Web3War is Shaking up Crypto Gaming With ‘Skill-to-Earn’ Rewards

First-person shooter Web3War is a game with a mission: to overhaul the crypto gaming landscape.

The problem, Valentin Cobelea, co-founder of Web3War developer Roll1ng Thund3rz told Decrypt, is that to date, Web3 games just haven’t been fun.

That’s down to misaligned incentives baked into their reward system, he explained. The first generation of play-to-earn Web3 games require players to “consume time, click like crazy, change the mouse or click the keyboard, and you earn things.” That means gamers just “burn time” rather than being rewarded for an enjoyable experience, he said. “Volume doesn't mean quality.”

Instead, Web3War employs a novel “skill-to-earn” model, in which gamers are rewarded based on how well they play the game rather than how long they play it for. “If you are good, or great, or awesome, or professional level at being a gamer, you're going to earn more based on your skill,” Cobelea said. Players can win rewards by playing ranked matches, progressing through the game’s seasons, its profile progression system, “even in the weapon progression system,” he explained.

The game itself is a multiplayer, free-to-play FPS based around seasonal content, with players taking part in missions and challenges to earn cosmetic NFT skins and Web3War’s in-game currency, FPS.

Developed by a team that’s worked on AAA titles for the likes of Activision, Web3War has already hit several milestones—it has already racked up over 61,000 players to date, with over 25,000 monthly users and 1,400 daily users. Touting “close collaboration” with Google and Microsoft, Web3War has also received endorsements from elite esports teams including Mad Lions, RRQ Esports and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

The game itself is “a combination of the best features that one can find in Call of Duty, Counter-Strike and Battlefield,” Cobelea said. The weapon progression system is inspired by Battlefield, (“We consider it as the most well done and well implemented for each of the guns”) while the gameplay harks back to the “previous age” of Call of Duty and the squad base mechanics and game modes recall Counter-Strike. Of course, the game isn’t simply mimicking what’s gone before, Cobelea added. “If we just mimic what these games are doing without adding our flavor, of course, we’re gonna fail,” he said.

The game’s secret sauce is, of course, its NFT rewards. These reward tokens are created on the Zilliqa blockchain, enabling Web3War to seamlessly reward players for their ability—something that Zilliqa CEO Matt Dyer explained is vital if Web3 gaming is to break out of its niche. “Web3 is still far too difficult to actually participate unless you've got real motivation and purpose around why you're going to do it,” he said, explaining that Roll1ng Thund3rz and Zilliqa’s approach is “very much about how do we look to make gaming as accessible to gamers rather than coming at it from a crypto degenerate farming perspective.”

The biggest challenge, Dyer said, was, “How do you allow people to onboard in a way that they're familiar?” To that end, Roll1ng Thund3rz created the FUS1ON gaming hub, which includes an integrated Zilliqa wallet. Users only need to enter an email and password, and “instantly your account is created,” said Cobelea. “And here comes the cool thing: you do not need to know anything about Web3 and crypto, because a wallet on the Zilliqa blockchain is instantly assigned to your account.”

Armed with a Zilliqa wallet, users can earn rewards in FPS and NFTs, and will ultimately be able to migrate their Web3War NFT skins to other games.

“We've come at it from a game-first perspective,” said Dyer. “The blockchain is used for a small component of the experience.” That approach, he said, means Zilliqa can focus on “where the blockchain component adds value,” such as the ability to move NFTs cross-game and thus transfer value. “It’s about being able to create a token economy that rewards players for their craft,” he added.

A new Roll1ng Thund3rz title that will allow players to use Web3War skins is coming “mid next year,” Cobelea said, while Web3War itself will roll out version 3.2 of the game, with ranked matches and season passes, early in 2024.

After that, said Cobelea, “Why would you go back to playing Call of Duty—just to earn more pixels? I don't see a reason for needing that.”

Web3War version 2.3 is available to download and play at w3w.game. Follow Web3War on Twitter, Twitch and Discord, for details on Web3War’s upcoming FPS token launch.