Big Time is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on Ethereum, with an industry-leading team and financing. The game is still in the internal testing stage, but it has basically taken shape as an MMORPG and completed the concept of a sustainable economic mechanism for the game. The game experience is good and has a certain degree of playability. In addition, the blockchain game track still maintains a good scale in the current bear market. In the future, when Big Time is opened to zero threshold, it is likely to welcome more players to enter.
Original First Class Warehouse First Class Warehouse Blockchain Research Institute 2023-10-10 16:02 Published in Fujian
Big Time is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on Ethereum, with an industry-leading team and financing. The game is still in the internal testing stage, but it has basically taken shape as an MMORPG and completed the concept of a sustainable economic mechanism for the game. The game experience is good and has a certain degree of playability. In addition, the blockchain game track still maintains a good scale in the current bear market. In the future, when Big Time is opened to zero threshold, it is likely to welcome more players to enter.
Project Overview
Big Time is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on Ethereum. The game is still in the internal testing stage. It has basically taken shape as an MMORPG and completed the conceptual construction of the game's economic mechanism.
From the team's perspective, the Big Time team has a solid background in the gaming and crypto fields, and the core members have experience in developing large-scale games or working in large gaming companies. Compared with the first research report in May 2022, there have been some changes in the core team members of Big Time. The departure of the product director and the game economic model design director may have had a certain impact on the development and delivery of the game. Subsequent work will be taken over by other experts who are deeply involved in the gaming industry. In addition, since Big Time Studios is a game studio that works completely remotely worldwide, it will also have a certain impact on the on-time delivery of the game.
In terms of funding, Big Time is estimated to have raised more than US$90 million through primary market financing and NFT sales, which is enough to support the development of a 3A game. After the game is launched in the future, the project team can continue to operate sustainably through the sale of game resources.
From the perspective of the core game mechanism, Big Time basically borrows the role and growth design of mature MMORPGs, but its free job transfer system will greatly enrich the player's gaming experience. However, this also puts forward requirements for the game team to make balance adjustments, because the low job transfer threshold means that if a certain profession has particularly outstanding abilities, it will squeeze the living space of other professions, thus affecting the playability of the game.
From the perspective of the game's economic mechanism, Big Time's design is very clever, which can ensure that the economic cycle in the game has a certain degree of flexibility on a stable basis, and can also ensure that both free players and paying players can have a richer gaming experience. However, such an economic mechanism also places high demands on the player's strategy for allocating resources in the game. Players need to invest a certain amount of resources to explore their own appropriate position in the game.
Judging from the actual gaming experience, the game already has a certain degree of playability, but more iterations will be needed in the future to improve the game’s graphics and gameplay mechanisms.
Judging from the game threshold, the game's hardware requirements do not seem to be high at present, but players need to meet certain requirements before they can participate in the preseason.
From the perspective of project development, the current operation and development of the game is slower than expected, but the game already has a group of highly sticky core players. In the future, when Big Time is opened to zero threshold, it is likely to welcome more players to enter.
From the perspective of the track, since entering the bear market, although the number of players and transaction volume on the chain game track has declined to a certain extent, the core group of chain game players still maintains a high stickiness, and the overall development progress of the track It has not been significantly affected, and a large number of new games are still being developed and operated. Once the overall macro environment picks up, the chain gaming track itself still has room for imagination. At the same time, based on the different types and development stages of the blockchain game track, we believe that games with some core assets like Big Time that are put on the blockchain, are rooted in Web2 games, and have sufficient development capabilities and operational experience will have greater development in the future. potential.
1. Basic Overview
1.1 Project Introduction
Big Time is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on Ethereum. The game is still in the internal testing stage. It has basically taken shape as an MMORPG and completed the conceptual construction of the game's economic mechanism.
1.2 Basic Information
Established
2021
Country
USA
Section
Chain Games
Token Symbol
BIGTIME
Fundraising
$93.87 million (incomplete statistics, see the funding section below for actual situation)
2. Project details
2.1 Team
According to the official website, there are currently 38 core members of the Big Time team, and according to LinkedIn, there are currently 89 employees in the Big Time team, an increase of 22 staff members from the first edition of the research report in 2022. Since its inception, Big Time has recruited an all-star team of veterans in the gaming industry from leading gaming companies such as Epic Games, Blizzard, EA, and Riot.
The introduction of the core team members and corresponding changes are as follows:
Ari Meilich, CEO, former co-founder and CEO of Decentraland, worked as a market research analyst at Charles River Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund. He also founded and served as CEO of the big data company Benchrise and has extensive experience in venture capital and data analysis.
Matt Tonks, CTO, served as the chief programmer of COR Project from January 2004 to May 2005; worked as a software engineer at Electronic Arts from May 2005 to October 2007; worked as a senior artificial intelligence programmer at Epic Games from October 2007 to July 2012; worked as the technical director of Drifter Entertainment from January 2016 to August 2020; and has been a co-founder of BitMonster since March 2012. Matt Tonks has been committed to the game industry for the past 18 years and has extensive experience in game development.
Thor Alexander, CPO, served as Director of Development at Epic Games from April 1999 to December 2006; Founder and Editor of MMP Game Development from October 2002 to February 2005; Director of Product Management at Metaplace, Inc. from December 2006 to November 2008; Executive Producer at Zynga from November 2008 to December 2011; Founder and CEO of Lucky Puppy, LLC from March 2012 to August 2017; Vice President of Product at Decentraland from November 2018 to April 2020. Thor Alexander is an OG in the traditional gaming field, with more than 25 years of experience in game production, has worked on many successful game projects, and has extensive entrepreneurial experience. There is no information on the official website at present, and it is highly likely that he has left the company, and his job has been taken over by Brian Chu.
Brian Chu, Head of Product Management, entered the gaming industry in 2007 as a developer marketing intern at Salesforce. In 2008, Brian joined Deloitte Consulting as a senior consultant, providing consulting services to multiple companies in the interactive entertainment, software, and mobile information industries. In 2009, Brian joined Zynga as the lead product manager for the CityVille project. He then became the Vice President of Product at Identified in 2012. In 2013, Brian joined Blizzard Entertainment as the Director of Global Brand Management, responsible for the global brand marketing strategy, budget, and execution of Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft II. In 2016, Brian became the Product Director of Rocket Games, which was acquired by Penn Interactive Ventures in April 2017. In 2017, Brian became the Director of Product Management at EA, and then joined Epic Games in 2019 in the same position. In April 2022, Brian joined Big Time and has served as the Head of Product Management since then.
Michael Migliero, CMO, served as a product marketing assistant at Akamai Technologies from 2007 to 2008; from December 2012 to May 2018, he served as co-founder and CEO of Fractional Media (an advertising service company); from May 2015 to May 2018, he served as DSP director at Machine Zone (MZ).
Ken Harsha, Chief Animator, Creative Director, has more than 31 years of experience in feature animation, television animation and games. He has served as an art director, production designer, director, writer, story artist, storyboard artist, visual development artist, and has considerable reputation in the American entertainment industry. Ken Harsha has participated in many works of Disney, DreamWorks, and Warner Bros., and provided art guidance for multiple series of Call of Duty games. In Electronic Arts for more than 5 years, he served as an art director, producer, production designer, and film director, and managed Treyarch's concept art department for more than 8 years.
Daniel Paez, Director of Game Economic Model Design, served as a product manager at VisusTV, an industrial engineer at IBM Brasil, an account manager at Transcend Information, and a business development manager at Gresso Miami from 2009 to 2015, mainly responsible for enterprise product work. From 2015 to 2015.06, he served as an Apple SPO expert; from 2015.06 to 2020.12, he served as a pricing manager and publishing intelligence manager at Blizzard Entertainment; from 2020.12 to 2021.08, he served as a senior manager of commercial finance and operations at Activision. In addition to his work at Big Time, Daniel Paez also served as the Director of Game Economic Model Design at Worldspark Studios. According to LinkedIn information, Daniel left in February 2022 and was later replaced by Khaled Alroumi as Director of Game Monetization and Economy.
Khaled Alroumi, Director of Game Monetization and Economy, entered the game industry in 2010. He has served as co-founder of several game companies in Kuwait and Dubai, and developed the game "Warfront: Battle of Tolia". In 2021, Khaled Alroumi joined the blockchain game Illuvium as a game system and economy designer. In September 2022, Khaled Alroumi joined Big Time and has served as the Director of Game Monetization and Economy since then.
Aaron Smith, Art Director, has previously worked at Rogue Entertainment, Nerve Software, Epic Games, and is also the co-founder and game artist of Bitmonster, Inc. Aaron Smith is an artist with over 20 years of experience in the game industry, specializing in concept art, 3D character and environment modeling, and has over 17 years of experience in Unreal Engine, making him a senior game industry practitioner.
Martin Sweitzer, Chief Engineer, 1998.06-2000.05, worked as a software developer at Trilogy; 2000.11-2001.10, worked as a programmer at Sony Online Entertainment; 2002.01-2004.06, worked as the founder of Sigil Games Online; from 2004 to 2017, he worked as a senior game programmer at BrickHouse Games, Epic Games and Squanch Games, and was also the co-founder of Bitmonster, Inc. Martin Sweitzer is a senior game industry practitioner with more than 20 years of game development experience.
TJ Stamm, Chief Designer, started working in the game industry around 2000. Previously, he worked as a designer at Electronic Arts, Infinity Ward and other companies, and has been responsible for the producer, designer and artist of many games. During his 6 years at Infinity Ward, he was mainly responsible for the weapon design and in-game parameter balance of the two series of games, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Infinite Warfare.
Cedric Fleury, Chief Designer, started working in the game industry in 2006. He worked as a level designer for multiple games including Wolfenstein at Threewave, EA and SE. In 2016, Cedric Fleury joined Ubisoft and participated in the development of Farcry 4, mainly responsible for the open world environment design of the entire game. Cedric Fleury then served as a senior level designer in multiple projects at WB Game and EA. In May 2022, Cedric Fleury joined Big Time and served as chief designer.
The CEO of the Big Time project is Ari Meilich, who is also the former co-founder and CEO of Decentraland. In addition, most of the team members have rich industry experience in the traditional game industry and have worked in large companies. Judging from the resume of the team lineup, the team has professional game development experience and has participated in the design and development of many top games, including: League of Legends, Fortnite, God of War, Call of Duty and Overwatch. Compared with the first research report in May 2022, there are not many changes in the core team members of Big Time, but the departure of the product director and the game economic model design director may have a certain impact on the development and delivery of the game. Subsequent work will be taken over by other experts who are deeply involved in the game industry. In addition, since Big Time Studios is a game studio that works completely remotely worldwide, it will also have a certain impact on the development of the game.
2.2 Funding
2.2.1 Financing
On May 12, 2021, Big Time Studios announced the completion of a $21 million financing, which will be divided into two parts. The first part of $10.3 million was led by FBG Capital, with participation from North Island Ventures, Digital Currency Group, DFG, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Alameda Research, LD Capital, YBB Foundation, Circle Financial and Sound Ventures founded by Ashton Kutcher. In addition, Big Time Studio also completed a round of $11 million in financing, which will be used to invest in game companies willing to use related NFT technologies.
2.2.2NFT sales part
In addition to the financing part, Big Time also obtained considerable income through multiple in-game NFT prop sales activities, as follows:
1) Binance NFT Marketplace First Sale
On July 22, 2021, Big Time launched NFT Drop for the first time on the Binance NFT market. The event is mainly divided into 4 parts, as shown in Table 2-1 below:
Table 2-1 Binance NFT Market First Sales
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
VIP Pass
VIP passes are divided into three tiers: Emerald (8,000 total), Silver (3,000 total), and Gold (1,000 total). Of the three types, Gold will provide players with the earliest access, followed by Silver, and then Emerald. This sale represents 10% of the total number of Early Access VIP passes.
Gold Card: 100 cards
Silver Card: 300 cards
Emerald Cards: 800
Gold Card: $499
Silver: $299
Emerald Card: $179
$ 282,800
Mystery Box
Shows the scenery of four different game locations in Big Time (animated postcards), and has a chance to open VIP passes
6,000 sheets
$ 9.99
$ 239,760
Heroic Moment
Players can unlock character actions in the game. There are 4 different Hero Moments action clips in total. Each of the 4 series of Hero Moments is limited to 100 copies.
400
$ 299
$ 119,600
Exclusive NFT Auction
“WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE”NFT拍卖
1
$ 25,000
$ 25,000
total
$ 667,160
In summary, Big Time’s first sale on the Binance NFT market was sold out, with a total value of NFTs sold of $667,160.
2) Binance NFT Marketplace Sales Part 2
On August 13, 2021, Big Time launched the second round of Binance NFT market sales activities. The event is mainly divided into two parts, as shown in Table 2-2 below:
Table 2-2 Binance NFT Market Sales Part 2
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
VIP Pass
VIP passes are divided into three levels: Emerald, Silver, and Gold
900 Gold Cards
Silver Cards 2,700
Emerald Cards 7,200
Gold Card: $499
Silver: $299
Emerald Card: $179
$ 2,545,200
Mystery Box
Two new game locations are introduced, and there is a chance to get VIP passes. Combined with the 4 types of postcards sold previously, collecting six different types of postcards can be exchanged for exclusive equipment in the game.
18,000
$ 20
$ 360,000
total
$ 2,905,200
In summary, from the information we have learned, the value of NFTs sold in Big Time’s second round of Binance NFT market sales is approximately $ 2,905,200.
3) SPACE NFT Sales
On December 21, 2021, Big Time started selling SPACE NFTs.
Table 2-2 SPACE NFT market sales (December 2021)
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
SPACE NFT
See Figure 2-1 for details
60,000
SPACEs of different rarities have different prices, see Figure 2-1 for details.
$ 38,148,000
total
$ 38,148,000
SPACE NFT is a component of the personal metaverse in Big Time, equivalent to "land" in other metaverse projects. SPACE NFT comes in various sizes and rarities. The rarer and larger the SPACE, the more functions it can support.
This is the first sale of SPACE NFT. The team will sell 60,000 SPACE NFTs (10% of its total supply). The details are as follows:
Figure 2-1 SPACE NFT sales details
Combining the two tables in Figure 2-1 above, we can calculate that Big Time sold a total of $38,148,000 worth of SPACE NFTs in its first SPACE NFT sale.
4) Mystery gift box sales
Table 2-3 Market sales of mystery gift boxes (February 2022)
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
Mysterious Gift Box
The mysterious gift box will contain 6 different types of animation postcards. There is a chance that super rare postcards and early access VIP passes will be dropped.
25,000
25 BUSD
$ 625,000
total
$ 625,000
On February 17, 2022, Big Time launched a mysterious box sale on the Binance NFT market. In this sale, a total of 25,000 mysterious boxes were sold, each of which had a chance to drop 6 different types of animated postcards, and a small chance to drop ultra-rare postcards. In addition, the mysterious box also had a chance to drop a VIP pass for early access.
In this sale, each mystery box is priced at 25 BUSD, with a total value of $625,000.
5) Exalted SPACE Sale
Table 2-4 Exalted SPACE NFT market sales
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
Exalted SPACE NFT
See Figure 2-2 for details
3,000
$ 1,066 — $ 11,381
Mythic SPACE NFT
See Figure 2-2 for details
12,000
$ 36 — $ 691
total
Estimated $30,000,000
On March 24, 2022, Big Time launched the Exalted SPACE NFT sales event.
Figure 2-2 Exalted SPACE sale details
In this Exalted SPACE sale, Big Time sold a total of 3,000 Exalted SPACE NFTs (0.5% of the total SPACE NFTs) and 12,000 Mythic SPACE NFTs (2% of the total SPACE NFTs), as shown in the figure above (right).
The sales price of Mythic SPACE NFT has increased from $36 to $691 compared to the previous SPACE NFT sales event held on December 21, 2021; and the price of Exalted SPACE NFT has increased from $1,066 to $11,381. Such an exaggerated increase has also attracted criticism from some community members, but it still does not hinder the popularity of Big Time.
However, for this Exalted SPACE sale, the team did not disclose how many large, medium, and small-sized SPACE NFTs were sold, so it is difficult for us to calculate how much money was raised from this event.
Comparing the scale and pricing of the previous SPACE NFT sales event, the editor conservatively estimates that if all the SPACE NFTs in this event are successfully sold, the team will raise at least US$30 million in funds. For reference only.
6) Open Loot Mystery Box Holiday Sale (Christmas Holiday, Spring Festival Holiday)
Table 2-5 Market sales of Open Loot mystery gift box holiday sales (Christmas holiday, Spring Festival holiday)
introduce
quantity
unit price
Total Value ($ USD)
Christmas Holiday Mystery Gift Box
Contains 3 functional NFTs.
4,500
$ 49.99
$ 224,955
Spring Festival Holiday Mystery Gift Box
Contains 2 functional NFTs.
7,388
$ 39.99
$ 295,446
total
$ 520,401
Big Time sold 4,500 and 7,388 mystery boxes on Open Loot during its two holiday sales. These boxes will include three types of Utility Collectibles that can be used in SPACE: Armory, Crucible, and Time Guard, with a ratio of 45%, 45%, and 10% respectively. The Time Guard will be used to make the Hourglass component, which will be used to generate BIGTIME tokens. The Armory and Crucible will use BIGTIME tokens to make some skin NFTs, which will be traded on Open Loot later.
Each Christmas holiday mystery box will be able to open 3 functional NFTs, and only 2 functional NFTs will be opened in the Spring Festival holiday mystery box sale. However, the team has adjusted the drop rate of the armory, furnace and time guard in the Spring Festival holiday mystery box to 33.3%. In addition, the drop rate of high-rarity functional NFTs in the Christmas holiday mystery box is also much higher than that of the Spring Festival holiday mystery box.
The Christmas holiday mystery gift box will be priced at 49.99 USD, and the Spring Festival holiday mystery gift box will be priced at 39.99 USD. Users can purchase up to 100 mystery gift boxes at one time. The sale of all the mystery gift boxes will bring the team nearly US$520,000 in financial income.
7) Game Guild Subscription
Currently, Big Time has reached cooperation with more than 20 game guilds, including YieldGuild, Merit Circle, Avocado Guild, Loudgg, Neo Tokyo, Black Pool, Polkastarter, YGG Sea, ReadyPlayerDAO, 3D Gamers Guild DAO, etc. Most of the cooperative guilds have purchased the corresponding NFT assets in Big Time games, but most of the guilds have not yet disclosed the specific amount, so the specific sales situation in this regard is not yet known. In addition, the Web3 community OpenDAO has also cooperated with Big Time and purchased more than $5 million in SPACE.
In summary, Big Time has conservatively estimated to have earned approximately USD 72,865,761 in revenue from its multiple NFT sales activities since its inception (incomplete statistics, the actual situation is much more, there have been voices in the community previously stating that Big Time has made profits of over 100 million US dollars from multiple NFT sales activities, but this news has not been confirmed and is for reference only).
In addition to the $21 million in financing the team has completed, Big Time’s treasury currently has a total of about $93.87 million, not taking into account expenditures. Even considering that Big Time is targeting 3A game blockbusters, where development costs normally cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, Big Time’s treasury is currently quite sufficient, enough to develop and operate the project for a long period of time in the early stages.
2.3 Code
Big Time is built on Ethereum and uses procedurally generated goodness to scale off-chain. The big framework is similar to most blockchain games on the market, that is, game assets are on-chain and the main game runs on off-chain servers. The specific code base is not open source.
2.4 Products
Big Time is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) inspired by time travel.
Generally speaking, as a subcategory of the RPG game category, MMORPG should first meet several core elements of RPG games:
1) Role elements: Players will need to choose to set or play a certain role in the game and select the abilities and attributes of the role.
2) Interactive elements: Games generally have built-in combat systems, quest systems, NPC systems, map systems, loot systems, and other mechanisms that generate feedback from player behavior.
3) Growth factors: Growth factors are generally the key to RPG games. Common growth factors in RPG games are divided into internal growth mechanisms and external growth mechanisms. Level and skill mechanisms are generally considered internal growth mechanisms. Players gain experience points through battles, explorations, and other mechanisms, and can improve their abilities without relying on external resources. Equipment and props are generally considered external growth mechanisms. Players can accumulate external resources such as gold coins to obtain corresponding growth in character abilities. An excellent RPG game will strive for a balance between internal and external growth mechanisms to give players a smoother gaming experience.
The key point that distinguishes MMORPG from other types of RPG games lies in the difference in gaming experience.
For example, Japanese RPGs pay more attention to the guidance of the main plot when setting up the gaming experience. Players are equivalent to playing a role in a script set by the game producer. Most games adopt a single-line ending, and even multi-line endings generally have a clearer path to achieve them. The player's differentiated experience will be supplemented by side plots, but overall, it will not deviate too much from the main line setting of the game itself.
The American RPG, which was born out of TRPG (Table RPG, such as Dungeons & Dragons), will relatively weaken the influence of the main plot in the setting of the game experience, and add more random elements to emphasize the impact of player behavior on the game. During the player's play, American RPG will be able to bring more differentiated experiences to players through the accumulation of interactive elements, allowing players to form their own game memories. The game itself will generally design multiple endings as feedback on player behavior.
Conceptually, MMORPGs basically follow the design ideas of American RPGs, that is, they emphasize two-way interaction over one-way experience. Generally, there is only a short introductory plot to help players establish a basic worldview, and there is not even a concept of "ending" for the game. The main gaming experience of players is based on the interaction with game elements. On this basis, MMORPGs will also emphasize the interaction between players, and it can even be said that to some extent, it is more like an online social game.
In the following, we will first introduce the game's world view setting, and then make a certain degree of analysis from the three core elements of the game, gameplay mechanisms, etc.
2.4.1Big Time game story background
Note: This chapter is an introduction to the background story of the game. It is not the main point and readers who are not interested can skip it.
Every MMORPG game has its own unique game background and storyline, and Big Time is no exception. The story background of Big Time is in the future human world. A mysterious force is threatening the balance of the universe. Time is distorted, different eras collide with each other, and the space-time of the entire universe is severely damaged. In order to seek survival, the survivors drift to the last refuge in the universe - a place called the end of time (BIGTIME'S END).
However, due to the influx of survivors from different time and space, the asteroid BIGTIME'S END was soon overwhelmed. At this time, a solution appeared (seemingly out of thin air, perhaps with the support of unknown mysterious forces behind it). A man named Canard Cincade created Paradox Corporate, produced a batch of small robots Clockies to maintain the order of the time and space world, and quickly restored BIGTIME'S END to normal operation.
At the same time, Paradox also began to sell a pocket universe BIGTIMESHARES (similar to the VR virtual world of Cyberpunk) full of infinite possibilities - whether you want to ride a dinosaur in the American West pioneer era or meet a robot warrior in the Japanese feudal era, Paradox can make it happen for you. A large number of people flocked to it to escape reality. As time went on, the residents of BIGTIME'S END began to find that these small robots occasionally appeared abnormal or even ran away, and even began to disrupt the lives of residents. At the same time, BIGTIME'S END began to privately say that Paradox was the culprit for destroying the peace of the universe. On the one hand, Paradox strongly denied the incident, and on the other hand, it launched a large robot model with great lethality - Guardian XL. Canard Cincade wanted to use robots to control the entire world and use large robots for urban patrol work to monitor the operation of the entire city. To this end, an institution dedicated to protecting "time" - Evermore Academy - stepped forward. The president of the academy is one of the smartest scientists in history - Albert Einstein. Einstein assembled a group of heroes to solve the crisis facing the universe.
In Big Time, the player plays the role of a time traveler who is summoned to the end of the universe by Einstein. In the current version of the game, the player's task is to investigate Paradox in depth, find out Canard Cincade's intentions, and stop Canard Cincade's plans. In the future, more game plot content will be unlocked as the game version is updated.
As an RPG game, Big Time uses multiple time and space narratives. The game characters will travel through multiple time and space to achieve certain narrative purposes. Through the interlacing and contrast of different time and space, the game content is enriched and has deeper narrative potential.
2.4.2 Roles and Growth Factors
As an RPG game, the character attributes, occupations and other role elements as well as growth elements in the game are the focus of its game mechanism.
Figure 2-3 Big Time game characters
There are currently four character classes in the Big Time game, as shown in Figure 2-3 above, namely:
• Time Warrior: Good at close combat and suitable as a tank; signature skills include Whirlwind and Invincible Roar.
• Chronomancer: A ranged mage capable of dealing damage to groups; signature skills include Fireball, Blizzard, and Time Stop.
• Shadowblade: Has high-speed movement and stealth capabilities, suitable for single-target output; signature skills include stealth, backstab and bomb trap.
• Quantum Fixer: Similar to a priest, able to heal teammates, suitable as a support; signature skills include healing, summoning turrets, and restoring energy.
The four professions of Big Time basically follow the traditional European and American RPG profession settings of "warrior, magic, priest, assassin", which makes it easier for players to quickly adapt to the game mechanism and choose the game method that suits them. On the basis of the four professions, Big Time also designed a job transfer mechanism. Players can transfer to different professions in the game by using the "Pocket Watches" props of different professions. In addition, after the v0.26 update, when the player reaches level 30, they can choose to transfer to two new professions, Techblade and Battlemancer. Each of them has a new skill combination. In terms of role positioning, the former is a combination of tank and mage, and the latter is a combination of assassin and priest.
From the perspective of growth factors, the internal growth mechanism includes upgrade and skill point mechanism. In Big Time, players can obtain attribute points and skill points every time they upgrade. Attribute points can improve the basic attributes of the game character. With the improvement of basic attributes, players can wear weapons and equipment with better attributes, which is similar to the gameplay of traditional RPG games. Skill points include active skills and general talents. Active skills are related to the selected profession, while general talents are not related to the profession and are always effective.
Figure 2-4 Upgrade point system
The currently available external growth mechanisms include equipment system and prop system.
Figure 2-5 Equipment and props system
The equipment system currently includes gear, armor, shield, weapons, jewelry and backpack. Gear props can be equipped on the pocket watch to grant players additional abilities or props rewards. Weapons are equipped directly by the player. There are currently a variety of weapon types available, including two-handed axes, one-handed hammers, two-handed hammers, one-handed swords, two-handed swords, dual swords, two-handed staffs, etc. The weapons that players can equip are linked to the player's occupation type and their own level and basic attributes. Weapons can increase the player's basic attributes and have a mutual restraint relationship with the defense type of the attack target. Armor includes five parts: helmet, shoulder armor, chest armor, gloves and leggings. In addition, there are shields and jewelry. These equipment can also increase the player's basic attributes similar to weapons. Backpacks are equipment used to store player props. They can bring players additional inventory slots to place props, thereby assisting players in playing games.
The equipment system currently has built-in rarity and skin mechanisms. The higher the rarity of the equipment, the higher the upper limit of the attribute bonus. The skin system is similar to the fashion mechanism in DNF. It can be created by the armory and furnace in SPACE. It does not affect the attributes of the equipment. Players can equip the skins they currently have in the collection column above the UI. The above equipment or skins can be obtained by killing monsters, synthesizing, participating in activities or characters, and purchasing corresponding gift packs. Among them, skin NFTs can be traded as NFTs on Open Loot. We will explain more specific equipment forging mechanisms in detail in the NFT and SPACE sections.
In terms of the prop system, there are many props in the game, among which the props that players can use mainly include energy potions, life potions, teammate teleportation potions, town teleportation charms and life trees, etc. They can basically meet the needs of players to replenish character resources and move quickly, and can generally be obtained as spoils by killing monsters.
From the perspective of role elements and growth elements, Big Time basically draws on the role and growth design of mature MMORPGs, but its free job transfer system will greatly enrich the player's gaming experience. However, this also puts forward requirements for the game team to make balance adjustments, because the low job transfer threshold means that if the ability of a certain profession is particularly outstanding in the future, it will squeeze the living space of other professions, thus affecting the playability of the game.
2.4.3 Interactive elements
The core gameplay mechanism of the game can be refined into the interactive elements of the game. At present, the objects that can be interacted in the game include plots, maps, scenes, and players. Paid players and free players of the game can basically experience the same game content in terms of roles and growth elements, but in terms of interactive elements, paid players can get a richer gaming experience.
In version v0.27, players will play on an entire map with elements such as towns, forests, swamps, snow-capped mountains, towers, dungeons, etc. The objects that can be interacted with include NPCs, monsters, ores, portals and other players.
Figure 2-6 BigTime game map
Figure 2-7 Interactive elements
Players can complete item transactions, skill learning, storyline opening, and quests by talking to NPCs. Monsters and ores mainly correspond to the game's combat and collection mechanisms. Players can use the left and right mouse buttons to perform combos or use number keys to release corresponding skills or props to attack enemies.
Figure 2-8 Instance portal
The portal mainly corresponds to the dungeon mechanism of the game. Each dungeon has a maximum limit of 6 people, and a suggested level will be prompted. After forming a team to complete the small tasks of the dungeon, players can enter the final boss room and obtain rich rewards by killing the boss. , the prizes that can be provided by the dungeon in the subsequent official version will include pocket watches, gold coins, time crystals, BIGTIME tokens, equipment, skin fragments, lucky bonus chips, NFT and other items. In addition to the ordinary dungeon portal, there is also a high-reward dungeon called the Glory Portal, which will significantly increase the explosion rate of rare drops in the dungeon. Players need to meet the entry requirements for skin-type NFTs before entering the high-reward dungeon. Entry requirements may include skin-type NFT type, theme, season, color and other elements, and then pay BIGTIME or time crystal as the admission fee. In addition, players can also use the Lucky Wheel slot to provide additional bonuses for high-reward copies.
The current interaction mechanisms with other players in the game include team formation, player expressions and chat functions. It is expected that functions such as friends and guilds will not be opened until subsequent versions are updated.
2.4.4 Resource elements
On the left side of the map in the upper right corner of the game's main UI, the three game resource elements, gold coins, time crystals and BIGTIME tokens, are displayed. Gold coins can be dropped through game behaviors such as killing monsters, completing tasks, trading loot or mining, and can be used to purchase ordinary equipment and props in the game.
Time crystals are the main in-game currency. They are difficult to obtain through normal game channels. Players can basically only purchase them from Big Time through Open loot. Time crystals are not on-chain assets. Once purchased, they are bound to the account and cannot be traded on the market later. Currently, 500 time crystals are priced at about US$5, and 13,500 time crystals are priced at about US$100. Time crystals are mainly used to activate various functional NFTs. A certain amount of time crystals are required when using the armory, furnace, and time guards. In addition, time crystals can also be used to purchase some auxiliary props, such as additional time hourglass equipment slots or to pay the entrance fees of certain Prestige Portals.
BIGTIME token is the most important core asset in the game. It is the last link of the entire game economic mechanism. We will introduce this token in 2.4.7.
In addition to the above three resource elements that can be directly seen in the UI interface, there are four other important resource elements related to functional NFTs in the game: Cosmetic Shards, Workshop Mod Chips, Prestige Portal Mod Chips, and Cosmetic Scraps. Workshop chips and Prestige Portal Mod Chips are collectively referred to as Bonus Roll Chips, which are dropped during game activities. They are not on-chain assets and therefore cannot be traded. They are mainly used to redeem functional NFTs and the lucky wheel of the Prestige Portal.
Figure 2-9 Workshop Chip and Honor Portal Chip
All four will drop from monsters in dungeons. Skin fragments are mainly used to synthesize refined skin fragments and then make or upgrade skin NFTs in the armory or furnace. Skin fragments are seasonal drops. New skin fragments will be released every season to synthesize the craftable skin NFTs of the season. Workshop chips are mainly used to redeem functional NFTs, and can also be used to purchase the lucky wheel (Bonus Roll) of functional NFTs. Honor portal chips are mainly used to redeem the lucky wheel of the Honor portal. Skin waste in most cases needs to be obtained by destroying skin NFTs, mainly used to redeem workshop chips and Honor portal chips.
2.4.5NFT
There are two types of NFTs in the game, one is the skin NFT we mentioned in the equipment section, and the other is the functional NFT. The difference between the two is that skin NFTs are products, while functional NFTs are production tools. The former can enhance the user's gaming experience and highlight the player's status by improving the sound and picture performance of in-game props such as armor and weapons, and players who own skin NFTs will also have the qualifications to enter exclusive scenes or glory portals and experience exclusive content. At the same time, in order to ensure the balance of the game, skin NFTs will not affect the original game values of in-game props. The latter is mainly used to produce skin NFTs and BIGTIME tokens to maintain the economic cycle in the game.
Skin NFTs are divided into two categories, craftable skin NFTs and non-craftable skin NFTs. The former can be crafted through functional NFTs, while the latter can only be randomly dropped in the game. There are currently three types of functional NFTs: Furnace, Armory, and Time Guardian, all of which can only be used after connecting to the personal metaverse SPACE. In the Furnace and Armory, players need to invest certain resources, such as BIGTIME tokens, time crystals, and skin fragments to complete the production and upgrade of skin NFTs. Among them, 3 low-rarity craftable skin NFTs will be able to be exchanged for higher-level craftable skin NFTs, which will become an important part of the season competition in the future.
The Time Guardian is the most complex functional NFT in the game. It will be used to produce BIGTIME tokens. Players need to first invest time crystals to create a time hourglass, and then equip the time hourglass and use the time crystals to charge it before they can generate BIGTIME tokens. The time hourglass is a consumable resource. When the time hourglass is exhausted, it is necessary to use the time crystals in the time guard to recharge it again to continue to generate BIGTIME tokens.
Players can choose to use the Lucky Wheel for every activity in functional NFTs, including refining, making and upgrading skin NFTs. The Lucky Wheel is obtained by exchanging for workshop chips, which can give additional bonuses to the action in the form of a lottery. The level of the functional NFT determines the available slots of the Lucky Wheel, and one action can stack multiple different Lucky Wheel bonus effects. Players can obtain functional NFT experience points for all activities in functional NFTs, and pay time crystals to upgrade functional NFTs when the experience points reach the upgrade standard. After upgrading, functional NFTs will have higher production efficiency, as well as additional Lucky Wheel slots and bonus effects.
In addition to the functions mentioned above, functional NFTs also have different types. Different types of functional NFTs have different color classifications and special bonus types. In addition, the type of functional NFT is also linked to its rarity. The top three functional NFTs in rarity will all be Triumph types.
There are currently 10 types of furnaces:
Furnace Type
color
Applicable special bonus type
Quickness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
Two-handed Axe
Rapidness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
Two-handed sword
Swiftness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
Staff + Dual Wielding
Decisiveness
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
Two-handed hammer
Diligence
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
One-handed weapons
Acuity
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
Two-handed axe + two-handed sword
Chance
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Staff
Luck
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Dual Wielding
Fortune
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Two-handed hammer + one-handed weapon
Triumph
Rainbow (all three bonuses)
All weapons
Figure 2-10 Maximum supply of furnaces of different types and rarities
The armory currently has 10 types:
Furnace Type
color
Applicable special bonus type
Quickness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
Gloves
Rapidness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
helmet
Swiftness
Red (increases crafting and refining speed)
Leggings + Shield
Decisiveness
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
Shoulder pads
Diligence
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
Breastplate
Acuity
Blue (reduces BIGTIME consumption during crafting and refining)
Gloves + Helmet
Chance
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Leggings
Luck
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Shield
Fortune
Green (extra lucky wheel slot)
Shoulder pads + chest armor
Triumph
Rainbow (all three bonuses)
All armor
Figure 2-11 Maximum supply of different types and rarities of armory
Unlike the Forge and the Armory, there are currently only 4 types of Time Wards:
Time Guard Type
color
Applicable special bonus type
Brilliance
Red/Blue
Recharge time hourglass
Prosperity
Blue/Green
Making time hourglass
Expedience
Green/Red
Recharge + create time hourglass (50%)
Ascendancy
rainbow
Charge + create time hourglass (100%)
Figure 2-12 Maximum supply of time guards of different types and rarities
In addition to the individual bonuses of each functional NFT, players can also obtain set bonuses based on various types of functional NFTs in SPACE. The rewards of set bonuses are similar to individual bonuses and can be stacked. Red increases the speed of production and refining, blue reduces the BIGTIME consumption during production and refining, and green adds additional lucky wheel slots.
Finally, the official emphasized that all functional NFTs will have a fixed and unchangeable issuance quantity, but in the future, new skin-type NFTs will be launched on a season-by-season basis. The maximum issuance quantity of skin-type NFTs in a single season will be determined at the beginning of the season.
2.4.6SPACE
SPACE is an important game content that distinguishes paying players from free players. It is similar to the concept of "land" in other metaverses. In the game, players can summon their own metaverse portal on the map by clicking a specific button and then enter it. Both free players and paying players can have their own personal metaverse in the game, but only players with SPACE can perform some special operations in the expanded space of SPACE.
Figure 2-13 Personal SPACE portal
SPACE currently has four functions:
1) Expand your personal metaverse. The design of SPACE is like building blocks. Each SPACE has one entrance and multiple exits. Players need to create their own metaverse through the entrance first, and then connect to other SPACEs or functional NFTs (Armory, Furnace, and Time Guardian) through the exit. SPACEs of different sizes have different numbers of exits.
Figure 2-14 Inside SPACE
2) Use functional NFTs. The Armory, Forge, and Time Guard are only usable when connected via SPACE.
3) Place skin NFTs. Players can display skin NFTs obtained during the game in their personal metaverse, or make some personalized modifications.
4) Get a broken hourglass. The broken hourglass can be used to produce the game token BIGTIME at one time.
5) Integrated social functions. Players will be able to invite other players to visit their personal metaverse and interact with them.
SPACE can only be obtained by purchasing. And there is a fixed maximum circulation of SPACE of different sizes and rarities:
Figure 2-15 Maximum issuance of SPACE of different rarities and sizes
The size of SPACE will affect the number of SPACE exports, that is, the number of components that SPACE can be connected to.
Except for the Exalted SPACE, there are three sizes: small, medium and large, with 2, 3 and 5 exits respectively. The Exalted SPACE has one more exit than the other SPACEs.
In addition to affecting the number of SPACE exports, rarity will also limit the functional NFTs connected to SPACE. High-rarity functional NFTs can only be connected and used on high-rarity SPACE. At the same time, the rarity of SPACE will affect the rarity and drop rate of the Broken Time Hourglass. The size of SPACE will affect the drop number of the Broken Time Hourglass, thereby affecting the supply of BIGTIME tokens.
In the future, Big Time will also enable the SPACE rental system to allow more players to experience the richer game content provided by SPACE.
2.4.7 Game Economic Mechanism
The game economic mechanism built by Big Time revolves around the BIGTIME token.
BIGTIME tokens have the following main functions:
1) Used to refine skin fragments in furnaces and armories or to craft and upgrade skin NFTs.
2) Pay the entrance fee to the Glory Portal.
The number of BIGTIME tokens is 5,000,000,000. In theory, they will be generated entirely within the game through gaming behavior, rather than entering the game through issuance, and there will be no token sales to investors.
There are three specific ways to obtain it:
1) Cracked Hourglasses are randomly dropped through the personal metaverse SPACE. As a one-time prop, you can equip it to produce BIGTIME tokens. Cracked Hourglasses are not on the chain, just like time crystals. They are bound to the player account and cannot be traded.
2) Spend time crystals in the functional NFT Time Guardian to create and equip Hourglasses, and then continue to spend time crystals to charge the Hourglasses to produce BIGTIME tokens.
3) Obtain the BIGTIME tokens that have been produced through market purchase or team airdrop.
The mechanism of BIGTIME generation determines that the supply of BIGTIME will be related to the allocation of in-game resources most of the time, which ensures that the economic model of the entire game has both certain stability and flexibility. Because as a BIGTIME producer in the game, the direct resources it needs to invest are mainly time hourglass and time crystal. The price of time crystal is denominated in US dollars and is fixed, and the price of time hourglass fluctuates with market supply and demand. The former ensures that if the output of BIGTIME is lower than the cost, the producer will reduce the supply of tokens, thereby stabilizing the game economy. The latter ensures that the output of BIGTIME will have a certain correlation with the market activity, that is, the actual needs of players, thereby increasing the flexibility of the game economy.
In addition to BIGTIME tokens, assets that can be traded on Open Loot also include skin fragments, SPACE NFTs, decorative NFTs and functional NFTs, so there are two other ways to participate in the complete economic cycle of the game in Big Time.
1) Kill monsters and clear dungeons to obtain skin fragments and trade them in the market.
2) Kill monsters and clear dungeons to obtain non-craftable skin-type NFTs, and then trade them on the market.
The above are two ways for free players to participate in the game's economic cycle. Since the explosion rate of NFTs and rare resources in ordinary copies is low, free players need to invest a lot of time and energy, and trading skin fragments will be a behavior that only a few free players can actually participate in the complete economic cycle of the game. However, since on-chain assets basically do not affect the balance of the game, free players can still experience most of the fun of the game without involving on-chain assets.
For paying players, how to participate in the game's economic cycle is more strategic. What proportion should be invested in resources such as time crystals, BIGTIME tokens, and skin fragments, and using SPACE and functional NFTs to produce more skin NFTs and BIGTIME tokens for trading will become a compulsory course for every paying player. At the same time, the existence of mechanisms such as the Glory Portal can further enrich the game experience of paying players and increase their participation in the game.
In general, Big Time's game economic mechanism is very cleverly designed, which can ensure that the economic cycle in the game has a certain degree of flexibility on a stable basis, and can also ensure that both free players and paying players can have a richer gaming experience. However, such an economic mechanism also places high demands on the player's strategy for allocating resources in the game. Players need to invest a certain amount of resources to explore their own appropriate position in the game.
2.4.8 Airdrop
Big Time officials will airdrop the game's NFTs to early buyers and early participants to thank them for their support.
There are two types of airdrops. One is the mysterious gift box airdrop, with a total of 153,000. Each gift box contains a functional NFT, with different explosion rates according to the rarity. The more NFTs a user has in their account, the higher the rarity, the higher the corresponding asset value, or the more game tasks and dungeons they complete, the higher the value of the airdrop they can get.
The other is the airdrop of BIGTIME tokens. According to Big Time's current airdrop plan, the total airdrop of tokens will reach 2.6% of the total, which is 130,000,000 BIGTIME. In the preseason, the official will airdrop 97,500,000 BIGTIME tokens and use the remaining tokens for other airdrops and marketing plans. The above airdrops will be carried out at the end of the first three months after the start of the preseason. The airdrop amount will be based on the real-time ranking of points in each user account. The points in the user account will be calculated based on the following behaviors:
1) In-game upgrades. The higher the level a player reaches, the higher the points reward will be.
2) Use utility NFTs. Points can be earned by refining cosmetic fragments, making cosmetics, making hourglasses, charging hourglasses, and dismantling broken hourglasses.
3) Participate in the Glory Portal.
4) Invite friends. The inviting player will receive 50% of the invited player's points as a reward.
Simply put, the more players participate in Big Time and the more collectibles they have, the higher the probability of receiving airdrops and the richer the prizes they will receive. However, the Big Time team may fine-tune the details of the specific airdrop plan in the future.
2.4.9 Season Competition and Rewards
After the public beta, Big Time will update the major version in a 90-day season. Each major version update will include the following:
1) A new fixed number of skin-type NFTs, including craftable and non-craftable skin-type NFTs.
2) New season skin fragments and refined skin fragments.
3) New special events and game content.
In addition, each season will hold a skin NFT synthesis competition, also known as the Unique Challenge. In each season, only one skin NFT of Unique rarity will appear. The player who first creates a unique skin NFT will win the season competition. According to Big Time's skin rarity mechanism, synthesizing a skin of Unique rarity will consume 19,683 ordinary Future rarity skins. Big Time may launch more activities to encourage players or guilds to participate in this competition.
2.4.10 Game experience
• Game configuration
Since Big Time is designed to compete with traditional 3A masterpieces, it has certain requirements on hardware configuration. The current minimum system configuration requirements are as follows:
Graphics card: GeForce GTX 1060 / Radeon Rx 580 or higher
Memory: 8GB RAM
API interface: DirectX 11 or higher
Processor: Intel core i5 4430/ AMD FX 6300
Storage: 23GB
Note: The above specifications may be adjusted based on the development of subsequent games.
Although Big Time cannot be compared with the 3A games of traditional big companies at present, from the perspective of the blockchain game track alone, Big Time is far superior to the crudely made blockchain games on the market in terms of game graphics, gameplay, sound effects, systems, etc., and can reach the level of a qualified independent game in the traditional game field.
However, since Big Time has certain requirements for configuration and certain operations, it will inevitably limit the participation of some people for such games that require a lot of time and energy. Therefore, the key lies in whether the game can successfully go viral, that is, whether the game is outstanding, whether the built-in economic incentives and other factors can attract blockchain game players and players in traditional fields to enter.
• Gaming experience
In terms of the overall game testing results, the v0.27 version of Big Time already has the prototype of an MMORPG game.
First of all, the gameplay mechanism of the game has been established, but all systems have not yet been fully implemented in the current internal test. For example, tokens, guilds, etc., will appear in subsequent updates. At present, the dungeons and main story challenges that can be experienced smoothly have basically reached the standard of normal games.
Secondly, in terms of the game's audio and video performance, it is basically above the passing line, and the picture performance is slightly better than expected, but the overall color tone is relatively monotonous and the elements are relatively scarce, which will make you feel tired after playing the game for a long time.
Looking at the overall process of the game, it will take players more than 30 hours to experience all the elements of the current version. The size of the game itself is medium, but more plot lines and copies still need to be provided in future updates of the game.
•payment system
If players want to purchase NFT assets on Big Time, they only need to log in with a Google account on the Big Time official page, bind the corresponding mobile phone number or Google Authenticator, and finally bind a bank account or add USDC to make the purchase. Of course, for users who are experienced in on-chain transfers, they can also create a new encrypted wallet and then trade.
Note: Currently Big Time Marketplace only supports USDC payments, and it is expected that ETH will be used for payment in the future.
Big Time's NFT purchase process is relatively convenient in operation. Players do not need to learn how to use digital wallets. They only need to log in to their Google account and bind their bank account to make purchases, which greatly reduces the entry threshold for users. It should be noted that on the Big Time NFT trading market Open Loot, you need to complete the corresponding KYC certification before making large deposits (more than US$2,000 within 24 hours) in your account or any withdrawal operations, and currently one KYC certification can only be bound to one account.
2.5 Technology
2.5.1 Procedural Content Generation
Big Time is built on Ethereum and uses Procedural Content Generation to scale off-chain.
Programmatic content generation is a method that requires inputting feature parameters and basic materials, and then using a series of customized (or somewhat random) algorithms to generate game content in large quantities in real time or offline.
As game manufacturers are becoming bigger and bigger, the trend of industrialization is becoming more and more obvious. In recent years, the use of PCG has become the mainstream of current game developers. In game production, PCG technology has the following advantages:
1) It can greatly increase the production speed of game assets, reduce costs, and reduce the error rate. This is very important for optimizing the control of outsourcing large-scale game projects.
2) PCG generates a huge amount of resources, which can enable a lot of innovation in gameplay and continuously generate content randomly and automatically, which can stimulate the imagination of game designers.
3) Unlimited new content can be generated dynamically in real time within limited hard disk space, saving hard disk space and allowing players to repeatedly play new automatically generated levels. Offline calculations can also be performed to optimize game performance, giving players a wide space to explore.
Many of the currently popular traditional PC games, such as "EVE", "Horizon: Zero Dawn", "Red Dead Redemption", "FarCry", "GTA", "Minecraft" and many other games, are built using PCG's underlying technology.
Big Time builds a grand game world for players through PCG technology, bringing more fun and playability to players and increasing the exploration cycle of the game.
2.5.2 Vault Technology
One of the most groundbreaking components integrated into Big Time is its patented Vault technology.
According to the team, Vault technology can help users reduce the management of external wallets, self-custody assets and avoid expensive on-chain transactions. Players can enjoy benefits such as instant transaction settlement without setting up and managing their own crypto wallets or spending network fees. The way to achieve this goal is mainly because the team stores Big Time's game items in its off-chain Vault custody system.
To put it simply, Big Time uses Vault technology to create a private database.
Big Time stores the records of created or purchased items in its own database through Vault. Technically, Big Time does not automatically mint NFTs on the blockchain, where NFTs and regular items can coexist, keeping transaction costs low. On the other hand, players can transfer assets from the off-chain to the on-chain at any point in time.
In addition, Big Time CEO Ari Meilich also pointed out that if sufficient demand for Big Time becomes a reality, the studio will design new ways for players to extract their assets and transfer them to any desired blockchain, which may mean that Big Time's SPACE in-game NFT is likely to become a cross-chain asset in the near future.
Summarize:
From the team's perspective, the Big Time team has a solid background in the gaming and crypto fields, and the core members have experience in developing large-scale games or working in large gaming companies. However, compared with the first research report in May 2022, there have been some changes in the core team members of Big Time. The departure of the product director and the game economic model design director may have had a certain impact on the development and delivery of the game. Subsequent work will be taken over by other experts who are deeply involved in the gaming industry. In addition, since Big Time Studios is a game studio that works completely remotely worldwide, it will also have a certain impact on the on-time delivery of the game.
In terms of funding, Big Time is estimated to have raised more than US$90 million through primary market financing and NFT sales, which is enough to support the development of a 3A game. After the game is launched in the future, the project team can continue to operate sustainably through the sale of game resources.
From the perspective of the core game mechanism, Big Time basically borrows the role and growth design of mature MMORPGs, but its free job transfer system will greatly enrich the player's gaming experience. However, this also puts forward requirements for the game team to make balance adjustments, because the low job transfer threshold means that if a certain profession has particularly outstanding abilities, it will squeeze the living space of other professions, thus affecting the playability of the game.
From the perspective of the game's economic mechanism, Big Time's design is very clever, which can ensure that the economic cycle in the game has a certain degree of flexibility on a stable basis, and can also ensure that both free players and paying players can have a richer gaming experience. However, such an economic mechanism also places high demands on the player's strategy for allocating resources in the game. Players need to invest a certain amount of resources to explore their own appropriate position in the game.
Judging from the actual gaming experience, the game already has a certain degree of playability, but more iterations will be needed in the future to improve the game’s graphics and gameplay mechanisms.
Judging from the game threshold, the game's hardware requirements do not seem to be high at present, but players need to meet certain requirements before they can participate in the preseason.
3. Development
3.1 History
Table 3-1 Big Time Events
2021.05.11
Big Time officially introduced the game demo on its blog for the first time
2021.05.12
Big Time Studios Completes $21 Million in Funding
2021.07.22
Big Time Launches First NFT Drop on Binance NFT Marketplace
2021.08.13
Big Time Launches Second Round of Binance NFT Marketplace Sales
2021.11.10
Big Time announced the initial version of the game token economic model.
2021.11.11
Big Time announced that it has reached cooperation with game guilds such as Yield Guild Games, Merit Circle, and Avocado Guild, which will participate in Big Time’s latest product SPACE
2021.12.02
Decentralized startup platform Polkastarter has reached a partnership with blockchain gaming company Big Time. The cooperation includes allowing the Polkastarter Gaming Guild to participate in early beta testing of Big Time games; obtaining SPACE NFTs; launching scholarships for the Polkastarter Gaming Guild; educating trainers on how to play Big Time games; working together and other activities involving both communities
2021.12.17
Big Time announced a partnership with Circle, the issuer of the stablecoin USDC, to integrate Circle’s payment solutions.
2021.12.21
Big Time Launches SPACE NFT Sales
2022.02.17
Big Time Launches Mystery Box Sale on Binance NFT Marketplace
2022.03.24
Big Time Launches Exalted SPACE NFT Sales Event
2022.04.14
Big Time announces the game launch, Gold Pass holders can experience it first
2022.05.06
Big Time updated version 0.1, added new game meta, added new professional skills, updated the game interface UI, adjusted the game balance, fixed bugs and made some other changes.
2022.05.12
Big Time announced that the mystery box is now available for first-hand experience.
2022.05.16
Big Time updated to version 0.12, which updated the game UI, adjusted the game balance, fixed bugs and made some other changes.
2022.06.06
Big Time updated to version 0.13, adding new game elements, updating the game interface UI, adjusting the game balance, fixing bugs and making some other changes.
2022.07.20
Big Time has been updated to version 0.2, which adds new mission types, updates the game UI, adjusts the game balance, fixes bugs and makes some other changes.
2022.07.28
Big Time announced the launch of blockchain gaming infrastructure Open Loot.
2022.11.11
Big Time update version 0.23 adds new boss battles, adds new class skills, updates the game UI, adjusts the game balance, fixes bugs and makes some other changes.
2022.11.26
Big Time released parts of the game's economic model.
2022.12.17
Big Time updated to version 0.24, which launched the personal metaverse, weapon slots and public activity systems, added new mission types, added new professional skills, updated the UI of the game interface, adjusted the balance of the game, fixed bugs and made some other changes.
2022.12.19
Big Time won the GAM3 Game of the Year Award hosted by Polkastarter Gaming.
2022.12.23
Big Time has released a new round of NFT blind boxes with a limited edition of 4,500.
2023.01.20
Big Time announced that starting from February, it will provide airdrops to players every month based on their account points.
2023.01.21
Big Time released a New Year NFT blind box limited to 7,388 pieces.
2023.02.25
Big Time update version 0.25 adds a new dungeon scene, adds daily and weekly bounty missions, updates the game interface UI, adjusts the game balance, fixes bugs and makes some other changes.
2023.05.06
Big Time updated version 0.26, added new challenge maps, added new career skills and optional careers, updated the game interface UI, adjusted the game balance, fixed bugs and made some other changes.
2023.08.29
Big Time updated version 0.27, added new mission chapters, added new professional skills, updated the game interface UI, adjusted the game balance, fixed bugs and made some other changes.
3.2 Current situation
Currently, Big Time is still in the internal testing stage. As of September 1, 2023, the game has been in internal testing for more than a year. It has been updated to version 0.27 and has deleted files for testing of several major versions. However, due to limited testing qualifications, the actual number of online players in the game is currently small, and most servers are relatively idle.
3.2.1 Social Media Scale
Table 3-2 Big Time social media data
Discord
Twitch
Youtube
Followers
246,882 followers
363,823 members
21,000 followers
5,376 fans
13,000 followers
12.9K subscribers
Comments
More likes and comments
25,905 members online
Average number of likes and comments
Average number of likes and comments
There are more than 2,000 anchors.
The average number of viewers is around one thousand.
As of October 9, 2023, Big Time has a large number of fans on the social platform and a lot of interactions. The community communicates frequently, and most of the content revolves around the game mechanism. The game live broadcast data is good. A total of more than 2,000 anchors have broadcast Big Time games, and the live broadcast time has exceeded 40,000 hours. It has now surpassed Axie Infinity to become the Web3 game with the most anchors. At the same time, the total viewing time of the game has exceeded 480,000 hours. It is estimated that the core fans of the game are about 1,000 at this stage, and it is likely to continue to increase in the future.
3.3 Future
Figure 3-1 Big Time Roadmap
Big Time is still in the beta stage. The development focus of the next few versions of the game will also be on the development of BIGTIME tokens and the implementation of functional NFTs. In the future, Big Time will also update more main storylines to improve the game experience. On October 10, 2023, Big Time plans to start the preseason version, and it is expected that a large number of new players will enter the game.
Summarize:
From the perspective of project development, the current operation and development pace of the game is slower than expected, but the game already has a group of highly sticky core players. After subsequent versions are opened with zero threshold, it is likely that more players will enter.
4. Economic Model
Big Time is about to launch the in-game token $BIGTIME. We have put the BIGTIME token and the game economic mechanism into the product (Chapter 2) and will not go into details here.
5. Track
5.1 Track Status
After entering 2023, the performance of the overall blockchain game market can only be considered unsatisfactory for those who have high hopes for this track. However, compared with the sluggishness of the entire blockchain market, the current blockchain game market is still considered to be performing well and still has great development potential in the future.
Figure 5-1 Unique Active Wallet (UAW) and Transaction Amount in the Blockchain Game Track
Figure 5-2 Number of unique users in the blockchain game track
According to data from DappRader and Footprint, as of September 25, 2023, the number of unique active wallets (UAW) in the blockchain game track has basically remained around 800,000 in the past year. Although it has dropped by more than 30% compared to the average daily number of about 1.2 million in Big Time's first research report, there has been no obvious loss of core players in blockchain games in general. Once the overall market picks up, the blockchain game market will have a basis for recovery.
Figure 5-3 Financing volume and amount of blockchain game industry
Figure 5-4 Number of active blockchain games
Although there has been a significant decline in the amount of financing on the chain game track over the past year or so, we can also find that the number of active chain games has not declined significantly, and is even rising slowly, which means that the entire track is currently It still maintains growth and development, and still has a certain degree of resilience in the bear market.
Overall, whether from the game or player data, the blockchain game track has performed well in the current bear market environment.
5.2 Track Future
After the first wave of blockchain games led by StepN and Axie Infinity ended, the current blockchain game track fell into a rather contradictory environment. On the one hand, the market has confirmed the feasibility of the entire blockchain game track, but on the other hand, the market is waiting for the emergence of the next paradigm to guide the track to the next stage.
Currently, there are many games exploring various segments of blockchain games. There are many ways to classify blockchain games. For example, according to asset categories, they can be divided into full-chain games and partial core asset on-chain games. According to the operation mode, they can be divided into Web2.5 games and Web3 games. According to the gameplay mechanism, they can be divided into MOBA, FPS, MMORPG, etc.
At present, among the mainstream categories, we believe that Web2.5 games with some core assets on the chain have great development potential. The reasons are as follows:
1) The limited performance and reliability of the chain means that the full-chain game cannot currently meet the interaction needs of most players in the game. At the same time, only putting core assets on the chain can also reduce the operating costs of game operators.
2) Since most games have high requirements for project operations and product iterations, compared to pure Web3 games, Web2.5 games, that is, Web3 games operated in the form of Web2, can strike a balance between the efficiency and cost of game operations, and can ensure that players have a basic gaming experience.
3) After the first wave of blockchain games, the blockchain game track has developed significantly, the investment in game development has increased significantly, and players' expectations for the next blockchain game paradigm have also increased significantly. Therefore, it is difficult for the old blockchain games that are close to small games or web games in terms of mechanism and graphics to achieve unexpected success. Players and the market expect a blockchain game masterpiece that can truly rival mainstream Web2 games.
Based on the above points, we are relatively optimistic about games like Big Time that are rooted in Web2 games and have sufficient development capabilities and development experience. In addition, MMORPG as a game type often has a more stable user base and longer game life than other types of games. Although this means that higher requirements will be placed on the project's operations, it also means that it has greater development potential.
Summarize
From the perspective of the track, since entering the bear market, although the number of players and transaction volume on the chain game track has declined to a certain extent, the core group of chain game players still maintains a high stickiness, and the overall development progress of the track It has not been significantly affected, and a large number of new games are still being developed and operated. Once the overall macro environment picks up, the chain gaming track itself still has room for imagination. At the same time, based on the different types and development stages of the blockchain game track, we believe that games with some core assets like Big Time that are put on the blockchain, are rooted in Web2 games, and have sufficient development capabilities and operational experience will have greater development in the future. potential.
6. Risks
1) Game economic model
Big Time tokens can only be obtained through normal game behavior in the game, which often requires players to have a high level of game participation.
2) Team Risk
The game rules are customized by the team, and the team may change/adjust the game rules at any time based on the current status of the game, which may cause damage to the interests of the players.
3) Game Bug Risk
There are still a lot of game bugs in the current version of the game, some of which may be malicious bugs that affect game assets. Players need to be cautious and provide feedback to the project party in time.
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