War Riders, a new crypto virtual game à la Mad Max, will be running a pre-order campaign for its war vehicles in collaboration with blockchain-based assets and crypto-collectibles marketplace OpenSea.
Developed by Cartified, a VC-backed blockchain startup headquartered in Washington DC, War Riders is a virtual game that lets players customize their war vehicles which may be used to mine while attacking other users for the in-game currency, Benzene (BZN). Players can mine for BZN by driving through waypoints or shamelessly raiding other players.
BZN will not be offered for sale. Instead, all vehicles will come with a tank filled to the top with BZN. All additional BZN will be discoverable in the Wasteland.
Players will be able to use BZN to buy weapons, and upgrade garages, as well as exchange these for cryptocurrencies such as ether, bitcoin, and more.
The game is scheduled to be released in beta later this year with a full release scheduled for early 2019.
OpenSea users will have exclusive access to War Riders’ Deadly Car Factory smart contract, which will allow them to pre-order vehicles through the popular crypto-collectibles peer-to-peer marketplace.
“Together with OpenSea we’ve developed an interesting technology that allows us to seamlessly integrate two websites and connect them to the same smart contract system,” said Vlad Kartashov, CEO of War Riders.
“We’ve always believed in the native integration, and we think the marketplaces could be a great platform to organize the initial sale of in-game items.”
The pre-order campaign for war vehicles will run simultaneously on both War Riders and OpenSea websites, and the Ethereum blockchain. It will start on August 20 and is scheduled to last for two months, starting in a private mode with mandatory prior registration.
When buying a vehicle, players won’t know exactly what kind of performance stats they will be getting, as the vehicle pre-ordered will be produced on the fly. Players will only know the type, such as an SUV or a Lamborghini, but won’t know the vehicle’s speed or how much the “BNZ tank” can hold. Performance ranges for each vehicle will eventually be known, but only after delivery will they know exactly how each ride compares to others.
The pre-order contract will set the lower price for every vehicle which will increase by a certain percentage with every vehicle sold.
Only 30,000 premium vehicles, including 1000 special vehicles, will be offered for sale at this time. Premium vehicles will have superior mining and combat capabilities, and they are set to be extremely rare compared to a total supply of all vehicles which is capped at 1,180,000. Premium vehicles will not be offered for sale again after the initial pre-orders take place.
Moving forward, players will be able to freely trade their in-game items on OpenSea and similar crypto-collectible marketplaces.
Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea, said:
“We’re super excited to partner on the launch of the game and support War Riders items on our marketplace. It’s a unique time in the blockchain gaming space as new, high-quality teams are both building compelling new user experiences to onboard the next set of consumers into the ecosystem.”
The crypto-collectible phenomenon was initiated by CryptoKitties, a game introduced in December 2017 by Canadian startup Axiom Zen. CryptoKitties rapidly skyrocketed in popularity with rare kitties going for well over US$100,000. At some point, the virtual game was the largest decentralized application on the Ethereum protocol, accounting for more than 13% of the network’s transactions.
Since then, several variants have emerged including CryptoCelebrities, CryptoPuppies and CryptoPets.