Another day, another new developer convinced it can solve the impossible problem of making NFT games fun. Midnight is a new blockchain-based dev led by some of the industry's "most commercially successful creators", and it's already announced some ridiculously ambitious plans, which always bodes well.
The blockchain "revolution" in gaming continues apace. FIFA recently announced four blockchain games to coincide with the World Cup, and industry figures like Dan Houser have also publicly backed blockchain tech. Now, another new studio has sprung up out of the woodwork: Midnight, which, according to a somewhat disconcerting press release, has "emerged from stealth" with $7.5 million in funding from crypto investors.
So, what is Midnight all about? Its execs include Game of War: Fire Age (yes, that annoying mobile game) designer Geoffrey Hunt and former Improbable CCO Bill Roper, and investors include blockchain platform Forte, mod company Overwolf, and others. Its mission is to use blockchain as "a layer that creates real value and utility for players". Hmm.
A lot of Midnight's promises will sound familiar if you've been keeping up with the world of blockchain and Web3 (which is definitely still going great, by the way). The studio says it wants to make blockchain games that are fun first and profitable as an additional layer, and also that its games will be "fun without the NFT layer". Midnight also says it wants to attract "the broadest swath of gamers", which, well, we'll have to see about that.
Perhaps more concerning (or enticing, depending on your outlook) is that Midnight says it has four games in the works, three of which it has provided brief descriptions of. The first is a 4X MMO, Legion, which strikes me as an alarmingly ambitious first project even without the others. Second is a 2D pixel brawler called Next Protectors, and third is a "couch co-op" (they don't say what kind of game) called At Your Service.
It remains to be seen exactly what will happen to Midnight henceforth. Perhaps these projects really will come to fruition and they'll be the first developers to create games that really do bridge the gap between fun gaming and NFT chicanery, sorry, "economy". Watch this space for more info on Midnight.
Elsewhere in the world of blockchain gaming, things are going pretty much exactly as you'd expect, especially if a recent exchange between Jason Schreier and Web3 award ceremony Gam3 Awards is anything to go by. Schreier accuses Gam3 Awards of stealing its bio from The Game Awards (which, well, are you surprised?), and the ceremony's organizers accuse Schreier of an "anti-blockchain gaming agenda".
Subsequently, Twitter user Dan Sandler points out that one of the awards' nominees for Best Strategy Game used stolen assets to promote itself, calling this "bad faith all the way down". Ouch. Not that Midnight is related to any of this, of course. Just something to bear in mind when you're thinking about the world of Web3.
