GameFi project brings metaverse to life with free-to-play model and user-generated content

As the traditional gaming industry has grown and people have begun to spend more time online, the digital world and reality are slowly becoming indistinguishable from each other. Unfortunately, while many gamers were already used to participating in multiple virtual worlds, traditional games have left significant gaps in their ability to connect them to their ecosystem in a more cohesive experience. 

This difference quickly opened the world to the metaverse concept. Being more than a game, players are encouraged to do more than participate in exciting gameplay. In fact, with the introduction of the blockchain, the metaverse has grown to include real-world economies, complete with significant earning opportunities, such as the ability to create user-generated content (UGC) that is resellable – abilities unknown to the traditional gaming world.

Although the sheer number of virtual worlds available to users today can be overwhelming, GensoKishi Online is a game from Japan that presents a strong case as a leading metaverse pioneer, with qualifications including their winning the 2012 “Game of the Year Gold Award'' in Taiwan and a community of over 8 million players has joined. Today, the original Gensokishi Online game, Elemental Knights, is still available on iOS, Android apps, Nintendo Switch and Playstation4, and many users are still playing in the in-game metaverse.

To help facilitate the growth of the game, GensoKishi is looking to advisors, including Masaki Kato, the former President of NHN PlayArt Corporation and the person behind some of the most well-known titles available on the market, and Tokuhiko Uwabo, creator of Sega's famous game Phantasy Star.

The team shares that by “incorporating the concept of DeFi into the metaverse space, [the world] will soon realize an economic circle in a fantasy world that has never been experienced before.” 

A reason, in part due to the impact players have on the game's outcome.

Joining the virtual world

To become a part of the GensoKishi virtual world, players take to the ecosystem as a character, each with its own skills and attributes. With a virtual identity, players progress through the metaverse as they compete in different activities, explore an open-world metaverse and spend time with their friends. Items can also be earned in one of the newest UGC features, further ensuring a one-of-a-kind experience.

In practice, any user that has a certain amount of tokens staked will be allowed to incorporate UGC into the game through fashion-forward costumes. Since these items are NFT products, they can be sold on the marketplace for fiat money. Users can also get the right to create their own land, with the possibility to make their own dungeons and monsters and even design what NFT items will be dropped after defeating the monsters.

GensoKishi operates on Polygon (MATIC), better known as an Ethereum (ETH)-based protocol that allows users to issue and manage their own tokens. By leveraging this network, players get the added benefits of high transaction capabilities and low costs. Polygon will also become the basis for additional phases of the GensoKishi GameFi project, including deploying a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to give players additional power over the ecosystem’s management.

Following the release of Gensokishi Online game, Polygon's VP of growth Arjun Krishan Kalsy shares:

“The Gensokishi Online project is a game from Japan that has already been released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. It will be a GameFi version of a product that already has users in the metaverse. We are glad that such a traditional game has entered the crypto industry and deployed on Polygon. Polygon will continue to support GensoKishi in its future success and look forward to seeing many such games deployed on Polygon.”

Public availability and partnership

The team announced the official launch of their website, social media and Discord on Dec. 2.

Gensokishi Online announced their partnership with TrustPad, a decentralized multi-chain fundraising platform. With this partnership, Gensokishi Online will also receive the full support of the DeFi Launchpad Association. The gaming platform plans a second whitelist campaign before their initial DEX offering (IDO) to celebrate the collaboration with Launchpad partners.