INTRO
Today I would like to discuss an exciting new NFT game that is about to launch! It is both free to play and play to earn, built on Ethereum blockchain and scaled with StarkNet.
Influence is a space strategy MMO set in the Adalia system's asteroid belt, with 250,000 asteroids moving around their star with realistic orbital mechanics. It is developed by hardcore EVE Online players, who describe Influence as a mix between EVE Online, Stellaris and Civilization. Players compete with each other in multiple ways - mining, building, trading, researching, and fighting.
The dev team is very active on discord and hosts voice AMAs every week on Thursday that are recorded on their soundcloud. They have not accepted any Venture Capital investments, all funding has come from the community from primary sales. Approximately $6 million worth of Ethereum has been raised between the April and September 2021 sales. Their approach of staying away from hype marketing and instead focusing on making an amazing game are what have me the most excited for Influence.
GAME PIECES
The two main game pieces are Asteroids and Crew Members. Asteroids are the base "land" asset in game, where players will mine and generate resources. Players will be able to lease out plots of land on asteroids they own to others through smart contracts available through the in-game UI. Crew members are the in-game characters that take actions in game, each Eth wallet address can have a maximum of 5 active crew members at a time. Players can switch out their crew members if they have more than 5, but crew members get bonuses for being in active use longer. The devs have said that multiple accounts/wallets are okay and even expected, so I anticipate that most people will build crews of 5 and stick with them.
Asteroids and Crew Members are ERC-721 non-fungible tokens, and cannot be destroyed in game. Crew members that are on board ships that get destroyed use escape pods that slowly go back to Adalia Prime, the game's starting point unless they get rescued mid-flight. 11,100 asteroids have been sold so far during primary sales, and each of these 11,100 asteroids also came with one limited Arvad crew member, labeled a Specialist or Citizen. Crew members from the April 2021 sale are called Specialists, and crew members from the September 2021 sale are called Citizens. For future asteroid sales, they will not come with Arvad crew members - there will only be 11,100. Asteroids and Arvad Crew Members are currently available on OpenSea secondary market on Ethereum mainnet, but will be eventually moved to StarkNet. OpenSea Asteroid link and OpenSea Crew Member link
Influence is a free-to-play game, and players that do not own an asteroid may use plots of land on Adalia Prime to get started. Adalia Prime is the largest asteroid in the system and is sure to become a large trading hub between players. "Generic" crew members are also able to be minted for just the price of gas, so the cost to get started for a new player will be extremely low.
Although the game is free-to-play, there are advantages to owning an Asteroid or an Arvad Specialist/Citizen. Adalia Prime is a "common" asteroid, meaning it has no bonuses on it. Future asteroid sales will have ~50% of asteroids be common with no bonuses, as shown on this graphic from the Influence wiki. The wiki is maintained by the devs, and the whitepaper (aka blackpaper) is also hosted there. Asteroids from the April and September 2021 sales were guaranteed to be Uncommon or higher rarity.
Arvad crew members also come with "jobs" that generic crew will not have. These give extra bonuses to a specific niche and are further broken down into four Tiers, with Tier 1 being the rarest and highest bonus and Tier 4 being the lowest. The devs have stated the percent bonuses from Jobs and Asteroid boosts are multiplicative, but will not be game breaking.
TOKENOMICS
The in-game ERC-20 token is called SWAY, and it is not released yet. There will be no public or private sales - the only way to get it is to earn it in-game, and will be available on UniSwap and SushiSwap after the game launches. The devs primary ambition is to create a fun game, and SWAY is designed to facilitate in-game transactions. They did an excellent overview of their tokenomics in this medium post. A graphic of the feedback mechanisms to keep the price of SWAY stable is below.
The very first way to accrue SWAY will be from Crew Assignments, which are going live in 3 days on December 16, 2021! Crew assignments will tell the backstory of how the Arvad ship left Earth and made its way to the Adalia system, and completing assignments will give your crew members additional traits that will make them more unique and also give them small boosts. Small amounts of SWAY will also be awarded for completed crew assignments.
Finally, there is a planned governance token for Influence. "Influence is being built to be a community owned and operated game, we will take deliberate steps to decentralize governance of SWAY. This will be facilitated by the future introduction of an Influence governance token. This token will follow many of the same philosophies as SWAY and will intentionally prioritize active participants within the Influence universe, both in its distribution as well as in any ongoing benefits." Although it is not confirmed, I expect that this governance token will be airdropped to SWAY holders, since the only way to get SWAY is to earn it in-game by being active.
I am very excited for these upcoming crew assignments, and plan to make more Influence posts here on Hive as things develop!