It might seem disingenuous to use the term “OG” in the context of Web3 gaming, a sector that’s only really existed since the late 2010s. Given how many projects have come and gone in that period, though, any game still motoring after several years deserves the appellation.
Projects that have endured and prospered through multiple market cycles, not to mention ever-changing crypto gaming narratives (play-to-earn, play-and-earn, play-to-own, etc), are clearly doing something right. And Alien Worlds is one of the best examples.
In his most recent update, Jon Jordan – who has been writing and talking about games since 1999 (before bitcoin, never mind blockchain games) – cited Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity as the most popular Web3 games. Indeed, Alien Worlds, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, has consistently surpassed 100,000 daily users since February.
It’s worth asking why the Alien Worlds Metaverse has been able to stay relevant while others have imploded, been abandoned by developers and/or players, or generally just failed to build on early hype. The simple answer is that it has kept iterating on its original premise: evolving, innovating and focusing on delivering a superior experience to players.
Here are some key areas where that evolution is evident.
Governance
When Alien Worlds launched in 2020, decentralization was a stated objective yet no in-game, player-controlled DAOs existed. That all changed two years later with the introduction of Planetary Syndicates.
Syndicates empowered players to govern the planets to which they were allied, participate in weekly elections and govern their own Trilium budgets. Competition between Naron, Neri, Magor, Veles, Eyeke, Kavian intensified overnight as proposals about how to distribute TLM started to roll in.
The arrival of Planetary Syndicates was a watershed moment for Web3 gaming, giving players a meaningful stake in the metaverse. Since then, thousands of proposals have been made, hundreds of Planetary Custodians elected, and a great many endeavors funded, from tournaments and mini-games to NFT drops and even IRL meetups.
The decentralized governance structure has also evolved: last year saw the launch of a new set of parallel DAOs and a Worker Proposal System geared towards fostering more complex, large-scale projects.
Then, in May, it was announced that Union DAOs would gain the ability to redirect up to 10% of their planet’s mining rewards to a destination account of their choice, giving them the power to support initiatives beyond mining.
Between Syndicates and Union DAOs, Alien Worlds is giving Explorers an opportunity to jump into the driver’s seat.
Games
Initially, Alien Worlds was basically the mining game: players would get their standard tools and hit the coalface, with the goal of extracting Trilium from the planets and gradually levelling up their NFTs.
If the community had rested on its laurels and focused solely on mining, Alien Worlds would have struggled to retain players’ interest. But the project didn’t stand still: thanks to the development and scaling going on in the background, and the subsequent formation of the Syndicates, mining became the central – but not the only – game.
Today, there is a preponderance of diverse, community-driven games that incorporate Alien Worlds NFTs and lore, from Milky Way Miner, Battlefleet Armageddon and Mercenary Battlegrounds to Outlaw Troopers, Meta Battler, and AlienHelpers. While mining is browser-based, these titles are live on major platforms like App Store, Google Play, and STEAM. There’s also a digital comic, Starblind.
As the metaverse expands, it is becoming more attractive to creators and developers: expect more projects to explore the ecosystem, leverage the lore and bring fresh utility to Alien Worlds NFTs with their own games (or comics or graphic novels) in the months and years ahead.
User Experience
Any game lives or dies by the strength of its user experience. You could have the best story and the coolest characters but if the game is glitchy, it’s a goner.
Over time, strides have been made to improve players’ perceptions of Alien Worlds, and a raft of performance upgrades have delivered many appreciable benefits to gameplay, chief among them faster load times.
With the recent GraphQL integration, for example, performance has become 25x more efficient with updates to areas such as Mining, Lore and Syndicates. Efforts to make the gameplay even smoother will continue.
Lore
Sci-fi storytelling has always been central to Alien Worlds. But if players were going to govern this world, it made sense to give them a stake in creating and maintaining it. Hence the arrival of tokenized lore last year.
With bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson having laid the foundations and revamped its OG mythology, the community has since engaged enthusiastically by both submitting their own lore proposals and voting on those written by others. Many have subsequently received rewards for their story contributions.
Want to contribute to community-driven storytelling? Familiarize yourself with the Tokenized Lore book, read the official lore, send any queries you have to the Lynx LLM, and start shaping the metaverse.
Funding
The fact that Union DAOs can now redirect mining rewards to fund games is a great thing. But you can’t talk about funding in Alien Worlds without mentioning Galactic Hubs, the community-driven grant program launched in 2022.
In the three years since it was launched, GHubs has proven to be a major driver of growth and innovation, offering support to a variety of talented developers and helping them navigate the challenges of building on blockchain rails.
As well as distributing grants, Galactic Hubs provides tailored support including for projects organising tournaments and challenges; it can also assist with endeavors like community building and marketing.
Building Together
Thanks to continuous evolution in the five departments above, Alien Worlds is bigger and better today than it was when it began. The buidl mindset of the community deserves much of the kudos, and Explorers aren’t ready to put down their shovels anytime soon. Onwards!