Odaily debut | From "service" to "asset", "Red and Blue" completed tens of millions of RMB financing

Trading Card Games, or TCG for short, is a niche and high-end game field.

This type of game is usually based on collecting cards. Players match different cards according to their own strategies to build their own decks and play against others. In the game, because each person's deck is different, the order in which cards are drawn in each round is also different.

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Gamers playing Magic: The Gathering at a board game store

The originator of TCG games is Magic: The Gathering of Wizards of the Coast. Players can trade directly. Magic: The Gathering has sold more than 20 billion cards from 2008 to 2016. However, after the electronicization of TCG games, most of them have become CCG (Collectible Card Games), such as "Hearthstone". Most of the cards in CCG can be issued indefinitely, but cards cannot be traded between players.

"This is why we put the TCG game on the blockchain. Not only will we not issue additional tokens at will, but we also use blockchain technology to solve the problem of card transactions between players." Noah told Odaily.

Noah was born in NetEase, Tencent and other major game companies. He has participated in and produced a variety of client and mobile game projects. He has always been a core user of "Magic" and "Hearthstone". Noah's new work "Red and Blue" is a classic, hardcore blockchain TCG work.

Noah told Odaily that he left the big game company in 2014 and started his own game entrepreneurial career. At the end of 2017, I heard from a friend that I could use the blockchain to make games. At that time, Noah went to find out what the blockchain is. "In an instant, it felt like a door to a new world was opened." Noah said. After research by Noah and his team, as well as the support of investors (heavy Magic players), Noah decided to use TCG games as a breakthrough point to explore a new path for TCG games.

The team currently has about 30 people, mainly distributed in Singapore and the United States, and is jointly developed by Briliiant Games and the well-known American TCG company HEX. The technical team of Briliiant Games is mainly from domestic first-line game manufacturers such as Tencent and Netease. HEX has many years of experience in TCG research and development. The world-renowned "WOWTCG", which is developed and operated by them, has a good reputation and influence in the minds of North American players. According to reports, the team raised tens of millions of RMB in mid-2018. The investment was led by a well-known game listed company, followed by a number of entertainment funds.

According to Noah, currently they have made about 500 cards, which will increase to 750 when the product is officially launched. The product is expected to be officially launched in Q3 this year. There are two types of cards in "Red and Blue", one is "free cards", players can get them without spending money, and they only need to complete certain tasks on time every day to get them. But free cards cannot be mapped to on-chain assets, cannot be traded, cannot participate in tournaments, and can only play ladders. The other is "asset cards", which can be mapped to the chain, can be traded, and can also participate in tournaments.

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Only do assets on the chain, use blockchain technology to solve the problem of card transactions

As mentioned above, in traditional card games, there is no way to trade cards between players.

""Red and Blue" solves the problem that cards cannot be traded in the centralized world in the past. For example, compare the previous CCG game to the game developer opening a Disneyland. Players need to buy tickets to enter and play. Afterwards, only 'people' can go out and can't take anything away. And we use blockchain technology to make TCG games like making a store, we sell assets, and we also build a playground where players can hold Assets bought in our store are played in the playground, and when the player leaves, the asset is still theirs. And this asset will not change during the player’s entire game experience.”

According to Noah, this is the essential difference between "Red and Blue" and traditional card games. In the past, electronic card games could not be traded, such as "Hearthstone", "Red and Blue" solved the problem of card trading, and used blockchain technology to solve the real needs of players who want to trade cards .

So which aspects of the game "Red and Blue" put on the blockchain?

Noah said that they only put assets on the chain, and only put the asset cards on the blockchain. This is because the core of the game is the asset. Once the game rules are recognized by the players, it is difficult to change, and there is no need to put them on the blockchain.

At first, Noah hoped to put the assets on the chain, instead of "opening the bag" in the game server. Every time "opening the bag", the player needs to go to the chain to spend money to open it. Later, it was found that the player paid the money to get the bag. Ten minutes have passed, "This game experience is too bad for players."

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"It is wrong to make games for blockchain users"

When asked about the mainstream user groups for Red and Blue, Noah introduced that their user groups are concentrated in players aged 18 to 50 in Europe and North America. Europeans and North Americans have the custom of playing board games during festivals, and they will use board games as entertainment after meals. In addition, because the rules of the TCG game are very complicated, the targeted users are generally core users.

Moreover, TCG players have formed a mature market in North America. The frequency of new games in this market itself is very low, and these games are competitive games. There is no way to play with computers, but with people. Therefore, TCG games are more popular. Rely on word of mouth between people to expand the popularity of the game.

"Although what we are making is a game that includes blockchain technology, our game is still aimed at traditional players. What we need to do is to recruit core players, operate and activate the player community. The idea of ​​​​our operation is to find blockchain cooperation Partners to build ecology, and then attract traditional players to play, and finally hope to convert a large number of players into blockchain users, so our games are not made for blockchain users.” Noah said.

Moreover, Noah believes that when many blockchain users play games, they are not essentially to experience the game, but to make a fortune. Moreover, there are only 20 million blockchain users in the world (including speculators), and they are distributed on different chains. There are probably more than 1 million Ethereum users. If Red and Blue wants to find more than 1 million users target users, then the game will not be able to operate.

Summarize

Summarize

To sum up, "Red and Blue" is not a blockchain game in the strict sense. It just borrows blockchain technology to break the traditional TCG game's "cards cannot be traded" situation, and endows TCG games with "tradable cards". In this way, traditional TCG games are not only enjoyable, but also tradable.

Moreover, "Red and Blue" is the first game developer in the TCG game industry to use blockchain technology to realize card trading. There is no competitor yet, so it has a certain eye-catching effect on the stock users of TCG games .

TCG blockchain games do not have much technical difficulty for game developers themselves, and mainly rely on the development of the underlying public chain technology. Once the performance of the underlying public chain improves, the transaction volume that the game can accommodate will increase accordingly . The dividends enjoyed by games are all brought about by technology dividends.

Moreover, "Red and Blue" has no pressure on the acquisition of game players. As Noah introduced, "Red and Blue" mainly relies on the stock market users of traditional TCG games. This is a very mature and stable user group. About 200 million users. And there are few new games, so the spread of new TCG games is more accumulated by word of mouth from players.

To sum up, from the current point of view, TCG games with tradable functions may bring some changes in the traditional game market in the future.