Everseed 🌱 Product Opportunity

What we see in Web3 🔍

Oh, hello there! 👋

Though we have been somewhat shy since our quiet-to-viral reveal, we made the promise in last week’s blog post, Introducing Everseed🌱, to come out of our shell and share more details about the game that we’re making. We’re excited to reveal more and hope that the upcoming blog posts, each focused on different aspects of our product, will provide greater context that many of you have been awaiting. Setting the stage today, let’s focus on the product opportunity space that Everseed is looking to play in!

When deciding to depart our previous studios, we left eager to pursue a space that we believed was deeply underserved. In early 2021, we were introduced to the wild world of Web3 games by first movers like Axie Infinity. The hyped early reception highlighted the market potential, but as gamers ourselves we were much more interested in the new ways player communities became empowered by the blockchain. When done right, we truly believe Web3 gaming has the potential to provide more and new opportunities for players. Unfortunately, we think the current suite of options miss the mark on delivering engaging gameplay that keeps players coming back for the value of fun itself. Moreover, rushed economy design and lackluster post-launch updates have left these games open to predatory exploitation, causing serious damage to players and tarnishing an immature industry’s early reputation. Enter our team, Amihan. With veteran backgrounds building games with a player-first mentality, we see this as our golden opportunity to bring our AAA expertise and bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3. We aim to serve and equalize opportunity for you, our players, through Everseed.

Our plan with Everseed is rooted in an addictingly fun and replayable core game loop that can be used as a foundation for future innovations to be built on top. Early last year we explored a number of prototypes trying to internally validate representative moment-to-moment gameplay built in our engine. We built and killed a number of precedents before landing on our current game iteration. As part of our iteration loop, we rely heavily on playtesting. During the prototyping phase, we’ve intentionally kept our playtester audience tight with internal teammates and a handful of trusted friends & family. Maintaining a small playtester group during this stage of development allows us to move quickly, keep the product under wraps, and preserve our larger playtester pool for future iterations. As we move forward with Everseed’s development, we’ll be steadily increasing the frequency of playtests and expanding our pool to include more of our community over time. One of our core tenets of game development is to validate our gameplay with our target audience, incorporating your feedback into iterations that lead to a better experience shaped by players.

So, what exactly are we making? 🤔

Everseed is a “Farm-to-Tabletop” MMO—there is a core replayable game loop (“tabletop”) with built-in metasystems (“farm”) fostering long-term relationships with other players (MMO). At its core, Everseed’s gameplay is grounded with a roguelike core loop that significantly innovates upon various strategy genres, one of which is tower defense. We are making Everseed with the mainstream player in mind. We believe there has been a missed opportunity to open the world of Web3 games to a wider audience because of an unnecessarily forced segregation between crypto enthusiasts and gamers stemming from subpar design choices. We know that these two worlds, the “underground” and “above-ground,” can coexist, but it requires the right seed to be cared for by experienced botanists. We will cultivate Everseed to ensure that its strong gameplay roots can support a sturdy economic trunk, permitting players of all types to enjoy the shade from its canopy of non-fungible leaves. One does not need to pick leaves off in order to enjoy the shade, and our philosophy on how blockchain and gameplay interact in Everseed is similarly inspired. For Everseed, we will not require players to spend money on NFTs in order to experience our full gameplay loop. 🌳🍂

A full gameplay loop that does not exclude players, but still presents them with economic opportunity, is a feat that we’re excited to tackle. Over the coming weeks, we will reveal more details on how we plan to do so, including sharing our game design process that will hopefully paint a clearer picture of our core gameplay. (However, we know it’s often hard to visualize a game with just words on a page, so stay tuned for a visual “teaser” or two as well. 😉)

Next week, we’ll be diving into the technical decisions we’ve made with respect to our product, and also include a tactical primer for Web3 newbies as we start to prepare for the release of our genesis collectibles. (Don’t fret; it’s still early!) In tandem with the tech blog publication, we’ll also host an AMA next week on Twitter, and will poll our community on Discord in advance for scheduling.

As always, we can’t thank our community enough for the support that we’ve already received! We’re excited to enter this new phase where we’ll be able to engage with you all more intimately about our development process. 🤗

Cheers friends! 
HBBONG
Hannah, Lead Producer

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Addendum: What does “Web3” mean? 💡

Web3 is a new term used to describe the third “era” of the Internet. Here is a simplified breakdown of the three different online eras:

• Web1: Readable Era

  Web1 was largely business-focused with limited interaction between businesses and their users, let alone user-to-user interactions.

• Web2: Interactable Era

  Web2 allowed for back and forth interactions, which allowed for online communities to emerge. For example, social media users could now interact with other users’ content and share it with each other. In this model, however, user content (aka data) is still owned by businesses who act as gatekeepers, and thus most of the benefits (especially financial) accrue primarily to these businesses, creating entrenched monopolies.

• Web3: Ownable Era

  Web3 shatters the barriers of online content (aka data) ownership that Web2 businesses have erected. Thanks to decentralized blockchain technology, content ownership can now be put into the hands of users, and they can choose to trade said content directly with one another through tokens, thus benefiting much more directly from each interaction.