Treasure: A Decentralised Nintendo?
Reviewing the magic of play in a Web3 game publisher
Contents
6.1 Games
Introduction
The magic of play. That is how Treasure, a gaming ecosystem built on top of Arbitrum, brands itself. Another label it stands by - a “decentralised Nintendo”. Operating on a dual-resource model, the platform relies on the $MAGIC token for overall functionality while leveraging Treasure NFTs as composable assets to enable cross-game interoperability. Treasure has three layers, consisting of:
Cartridges: Games and metaverses created by Treasure and seasoned builders, linked through $MAGIC tokens
Community: Composite of interconnected smaller communities tied through $MAGIC, lore, guilds, and resources
Infrastructure: Shared economic engine, tooling, and resources that drive the ecosystem and empowers builders
At its core, Treasure seeks to be the foundational layer for building interoperable Web3 games. Hence, the whole Nintendo reference - similar to swapping Nintendo cartridges, users can seamlessly transition between different metaverses. The ultimate goal is to cultivate an ecosystem of games that share a composable economy. This is facilitated by a common token and infrastructure, connecting worlds and communities. Think Polkadot, except Treasure acts as the relay chain for multiple gaming protocols built on top of it.
Treasure strives to decentralise game development in two ways:
Challenging conventional and centralised publishing models
Dismantling “walled gardens” that restrict true community ownership and grassroots building
Through an indie developer approach, the platform empowers creators to build their own games with comprehensive support. Each game’s lore is seamlessly woven into the wider Treasure metaverse, while sharing common resources like the platform’s native currency, $MAGIC.
Cartridges & Community
Treasure features two proprietary games, Bridgeworld and Smolverse, alongside eight third-party games. Bridgeworld serves as the central hub of the ecosystem, emphasising the creation and utilisation of $MAGIC. Players engage in summoning and levelling up legions to embark on quests for valuable resources, mine for $MAGIC, join guilds, and take part in player battles. Gathering resources allows players to craft advantageous treasures and consumables, such as more powerful fighters in their legions and enhancing mining abilities for obtaining $MAGIC.
Separately, Smolverse is built around ‘progressively-evolving’ NFTs that allow players to directly see their character’s progression within the digital artwork itself. The game revolves around Smol Brains, an NFT collection of 8-bit styled graphics. These NFTs enhance their ‘IQ’ as players interact with the Smolverse game and play with their characters. As the IQ increases, the value of a player’s assets also increase within the broader Treasure community. The ecosystem promotes openness, enabling players to effortlessly move between games and use their assets across different metaverses.
While currently not implemented, Treasure has future plans to incorporate play-to-earn (P2E) features into its metaverses. This will allow players to navigate the world using their characters as well as gathering treasures, $MAGIC tokens, and legions (NFTs). Additionally, the SmolBrains initiative hints at potential P2E mechanics involving racing and breeding in the future.
Infrastructure
The key pillars of Treasure’s infrastructure are the Trove NFT marketplace, TreasureTags and Treasure Create.
Trove: NFT Marketplace
Trove functions as an NFT marketplace supporting both $ETH and $MAGIC listings. Players can trade NFTs acquired from various games within the ecosystem, making it akin to a central auction house spanning multiple worlds. Trove charges a 2.5% platform fee, and collection owners have the option to set creator fees ranging from 0% to 20%.
TreasureTags: Usernames
TreasureTags are free and non-transferable gamer identities within the Treasure gaming ecosystem. Players can use a single tag across the entire platform, comprising a name and four digits. Each wallet is limited to one tag, which can be claimed on Trove. In the future, players could have the ability to link their tags with avatars and earned badges, as well as customise their appearance.
Treasure Create: Content creator program
Treasure Create is a programme that rewards participants who contribute to the games on Treasure. In recognition of their efforts, top creators receives perks such as in-game items, badges, a creator role on Discord, and access to beta play tests. Additionally, Treasure Create participants have the chance to collaborate with other creators within the ecosystem.
Governance
The Treasure ecosystem is governed by the TreasureDAO, which oversees funding for new projects and decisions regarding supported games. To actively participate in community voting and decision-making, participants must stake $MAGIC tokens to obtain gMAGIC. This will enable to them to vote on proposals.
There are two ways to stake $MAGIC tokens:
Locking up your $MAGIC tokens in the Bridgeworld’s Atlas Mine for a certain period
Stake on the MAGIC-WETH SLP within the Arbitrum LP Rewards contract
For active and dedicated participants, the voting weight of your gMAGIC increases based on the duration of your $MAGIC token staking.
Game Builders Programme
As a decentralised platform that prioritises community involvement, Treasure is empowering indie game developers by providing robust support and ownership. To assess the strength of this strategy, we should examine the platform’s implementation and challenges.
A significant feature of Treasure is the Game Builders Programme (GBP), aimed to incentivise and attract game developers to build on the platform. GBP offers two support tiers, Gold and Diamond, granting varying levels of access to the Treasure Partners Discord and support from the Treasure and Arbitrum teams. Interested projects must integrate with key Treasure infrastructure pillars, such as Trove and MagicSwap (AMM), to demonstrate alignment and contribution to the wider ecosystem. However, this approach does not cater to early-stage gaming projects lacking integration capabilities.
The main drawback of the programme is its relative newness, which raises doubts about its effectiveness in attracting and retaining game developers. GBP primarily focuses on games that are already in development, creating uncertainty about its ability to engage new developers to the Treasure ecosystem. Therefore, to improve the programme, we propose the following:
Expand the programme: GBP can foster a more diverse and dynamic community by including more game developers, particularly those in pre-development stages.
Offer financial support: Offering monetary assistance will enable GBP to attract more developers who lack resources to independently develop games.
Increase promotion: Enhancing promotion efforts towards Web2 indie studios with established games and lore will amplify GBP’s impact and get more eyeballs within the gaming industry.
The success of Treasure relies significantly on GBP functioning as the onboarding funnel for high-quality game developers and studios. It helps facilitate the development of creatively interoperable and captivating games, leading to improved user conversion and retention.
Stats
Recent data shown below indicates that statistics from Dappradar are in line with the reporting from Dune Analytics. The data consistency enhances the overall understanding of Treasure’s gaming ecosystem performance.
Let’s cross-examine the statistics. Treasure states that they have:
100k+ engaged player community
101% quarter-on-quarter growth (weekly active users)
In terms of wallet count, there are over 100K addresses that have interacted with the Treasure protocol - a milestone surpassed in August 2022. However, not all of these addresses remain consistently active. Dappradar reports a cumulative count of just 5.4K unique active wallets over the past 30 days.
Analysing the historical data from DappRadar, we observe that the number of unique active wallets (UAW) typically remains below 2K. The exception is some occasional growth spurts followed by a gradual return to the average. Dune Analystics also reports similar patterns of high increases and subsequent tapering off in weekly new users.
To gain a better understanding, it is important to contextualise the 100K figure by examining the weekly active users engaging with the various games available within Treasure.
Games
Consider Dune Analytics’ data of weekly active users in notable games within the Treasure ecosystem:
As the centrepiece of this metaverse ensemble, Bridgeworld has the highest number of weekly active users. However, the figures are not convincing as the peak of 10K in January 2022 declineds to barely 700 active users in recent weeks. The charts for other games paint a similar picture.
While this decline is expected given the market conditions, it highlights the limited instances of successful community engagement that contribute to the reported statistics. Sustained engagement seems to have proven challenging. To address this, Treasure needs to go beyond releasing a few single game titles. Instead, the platform should focus on releasing a full album to indicate a more comprehensive and enduring approach.
Trove Marketplace
As one of the NFT marketplaces on Arbitrum, Trove is specifically designed for projects within the Treasure ecosystem. With its alpha version now launched, the platform seeks to enhance how users collect NFTs by introducing gamification. Treasure once stated: “Since launching our NFT marketplace on November 13, 2021, we have achieved over US$285M in trading volume in just seven short months”.
However, the overall picture so far suggests otherwise. Consider the following data:
While Trove's marketplace volume surpasses $270 million, trading activity has been limited to specific months. If the goal is to dethrone mammoths in the NFT marketplace sector, Treasure has a long way to go. The month-on-month volume consistently falls short in comparison to the top 3 NFT marketplaces in the industry - Opensea, Blur, and X2Y2.
Competition
Treasure is not alone in its pursuit of becoming the hub of Web3 gaming. Competitors, such as ImmutableX and Enjin, are also vying for that position. Of particular note is ImmutableX's partnership with GameStop, which holds significant potential that may be underestimated. Gamestop itself has a partnership with Microsoft, which has acquired Activision Blizzard - creators of World of Warcraft.
Treasure benchmarks itself against OpenSea, the largest global NFT platform. However, its chances of surpassing the marketplace giant are not favourable. Overcoming the dominant player in the market is challenging, as shown by the struggles of Blur and Looksrare. It remains unclear why Treasure would fare differently.
The bottom-line is that Web3 gaming landscape is not a greenfield one. While Treasure seems to be pursing a blue ocean strategy, it may need to pivot to a red ocean approach before becoming irrelevant in a highly competitive and crowded market.
Conclusion
Treasure faces a challenging task in establishing a viable decentralised game development model. The nature of decentralisation poses obstacles to the necessary organisation and coordination for creating high-quality games, as evidenced by Paradox Interactive's closure of two studios. The industry's uncertainty presents a significant hurdle, and Treasure has considerable work ahead to achieve its objectives.
Despite the challenges, Treasure should work to develop a flagship product that can attract, convert, and retain users. While its NFT collections have seen some success, none of its current games have gained popularity. This is a critical issue for the company, as they need popular games to drive user engagement and generate revenue. Without a compelling product, Treasure will struggle to gain traction and compete in the cut-throat gaming market.
For Treasure to achieve industry success, they must address multiple critical factors. Key among these is the creation of high-quality games with an active and engaged user base. Still, accomplishing this is no simple task. Game development itself entails a complex process demanding substantial time, effort, and resources.
Building a strong community is also crucial for Treasure's success. It fosters a sense of belonging and encourages user engagement, which is vital in any gaming ecosystem. While Treasure has made initial progress with over 100,000 users, sustaining engagement poses a challenge as seen in declining active users. To address this, Treasure must continue to invest in ongoing community building efforts to retain users.
Another key focus for Treasure’s improvement is continuous innovation and adaptability to meet evolving user needs. Staying relevant in the ever-changing gaming industry requires experimenting with new game mechanics, exploring emerging technologies, and taking risks. It also means welcoming and incorporating user feedback to drive its development process.
While Treasure faces a formidable journey, there are ways available to cross the hurdles ahead. If the platform can effectively execute the suggested strategies, it has the potential to establish itself as a significant force in the decentralised gaming arena.