This week on the agenda we have the upcoming blockchain game Heroes of Mavia. This game looks to have a promising future as they take inspiration from the immensely popular mobile game Clash of Clans, and try to make a very similar model work on blockchain. If they are able to pull it off, this could easily be the forefront of blockchain gaming on mobile.
What Is Heroes of Mavia?
Heroes of Mavia is a base-building game that will require all players to either own land, rent land, or partner with landowners in order to start building their base. They have already released that only 10,000 land pieces will be available this year, which has driven prices of land up considerably. Currently, the floor on OpenSea is 0.63 ETH or about $1,900 at the time of writing, so it’s not cheap to own the land. Luckily the renting/partnering options are there to help players who can’t afford the high land prices. Renting allows players to pay owners for the land, while a partnership splits whatever profit the player makes with the owner.
In order to protect your base and more importantly your resources, you will need to build up your defenses, such as walls, turrets, and traps to prevent the enemy from stealing your hard-earned assets. Of course, you can also be the aggressor, and attack your opponent’s bases while trying to steal their resources for yourself. Gold and oil are the in-game resources you will need, and RUBY the crypto Heroes of Mavia uses, can also be won through these battles, including successful defenses while offline! RUBY is necessary to upgrade your in-game NFTs as well as your base HQ.
In addition to the land NFTs, there will also be hero NFTs to help lead your armies into battle. These heroes can also be upgraded with RUBY, with a maximum of 4 heroes assigned to each base. NFT skins will also be released for each hero as well. The combination of heroes and troops that you use will likely be the deciding factor in your defenses and attacks. Choose your strategy wisely as it will be an important aspect of this game.
This week, they have also announced that there will be in-game alliances that can consist of up to 50 landowners in each one. There are very few details on what these alliances will accomplish, but it looks like a promising feature for the game.
Another encouraging aspect of this game is that their team, which has more than 60 members, is solely focusing development on this one game. It’s great to see a team of this size so focused on producing a quality product, and hopefully, that will yield a really great result.
The Tech
As mentioned above, Heroes of Mavia runs on the Ethereum network, so you may be wondering, what do they do about the high gas fees? Well, they have decided to use an L2 (Layer 2) solution called Arbitrum. Arbitrum is relatively new, as it hasn’t even been around for more than a year.
Arbitrum uses a technique known as transaction rollup to log batches of transactions submitted on the Ethereum main chain and execute them on inexpensive, scalable layer-2 sidechains.
Zipmex
Essentially, this system allows for low gas fees ($0.5-$0.69) while keeping some of the benefits of the Ethereum network, like security. In order for developers to build sustainable games on Ethereum, some sort of layer-2 solution, like Arbitrum, is required to allow for cheap player transactions.
My Concerns
I played Clash of Clans for a few years, so seeing a game built with blockchain technology in that style is really encouraging, but I do have one main concern, which can be summed up in one word: land.
Land sales seem to be the biggest trend in the blockchain gaming community. It seems like every other developer out there is pointing to the idea of land ownership as their main way to incorporate players into their game economies. I don’t see land as a bad idea in and of itself, and I believe there will be successful games that use this mechanic, but what scares me for this particular game is that it means the cost of ownership is so high.
As mentioned above, it costs about $1,900 to own a common piece of land, meaning the gap between people who can invest in the game, and your average player is very wide. It creates a dichotomy between the two that I think is unhealthy for a game to have, and this worries me. It is also unclear how more than 10,000 players will be able to play during this year. Maybe they are intentionally keeping it to that size, but limiting a player base size seems hurtful to the growth of the game.
I am thankful that they will be allowing landowners to rent/partner in order for free players to join. This could be a good way for investors to make some passive income, I just wish the bar wasn’t so high for investing. I do greatly look forward to the release of this game after beta testing is done in Q3 of this year.
Tell us what you think of Heroes of Mavia in our Token Gamer Discord channel. Also, make sure to check out my last article on blockchain’s unhealthy relationship with game launches.
