond: How it works

Illuvium Beyond is a Collecting “Game”. You open packs, these packs randomly give you rare things (Illuvitars) and accessories. All of these things give you points, and there’s a leaderboard ranking accounts by how many points they have (and giving awards to top accounts). If we’re honest, it’s closer to collecting baseball cards than actually being a game.

It’s all about collecting Illuvitars. These are the PFPs of the Illuvium ecosystem. You mix and match accessories and traits to get rare Illuvitars, which translate into in-game skins and other cosmetic items across the other Illuvium titles. They’re like Fortnite skins – the utility is in flexing and expressing yourself, it doesn’t actually impact gameplay.

Illuvium Beyond has done well so far. The first wave of D1SKs (packs containing Illuvitars) ran for three months as an open edition ending June 5. Collectors bought over 300,000 Illuvitars – which is pretty good.

Gamestop is their first brand partnership. In general, this category could be huge. We see it all the time in trad gaming (Marvel Fortnite skins) and we’re starting to see it in Web 3 as well (Gucci Otherside NFTs). It’s a great way for brands to get involved in popular IP and for developers to reach new audiences.

Bottom line: these could go fast. The packs are being priced at ~$50, or less than 0.03 eth. The first collection had 7k holders, but each holder owns nearly 50 Illuvitars on average - so it’s a fairly hardcore group. We’re also dealing with a very limited drop this time, meaning extra FOMO here.

Plus, the art is kinda lit. Idk what "Gamestop as an NFT" should look like, but this feels pretty close?

✨ Added to Watch List ✨

NOTE: These drops are lightly curated. Our only requirement is that they have recognizable founders. As usual, DYOR. To learn more go here.

Wild June Pass

Wildxyz innovates on art distribution models with their June Mint Pass, currently minting until Friday.

Priced at 0.42 ETH (0.37 for Oasis holders), the pass offers airdrops for all six of Wild’s upcoming June drops (plus one bonus allowlist spot for a major drop later on), letting minters save on time and gas costs.

I can’t tell how cost-effective this pass will be, since we still don’t have mint details for most of these June drops, but it’s cool to see platforms iterating on more user-friendly mint mechanics.

Are you taking notes, Art Blocks senpai?

GutterMelo

PUMA, Gutter Cat Gang and NBA star LaMelo Ball are teaming up for this upcoming sneaker drop.

The shoe, like most of the drop’s details, remains under wraps. All we know for now is that the June 29th mint should provide access to the physical sneaker later on.

With so many sneaker NFT drops lately, I’ll be curious to see which brand and affiliates come out on top.

Noble Gallery Avatars

Noble Gallery’s pseudonymous founder, Artifaction, recently announced a new community-centric avatar collection for the project’s holders and artists.

The free mint collection offers 10 factions for users to pick from, accompanied by a project-driven narrative shaped by holders' experiences.

We’ve seen very few web3 native art projects attempt the PFP side of things, so I’m curious how Noble will approach it.

THE MINT LIST

1. Project Animus. RTFKT's biggest launch since Clone-X

2. FewoWorld. New PFP by Fewocious, a rising star in the art world

3. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT

4. 10KTF PFP. Drop from a team that includes Yuga and Beeple

5. Garbage Friends. New PFP from the creator of Invisible Friends

6. Ether. Anime PFP collection by viii, an artist with a cult following

7. Dimensionals - EVE. Free gaming PFP from doxxed studio

8. Tony Babel x Typical Friends. Limited edition from the popular artist

9. Interwoven by Emily Xie. LACMA x Cactoid Labs x the lauded Xie

10. Glacier Dreams by Refik Anadol. AI art from the MoMA exhibitor