TLDR: Off The Grid is a cyberpunk-themed battle royale game with a crypto economy (almost) integrated. After its launch in the second week of October, it climbed on the download charts and got nice reviews. The crypto aspect, however, isn’t so popular with reviewers, some of whom consider it a ‘crypto cash grab’.
One of the potentially big narratives in the current bull market is the gaming narrative. With the explosive hype and exploding prices of Axie Infinity from last cycle in the back of our minds, it indeed isn’t a far cry to expect great price action from gaming coins. The consensus, though, is that this won’t happen until a big Web3 game crosses the chasm to ‘normies gaming land’.
Off The Grid has been viewed as a candidate for such a breakthrough game. It’s light years ahead of what Axie had to offer in terms of graphics and sophistication. Off The Grid is a AAA game, with aspirations of becoming a blockbuster. Set on “Teardrop Island” in a dystopian future, Off the Grid has 150 players duke it out in lobbies. An interesting twist in gameplay is its use of cybernetic enhancements, which allow players to modify their bodies.
Successful Launch
The game’s popularity surged after its early access launch in the second week of October 2024, reaching the top of download charts on platforms like the Epic Games Store and gaining attention on streaming platforms such as Twitch.
The popularity has dropped though. Now the sponsored streamers no longer seem to prop it up, Off the Grid has fallen outside the top 100 most-viewed games on Twitch. On the Epic Games website, it’s currently 11th in the Free to play games.
Crypto Integration Through NFTs and In-game Currency
Off The Grid’s blockchain pillar is built on Avalanche, to be precise an Avalanche subnet called GUNZ. This currency is earned through gameplay, such as completing missions or extracting loot from the game’s battle royale or extraction modes.
In Off the Grid, items such as weapons, skins, and other in-game assets can become NFTs once they are extracted or acquired. Such items in Off The Grid are Loot boxes (see image).
The act of opening such a loot box, is to mint the NFT that is the box. Players can then list them on a secondary market, and trade them with other players. (A caveat is that the full NFT and blockchain integration is not live yet and loot boxes are not tradable yet).
At this point, some reviewers start worrying. Gamers could start trading these boxes without using them in the game. Won’t Off the Grid become an eBay of sorts, instead of what it’s meant to be: just a game?
The game also allows players to buy and sell items using this currency on the marketplace. In order to do that, gamers need a paid subscription, which also allows them to earn 5 times the amount of GUNZ. It’s a requirement that rubs reviewers the wrong way, as we will see.
What do the Reviewers Think of the Web3 Integration?
I watched a few reviewers talk on YouTube about their experiences with the game.
Tomographic: He is skeptical about the crypto aspect, but not hostile. The possibility of having real ownership over in-game items, similar to games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where players can trade skins and cosmetics, which appeals to some gamers. Players who don’t care about crypto can still participate without directly engaging with blockchain systems, especially when dealing with cosmetics. Tomographic likes the option of having real ownership over in-game items, similar to games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, where players can trade skins and cosmetics, appeals to some gamers. But he is wary of market manipulation. Wealthy players could monopolize valuable in-game items, making it hard for others to compete.
Macro Live: He is strongly opposed to the cryptocurrency elements, feeling that the game prioritizes the marketplace and crypto over being a solid game first. Macro Live expresses concerns that the focus on crypto could turn into a “get-rich-quick” scheme for investors rather than focusing on long-term gameplay quality.
“If you have all of this funding you could have used that to just focus on the game first but it just feels like it might be something that could ultimately lead to like a get-rich-quick scheme for its investors the people that are working on the game it’s using like what are the bones of an interesting game as a way to kind of open a door and get people in and then pull a rug that’s my fear.”
More JGod: He is very critical of the Web3 aspect. The Off The Grid marketplace is flooded with hyperinflated prices for items and weapons, driven by the assumption that players can make a profit. This leads to frustration as it becomes difficult to find reasonably priced items.
“I was profoundly depressed to discover that it appears to be just another crypto cash grab blockchain game… most of these microtransactions are actually player Marketplace microtransactions… and everybody’s allowed to take their weapons, NFT them, and put them up on the marketplace for trade. So like 80% of people think they’re going to make money on this somehow.”
Drif0r: He is highly critical of the game’s cryptocurrency and NFT-based marketplace. He is frustrated that Off The Grid is powered by blockchain technology, allowing players to trade weapons as NFTs. This crypto integration is viewed as a “cash grab”. According to Drif0r, the blockchain-based structure feels exploitative and detracts from the gameplay.
The heavy focus on microtransactions, with most items priced in cryptocurrency and accessible through grinding or buying, makes the game feel more like a marketplace than a playable experience. He finds this frustrating and exploitative.
“The fact that Off the Grid is cryptocurrency-based was an immediate turnoff for me. This was a hard ‘nope’ because I don’t want to play a blockchain game disguised as a real game.”
What to Make of the Critics
The majority of reviewers see the introduction of crypto into their world as an intrusion into pure gaming. There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction here. On the one hand, gaming reviewers will acknowledge that gaming is valuable, that they value gaming skills. On the other hand, they frown at putting a number on that value, and making that value tradable.
Why? Maybe because incumbents in general are wary of change. When Dylan started playing electric, the folk world went berserk. When synthesizers first popped up in rock bands, critics loathed it. Innovations take time to get accepted.
Is the explanation this simple? Or maybe it’s because making in-game items tradable could allow ‘rich kids’ to buy their way into high status?
But that’s not entirely the case. First of all, the status of a player with a history could be visible to other players. Buying yourself into a game won’t ever give you the status that an OG player would have. (There are even on-chain solutions, for this aspect of reputation. Soulbound tokens are a token type that is glued to a certain wallet and can’t be traded, in this example credentials in a game).
Regardless of the eventual success or failure of Off the Grid, the path towards gaming having a Web3 element, seems pretty inescapable to me. And not just to me. For example The CEO of Epic Games envisions a plan for Unreal Games’ new gaming engine which will allow for an interoperable economy between games, a sort of ‘metaverse’ in which players can own items and transfer these across games.
Conclusion
The reviewers’ assessment of the crypto aspect of Off the Grid leans heavily negative. It’s too early to tell if the reviewers are simply wary of innovation, or if the way crypto is integrated in Off The Grid somehow misses the mark. In any case, there are potential tokenomics imaginable in other games that would provide real utility for in-game assets. While Off The Grid might not be the game to deliver on this promise, it seems quite likely that some game will at some point. Maybe the crypto investors have been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe we shouldn’t focus on triple A games. In the same way that silly meme coins have made investors rich, a silly tap to earn games such as Hamster Kombat might be the next breakthrough.
Erik started as a freelance writer around the time Satoshi was brewing on the whitepaper.
As a crypto investor, he is class of 2020. More of a holder than a trader, but never shy to experiment with new protocols.
