Thirdweb is a Web3 company intent on fleshing out the tools and infrastructure in place for developers and organizations to build in the space. Now, Thirdweb has released a Web3 game using the tools they have built.
In all honesty, the only reason I have been following Thirdweb for so long, is Steven Bartlett, the company’s co-founder. While most wildly successful entrepreneurs who also find themselves in the limelight are insufferable, Bartlett is grounded, calm, and articulate. His Diary of a CEO podcast has been a staple of mine for some time, and so when he first introduced Thirdweb in a pre-roll ad, my ears pricked up.
Thirdweb is, in their own words, an “all-in-one platform for developers to easily bring their games onto web3.” The friction of onboarding both players and developers into using blockchain technology is a road I have traveled weekly since 2018, but it remains a problem. When I started Token Gamer, creating a blockchain game required bespoke solutions in lieu of SDKs for the likes of Unity and Unreal Engine. Now, game developers have several options with platforms, and Thirdweb is a strong one.
Along with the news of Thirdweb’s Web3 Warriors game is the announcement of the new head of Web3 gaming for the company, Chris Cox. Chris Cox is the former Chief Product Officer at Facebook and, as a result, brings a wealth of experience with him.
So, what is Web3 Warriors?
What Is Web3 Warriors?
Web3 Warriors is a dungeon-crawler, RPG-style survival game with the key mechanics utilizing blockchain technology. Built on Ethereum as the underlying chain, in-game assets, rewards, and a number of player interactions are executed through smart contracts. Although the game’s token, $BATTLE, and the NFTs are ERC-20 on Ethereum, the game is “gasless”. It appears that it isn’t truly gasless, but rather the developers are covering the cost of the gas fees; that seems absurd if it’s directly on Ethereum rather than a Layer 2, so I’ll leave a question mark next to it.
Interestingly, Web3 Warriors does not have a backend; everything is either on-chain using IPFS (Interplanetary File System — i.e., decentralized assets) or on the Base Goerli Testnet, meaning it’s all public and transparent. This is an important solution to criticisms of blockchain games not being truly decentralized, as well as the age-old objection to NFTs being just “receipts”.
Last week we launched a full-scale survival game to demonstrate what blockchain gaming should feel like:
◆ No need to connect a wallet
◆ No transaction fees/signing
◆ No mention of "NFTs" or "play to earn"Just great gameplay.
Here's how we built Web3 Warriors in 3 weeks 🧵 pic.twitter.com/waXXYvCHqT
— thirdweb (@thirdweb) May 23, 2023
The game feels more like an advert for Thirdweb’s tools than a project in its own right. In fact, as you can see in the tweet above, it was built in just three weeks. Web3 Warriors is more of a battle cry to rally aspiring and established game developers to pick up Thirdweb’s tools and integrate blockchain into their games. Nevertheless, it is playable now and a long way above the worst games in the space.
