Studio 369 is a relatively new games publisher with some strong industry experience. Now, they have turned their attention to blockchain gaming. The team of developers has worked for the likes of Activision, EPIC Games, and Paramount Pictures, as well as on some gaming royalty such as Fortnite, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls.
This week, Studio 369 announced MetalCore, an ambitious project set in an Unreal Engine 4-built open world. MetalCore is a first-person, mechanized combat game that will allow large-scale PvP of 50 versus 50, as well as smaller-scale PvE, and a smattering of familiar game modes like Battle Royale.
The integration of blockchain hasn’t been fully revealed yet, but NFTs will be playing a central role and it will be on the Umbrella Network.
MetalCore players will collect rare weapons, cosmetic meshes, and skins that can be taken into battle and traded as NFTs in an open marketplace. By beating missions and earning rewards, players will become landowners to mine resources and generate tax revenue. They’ll build towering fighting vehicles, recruit pilots, and lead guilds into brutal territory wars.
In MetalCore, everything has value: each vehicle, pilot, land and blueprint is an NFT. The game is built around a unique cryptocurrency economy that incorporates Play2Earn and Win2Earn mechanics.
MetalCore Press Release
There is certainly no doubt that the vision for MetalCore is what a lot of us blockchain gaming enthusiasts want. There are all of the buzz-terms that generate hype in the current environment — Play to Win, land ownership, crypto economy — but combined with far rarer visuals and game complexity. In fact, my only hesitation is the sheer scope of what Studio 369 aims to achieve with a single game.
On their Medium announcement, they wrote, “Play the role of a metal baron and participate in PvP, PvE, RTS, TBS, Battle Royale, and more in this P2E title to earn in-game FAB tokens.” That’s a lot of content to achieve for any studio, so they have a mountain ahead of them, but I wouldn’t criticize anyone for aiming above and beyond the status quo. This also reveals that MetalCore will have its own token, FAB.
The first NFT sale will happen in January 2022 and will be for 10,000 unique war machines; I can’t imagine they’ll have too much trouble selling those, pending the prices, of course. This is a project I’ll be tracking closely, and once there is more in-game footage and flesh on the bones for me to pick at, perhaps another entry to our Blockchain Gaming Watch series.
You can follow MetalCore via their website, Twitter, and Discord.
