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New NFT from the Dragon Ball Z studio 👀

Plus, 5 big upcoming crypto games

March 27, 2023

GM

Wow, we broke 10,000 subscribers even after removing 30,000 bots. 

This would've brought a tear to my eye if I wasn't already crying all weekend from looking at the floor prices on some of these jpegs. 

Thanks for tuning in y'all. 

Today’s Edition

  • New NFT from the Dragon Ball team

  • Crypto gaming szn is coming (5 new games)

  • All the latest rankings

More info on the Mint/Watch lists here. 

NEW NFT FROM THE DRAGONBALL TEAM

Context

DenDekaDen is a new web3 IP co-developed by Strata and legendary studio Toei Animation.

Here’s what we know about their upcoming collection:

  • Supply: 7,777 PFPs 

  • Public mint date: April 5

  • Public mint price: 0.29 eth

  • Genesis holders receive discounts/airdrops 

Our Take

Raise your hand if you love anime. If your hand is in the air then you’re probably having a good time with NFTs. I can’t remember the last time we went more than a month without people drooling over a new Anime collection. 

And if you don’t like Anime, well you’re part of a dying breed. Anime has been on the rise for decades and is currently at an all-time high in terms of global awareness. 

Now so far most Anime NFTs have come from indie brands. Think: 

  • Azuki

  • Valhalla

  • PXN

  • Digidaigaku

  • 0n1 Force 

All original IP from new studios. 

Some of these could go on to do great things, but the more obvious opportunity is established brands tokenizing their already-beloved characters. 

There’s a long list of Anime IP out there that would crush it with NFTs. 

  • Demon Slayer

  • Pokemon

  • Dragon Ball Z 

  • Hunter x hunter 

  • Death Note 

  • One Punch Man

And so many more. 

While we wait, DenDekaDen could be the next best thing. It’s a brand new IP co-owned by Toei Animation, an absolute titan in the Anime world that’s behind brands like DBZ, One Piece and Sailor Moon. 

DDD is a story-driven project. We’ve heard that a lot before in the space, and I still think on-chain storytelling will transform entertainment, but if we’re honest, the execution so far by most collections has been awful. 

But that’s expected when most NFT founders are first-time indie creators that start with a collection of PFPs and then try to reverse engineer a coherent story out of that. I haven’t seen it work yet. 

In this case, DDD is leveraging talent and resources from Toei Animation, and they’ve already mapped out an entire year of story for multiple characters even prior to launch. 

We’re fans of their approach. They’re starting with a distinct roster of characters (seven souls), a simple yet interesting story (they’re trying to be gods), and have been fleshing out the plotline through twitter using profiles that represent each character. 

It’s definitely experimental. Toei is using this as a way to test out new ideas in Web3, and the team says there’s potential that DDD flows into other Toei IP down the road if they’re successful. 

But no one is claiming they have it all figured out. 

Now if we’re honest, the roadmap isn’t groundbreaking. 

You have Storytelling, some ambiguous “Events”, and some Merch. Oh, and Community of course. 

Again, we’ve heard this a lot before, but in the end it comes down to execution. 

If you think about it, what is Azuki outside of Art, Events, Merch and Storytelling? 

Speaking of art, we haven’t seen much yet. We’ve seen a lot of polished designs on Twitter and the DDD website, but very few sneak peeks of what the actual avatars will look like. I think this is the closest thing we have at the moment: 

The team says the art will morph and expand over time across different mediums, and so maybe you should think of this as a “character token” as opposed to a fixed PFP. 

But still, I hope we get more before mint. We’re less worried about the quality than we are about any lack of diverse traits when you’re looking at hundreds of DDD avatars side by side, which is something that has tanked other projects before. 

Lastly, there is a downside: the mint price. Genesis DDD holders will get airdrops and can buy additional avatars for 0.16 eth, but the public mint price of 0.29 eth seems…high. 

I get that historically many other Anime collections have minted at these levels or higher (Azuki minted out at 1 eth when eth was ~2,500). But, how do I say this, times have changed.

So I hope they listen to the community and give us some DenDekaDiscounts (sry). 

CRYPTO GAMING SEASON IS COMING

We’re excited to have Kevin Lambert join us as our first web3 gaming curator on Mint or Skip.

Kevin has been designing award winning games for 27 years including Dungeon Siege 2, Gruntz, Sanity: Aiken’s Artifact, Tron 2.0, and the new Microsoft Solitaire. 

He’s now co-founder at Koin Games where he’s building his own blockchain game along with several other gaming OGs. Keep an eye out, and follow them while you’re at it. 

Ok, take it away Kevin...

Hey, all! 

I know almost every web3 game and team out there, and I'm excited to share my current list of the top 5 web3 games I think are gonna make it (in no particular order): 

DeadDrop

This is probably the most important web3 game coming in the near future.

DeadDrop is a first-person loot extraction shooter created by Dr. Disrespect, one of the most popular traditional game streamers who has a reach of over 4M gamers. 

He put together a studio called Midnight Society by gathering talent from traditional game developers who built first-person shooters such as Call of Duty and Halo.

The core complaint of gamers is that current web3 games don’t have the quality of hit traditional games.

And, although there are some VERY strong web3 games being built (I’ll touch on more soon), the only one with massive traditional gamer awareness built in from the get-go is DeadDrop.

Everyone in web3 should be rooting for this game to succeed. If it does, it has a high chance to usher in the next big sector in web3: gaming.

In Dr. Disrespect's own words:

Links:

Parallel

This is an upcoming sci-fi trading card game (TCG) where players can optionally own their playing cards as NFTs.

The team sold packs of NFT cards with beautiful sci-fi art that went wild during the 2021 NFT bull run putting them into the top 10 NFTs by volume multiple times (they’re currently #1 in Opensea for gaming). 

That revenue was key. It gave them the funding needed to expand the team to build out the game, and they were able to launch a closed alpha version for certain VIP holders in their community in recent weeks. 

The game looks highly polished and shows good potential. In addition to card ownership, and unlike many web3 games following Axie Infinity, Parallel boasts one of the more innovative web3 economies in the space with some truly original ideas. 

So in summary we have:

✅ Huge amounts of cash raised

✅ Strong momentum with collectors

✅ A good-looking demo in a genre that fits perfectly with “ownership”

Links:

Wildcard

This is a mashup of a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and a TCG where players build a deck of collectible cards and summon unique creatures in an attempt to outplay their opponents.

Wildcard looks incredible. Why? The game previously raised $46M, was in development for almost 5 years with a very strong team, AND THEN pivoted to web3. 

All that development time helped a ton.

But don't just take my word for it, check out the trailer from almost a year ago showing actual in-game footage and make your own judgment.

Wildcard’s unique angle: they aim to go extremely heavily into the intersection of web3 and esports. 

They also plan on letting the community take on roles such as league directors, arena owners, team managers, etc. 

If the game turns out to be as fun to play and compete in as it looks, Wildcard will easily be in the running for one of the top eSports games in web3 period.

They also have an upcoming mint on April 20. 

Links:

Illuvium

Illuvium is THREE GAMES in an interconnected experience being built by a very large and well-funded team of traditional game developers and web3 folks. 

This team represents one of the strongest intersections of web2 game development knowledge and web3 demographic knowledge.

They launched a token in the bull run of 2021. This came out in the middle of a massive hype wave around the promise of the future of web3 gaming.

Unfortunately…speculators didn't realize that making a good game can take years, let alone making 3 of them. 

Without an awesome game ready to play when the bear market came, the token price dropped over 96% from its all-time high.

So with a chart like that, why on earth is Illuvium on my list? 

Because it’s one of the only ecosystems in web3 that are not only proving to be AAA quality and fun to play but are also leaning into "interoperability" where the items you collect provide value across multiple games. 

This is something that requires at least 2 games to truly showcase and is therefore very difficult and costly to even attempt.

The Illuvium games are all very high production value, and they look great. 

The keys to their success will be how fun each game is when it launches worldwide, what the interoperability experience across the games feels like, and whether the overall design of the games can capture a primary motivation to play for fun rather than to try to extract as much cash value as possible.

Links:

Shrapnel

There are 4 categories of games I consider "no-brainers" to bring to web3:

  1. TCG (like Magic the Gathering)

  2. Loot Extraction (like Escape from Tarkov)

  3. MMORPGs (like World of Warcraft)

  4. Sandbox (like Minecraft)

Like DeadDrop, Shrapnel is another loot extraction game with a futuristic military theme. 

The team building it comes from many years of experience – specifically with first-person shooters.

Do they have an internal celebrity promoter like Dr. Disrespect? No.

But they make up for it with a bleeding-edge creator economy and blockchain design.

For example, they plan to allow the community to create their own maps and content and to formally incentivize scouts to put in the time to highlight the best of these creations.

I can tell you firsthand just how powerful this is. I shipped a game in 1998 that to this day still has custom maps being made for it, 25 years later, purely for the love of the game, with no monetary rewards whatsoever. 

Now imagine a world where a community of passionate creators could actually be compensated for all their time & creativity!

I personally saw and played their demo at GDC recently. They didn't even call it an alpha or beta. They called it an "early experiment". And for an early experiment, it looked and played better than most shipped web3 games out there today.

There aren't a lot of specifics known about how their existing NFTs will provide value to holders within the game, but you can see just by watching the trailer or a gameplay demo why this game is absolutely on my list.

Links:

Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow me on Twitter for more on web3 gaming or our upcoming game.

 THE MINT LIST

Coming Soon: deep dives on www.mintorskip.com. 

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

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

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

  4. Reddit Series 3. Third NFT drop from the massive social site.

  5. Moonbirds Mythics. The fourth collection in the Proof ecosystem.

  6. Symbiogenesis. Square Enix's upcoming gaming NFT.

  7. Iron Paw Gang. The latest drop from Random Character Collective.

  8. Fellowship Show 1. Curated collection from Rope Rainisto.

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

  10. Spirit Key Avatars. Customizable PFP collection from DenDekaDen.