Deep Dive #1: Wildcard Alliance
Everything you need to know about Wildcard Alliance by Payton Kaleiwahea
Wildcard Overview
What is Wildcard?
Wildcard is a brand new Web3 video game IP that is currently in development. The first of its kind, it introduces a new genre termed “Collectible Action Battle Arena,” merging aspects from real-time strategy, battle arena action, and collectible card game genres to create something entirely new. The universe of Wildcard is united by the sport of Wildcard, a competition of champions fighting alongside their creature sidekicks in unique arena battlefields, surrounded by live fans and spectators
Their objective is to give tools to the creators and their fans. They asked, “What if a platform were built where players and creators could directly engage with their fans? “ Drawing a lot of inspiration from sports franchises and live events, they want to expand the creator toolset, unlocking new roles such as team ownership, arena management, and possibly running an entire professional league.
What is Wildcard's roadmap?
Short-term
They have an upcoming mint date of April 20th at 12:00 PM EST on Magic Eden’s launchpad: I will post when live.
Price: 44 Matic
The game is being polished by a small cohort of closed/invite-only alpha testers.
They have “found the fun” and are now in the process of tuning and balancing the gameplay, as well as developing and refining the meta and collectible content. They will be hosting streaming events with popular streamers in web3 to give exposure for their first drop.
Long-term
The next stage will be a closed alpha, involving a much larger (but still invite-only) playtest community. Then after that, open alpha tests, followed by public beta, although the exact timeframe for these milestones is still unknown.
The team is most interested in how “tokenomics” can incentivize connection and community.
There is a lot of inspiration drawn from the World Cup and the core feeling people have when watching an event like this. People are excited about being present and fall in love with the sport.
When listening to Paul on his Twitter spaces, he wants the game to change based on the economy, not just inside the game, but outside the game. He described how the game of Fortnite doesn’t change if 1000 people watch a stream and want to change that somehow. Details on how this unravels and how he plans to accomplish this are to be determined. I don’t see this being disclosed in the short term due to being their moat.
What Technology Stack is Wildcard using?
They are building on the Polygon blockchain.
Their game engine is Unreal Engine 5.
Wildcard's Team
Who are the leadership of Wildcard's team? (C-suite)
CEO: Paul Bettner
A talented CEO that has a lot of experience making games. He started his career working on the Age of Empires franchise. On his credits, it says that he was a programmer for the Age of Empires and Halo Wars franchises.
After his time at Microsoft, he ventured out by himself and started a studio called New Toy that created Words With Friends. The studio was sold to Zynga in 2010 and he remained the general manager until 2012.
After he left Zynga he started another gaming company named Playful Studio, which is now creating Wildcard Alliance. Before they started Wildcard they made two titles under the studio, Super Lucky’s Tale, and Creativerse.
Now he has raised a new round of funding to focus on Wildcard Alliance.
Highlight: Created Words With Friends, and Lucky’s Tale and spent many years at Microsoft's Ensemble Games working on Age of Empires and Halo Wars.
References:
Co-founder & Managing Director: Katy Drake Bettner
Katy has served as an advisor for the Sundance Producing Lab and Summit, the Women in Film/Sundance Financing Strategy Intensive, and the Documentary Producers Alliance. She serves on the boards of the Austin Film Society and The 19th* (a non-profit, non-partisan digital new organization), and she is a member of the Women at Sundance Leadership Council. Katy has juried both the New York City and DFW South Asian film festivals.
Her talents have translated to a high level of production value for Wildcard Alliance thus far, with the content on their channels, website, youtube, and externals being premier quality.
References:
VP of Production: Wally Wachi
While at Ensemble Studios, Wally was on the production teams as a production assistant, associate producer, management producer, and production lead for games such as Halo Wars, Age of Empires III, Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs, Age of Mythology, and Comanche 4. He later left Ensemble Studios in 2009 and joined Robot Entertainment for 3 years until he eventually found his home as an Executive Producer at Playful Corp.
He has worked with Paul for over 10 years.
References:
Studio Head: David Kubalak
David is the Studio head at Wildcard Alliance and has a lot of experience as an Art director. He worked at Ensemble with the team from 2000 to 2009. From there, he appeared to have joined Wally at Robot Entertainment and left around the same time to join Playful Corp. He stayed at Playful Corp for two years and left in 2020 to be the Creative Service Director at a gaming company called PeopleFun. PeopleFun was focused on family mobile games.
In January 2022, he joined his past co-workers to pursue Wildcard Alliance.
References:
Who is funding Wildcard?
46 million funded by powerhouses in the Crypto and Gaming Industry.
Paradigm
Paradigm primarily invests in crypto-assets and businesses from the earliest stages of idea formation through to maturity.
Notable projects funded:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/paradigm-b23a
Polygon
Polygon is a platform for Ethereum scaling and infrastructure development.
Notable projects funded:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/polygontechnology
Griffin Gaming Partners
Griffin Gaming Partners is a venture capital firm that focuses on investing across the broad gaming ecosystem.
Notable projects funded:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/griffin-gaming-partners
Wildcard's NFT or Digital Assets
What is Wildcard’s NFT or Digital Asset, and what utility or benefit does Wildcard’s NFT or Digital Asset get you?
Wildcard’s NFT is a game pass to their ecosystem called “Genesis WildPass.” Similar to battle passes in Fortnite and Call of Duty.
Holding a Genesis WildPass will get you the following:
Future allowlists forever.
Holder-only airdrops.
Exclusive private developer access, such as holder-only roundtable discussions, roadmap sneak peeks, etc.
Priority access to playtesting, content creation, collab, and partnership programs.
Early access to ownership opportunities within the Wildcard Leagues Ecosystem. More to come on this!
...and more!
The packs dropped by the pass will be Genesis playable cards used to summon creatures and compete in the web3 mode of the game.
First-generation collectible cards will be unique art. This initial drop of cards will include the 12 summons from the two released factions. The order of rarity is Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary, and Wild. Each card will have cosmetic differences, and it will not have in-game advantages.
Wildcard's Social Footprint
What are Wildcard’s social links?
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlayWildcard
Discord: https://discord.gg/playwildcard
What is Wildcard’s Marketing strategy?
22DEC22 (OPINION):
Their strategy is low hype, and high engagement. They use the common discord audience to pump certain posts to get more reach and engagement when they want to. This is common practice, and it seems they use it sparingly. They don’t tweet very often, and it appears they have slow organic growth with little to no bot traffic. This might change once giveaways, partnerships, etc. pick up. That’s only if they want to go that route.
I will add that this strategy is long-term orientated and gives them time to foster a community with a steady stream of people versus hyped traffic that creates a lot of noise.
04JAN23 (OPINION):
Their strategy is to make Wildcard a platform for creators, and their key insight is to attract the top content creators by creating the best toolset and reward structure.
They recognize that in the gaming industry, creators are set to dominate, while traditional media entities may struggle to match the imaginative prowess of communities, content creators, and streamers.
They are also leaning heavily into attendance and memorabilia.
They plan to capitalize on the content creators' desire for public exposure and financial gain as a means of generating virality on social media. This is brilliant, to be honest.
12APR23 (OPINION):
They now work with Magic Eden on their mint and now have spiked in their following due to doing collaborations and giveaways. They have a strong core community and have been building it for months, so dilution of the community won’t hurt their mint, and traders don’t have enough time to farm for WLs to dilute holders or have a massive dump on secondary.
What is Wildcard's Twitter following, engagement, and summary?
22DEC22 Snapshot: 14.6k followers
24JAN23 Snapshot: 17.6k followers
12APR23 Snapshot: 47.6k followers
As mentioned above, they have a steady increase in followership; they don’t do any hype posts or engagement farming, and instead, they steadily put out content that is more about the lore of their characters.
Their recent bump came from an influencer named Brycent, who streamed footage of their game. That happened on December 14 and had a tailwind of about 3 days, netting roughly 1700 new followers.
Their socials are healthy, and they seem to be in no rush to build a large following. They have no recent announcements regarding their NFTs or a date they will be minting. This gives them time to create an organic community without flippers or traders coming in with the sole intention of earning a whitelist. It takes a lot of mod power to answer tickets, and this time can be better spent building and interacting with their community.
12APR23 Snapshot Commentary
They have done giveaways on their socials to increase the social metric and have done work in collaboration with top-tier communities to increase their distribution. Now sitting at 47.6K followers, I have no worries on their mint and want to keep my eye on post-mint activations and if it grows their Twitter socials.
What is Wildcard's Discord following, engagement, and summary?
22DEC22 Snapshot: 28,536 Members
I opened up a ticket and was answered within 24 hours. The questions were answered well, and I had no complaints.
General chat is filled with gm and useless conversations, which most pre-mint projects are. No substance was found until they launched their mint details, and the community was upset it wasn’t free. I have yet to see what other communities think of the project. I will report closer to the mint.
08JAN22 Snapshot: 29,776 Members
27JAN23 Snaphot: 30,578 Members
12APR23 Snapshot: 44,745 Members
What is Wildcard's Youtube following, engagement, and summary?
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@playwildcard1451
Their youtube is the strongest in web3. It shows their lore, and the production quality shows they can execute what they are building. Usually, live video game trailers do not resonate well with gamers, but they deliver fun videos that build their brand and add to the experience of their game.
Who has mentioned the Wildcard on their socials?
Notable influencers that have mentioned Wildcard in their socials:
Summary of social footprint
Wildcard has done a great job capturing gamers and has not used hype tactics to grow it’s following. The organic growth has led to a strong follower base and a loyal community.
They are now in the end stages of their NFT distribution and are curious about what they have in store for post-mint activations.
Playtest of Wildcard Alliance - Credit: MyWifeBoughtThis
The intro into the Wildcard arena felt great. The upper view of the stadium was impressive, while the battle area itself was basic and relatively empty.
There are plans to incorporate sponsorships and collaborations on the cards, and when that happens, I think it will begin to pop. As with most alpha builds, the text / UI was somewhat bland but clean.
The sounds were great, and the art/visuals were solid overall. The map system and how you track what's happening as a player needs work, but the spectating system in place is strong. It is instantly apparent that this was a huge part of their focus when designing the game.
Both playable characters seemed polished and different, while the NPCs that are being summoned still need a bit of work and adjustment. The mech-style art seemed great but the translation into some of the other monsters wasn't quite there.
The playtesters were forced to use Xbox controllers for the matches, which certainly caused issues. One of the four players had to reset his character, which hurt his ability to play multiple times. Other concerns were large alerts popping up in the middle of their screen, lack of information on what NPCs did, overtime rules (Yes, those definitely need some work), and AI movement of one or two of the units.
All of these issues were well received by the team and I think all of the players, as well as most of the spectators, felt great about the dialogue that took place. The bones of Wildcard seem strong, and there is no reason that this game can't be molded into one of the great PVP-centric Web 3 experiences.
While I was watching the matches, I never felt lost or uninformed, even with the small amount of information I was given. The players, devs, and spectators, including myself, were all discussing ways to monetize the game in a very respectful and comfortable manner. I walked away feeling like the future is bright for Wildcard and its team.
What are the risks for Wildcard collectors, gamers, and investors?
Too Early
Being in web3 gaming in its early stages is a challenge; with the limited selection of working games available, there has been little progress made on bringing traditional gamers over which means the target audience is considerably smaller. A lot of the web3 gaming space is filled with profit-takers, traders, and short-term thinkers, not gamers, and the culture of web3 gaming is still closely tied to NFT speculators and NFT traders.
Distribution channels have not been properly formulated, there is no web3 “Steam” yet, and marketing and user acquisition are still huge obstacles that all projects will face.
Another thing to consider is that things move very quickly in the world of web3, and as games take a long time to build and progress can be slow, culture change will be one of the biggest challenges for game studios.
Lastly, being pioneers in the space is never easy. Tech is not as well developed as later movers, and there are endless unknowns to deal with.
Wildcard will be one of the first AAA web3 titles to hit the gaming scene. Similar to Axie, A lot of eyes will be looking to see if the innovations stick, and it is likely that companies will copy what works and not implement the things that don’t. Gaming is a cut-throat business that has a lot of copypastas.
For example, Axie had a two-token model system that seemed to work for a period of time, but after being stress-tested it is now evident that it is not a sustainable model. Small innovations that Wildcard procures might become successful, and later on be found to be potentially game-breaking, similar to Axie’s economy.
Too Sports Dominant
From reading their Wildpaper and attending some of their AMAs, it seems that they really lean into not just the esports narrative but the overall sports narrative. They liken it to the World Cup and other major sporting events in existence. That being said, some people enjoy sports not just because it is fun to watch but also because they understand how difficult a sport is to master by having experienced it themselves.
I don’t see Wildcard being a successful sports-like game until they get the game into the hands of the everyday gamer so they can understand what is going on in the game and have a deeper appreciation for the mastery of the craft.
“Just as fun to watch as it is to play”
This is a bold statement. I want to see how they gamify being a spectator. My assumption is that the fans (spectators) will have some type of benefit for participating. Maybe it could be picking the next game mode, airdrops from matches, or cheering for a certain member for a buff.
If the rewards for being an audience member are of high value I could see scholars or extractors manipulating the system to earn those rewards, though it is far too early to make an accurate assessment.
Wildcard's Competitors
Who are Wildcard's top competitors?
League of Legends
DOTA
Overwatch
Hearthstone
The above games all have strong similarities either in MOBAs, collectible card games, or arena battlers, and have esports attached to their names.
What is Wildcard's edge, if any?
Their game will impress any traditional gamer who play MOBAs, collectible card games, and arena battlers.
The majority of the team has worked together in the past at Playful Studios.
Further along in development compared to other web3 games
How do they plan to monetize Wildcard?
Their business model seems to be centered around the creator economy platform and selling tickets for their events. They have said they want Wildcard to become a platform in which people can host their live events.
Also, they will have traditional monetization, such as purchasing in-game assets, and will still let people purchase using fiat.
Does this have the potential to hit the mass market?
Wildcard has the greatest potential to hit the mass market in the near term as it checks all the boxes for traditional gamers to try the game, and it is unique enough that people will work through some resistance to play the game. The risk lies in trusting creators and players to like and enjoy Wildcard, which is what every game’s risk is.
Writer's Closing Remarks and Opinions
As a gamer who's played countless games over the years, I have to say that Wildcard Alliance's upcoming game has truly impressed me. This seasoned team has created a fun, playable game with an addictive gameplay loop that will keep you hooked for hours on end. Also, understand I’m comparing this game to all games that are in web2, not just web3.
While I don't necessarily agree with their messaging about the game being "just as fun to watch as it is to play," I appreciate their focus on empowering the creator economy. They understand that the network effect of media and the creators will drive awareness to their project due to having a personal stake in content creation and ownership. This unique approach sets them apart from other gaming projects and makes Wildcard Alliance a game changer in the gaming industry.
The team at Wildcard Alliance is top-notch and has a track record of success in shipping different genres of games such as Age of Empires, Words with Friends (Paul was the founder), and Lucky Tales. They seem to have a knack at entering early into disruptive technology and becoming victorious. And while their full game release isn't set until 2024-2025, their pre-alpha is already incredibly fun and addictive.
Overall, I give Wildcard Alliance my highest recommendation and an S-tier rating. If you're looking for a game that's not only fun to play but also empowers creators, then Wildcard Alliance is the game for you.
References
Written by: Payton Kaleiwahea
Disclaimer
None of this is financial or legal advice.
Fantastic read, well done