USA News Hub

The game is out on a regional basis and it has more than 100,000 signups, all vying to get one of 10,000 slots.

Asked if the game was the “top of the monetization funnel,” Tucker said, “I think of it as the front door. The goal is that becomes it the primary entry point. And then from there, we can convert or introduce people to other IPs and other things inside the Yuga ecosystem or Faraway ecosystem — games that are maybe more hardcore in nature or mid-core.”

Bored Ape NFTs

Yuga Labs rode the non-fungible token (NFT) wave in 2021 and 2022, selling a billion dollars worth Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs to virtual land prospectors, known as Voyagers, who have purchased tokenized land plots in the Otherside virtual world.

In March 2022, Miami-based Yuga Labs raised $450 million at a valuation of $4 billion. It did so because it has created one of the most popular new NFT brands in the form of The Bored Ape Yacht Club, but like other NFT companies it has been buys trying to come up with actual utility for the NFTs, which use the digital ledger of blockchain to authenticate unique digital items.

In the meantime, the crypto winter led to a slowdown in Web3 gaming, and titles have had trouble breaking into the mainstream. That’s where Dookey Dash: Unclogged comes in.

The original Dookey Dash game that debuted in February 2023 year was a “token-gated” hypercasual esports game, where holders of Bored Ape and other Yuga Labs franchises could play. This time, anyone can play the free-to-play games, whether they are NFT-holders or not.

In the first game, a professional Fortnite gamer “Mongraal” won Dookey Dash with the highest score. Then he sold his NFT to billionaire Adam Weitsman for $1.63 million.

“It was fairly intuitive, easy to pick up and play, but difficult to master. We saw pretty surprising results with the first game in terms of virality and stickiness and engagement. And the overall KPIs for the game were what I would describe as best in class,” Tucker said. “It was just a really big moment for Web3 gaming. At that time, looking at that game, we always talked about it.”

Tucker said the company had an amazing response from the first release, but it found that token-gating is too restrictive for a casual and intuitive game like Dookey Dash: Unclogged.

Unclogged

About eight months ago, Yuga Labs decided to revitalize the game and build it with a new engine. Yuga Labs partnered with Faraway to get it built from scratch. The aim was to recapture the energy and zeitgeist of the original game and make it available worldwide, Tucker said.

“I would describe it as a hypercasual Web 2.5 game, meaning there things you can do with tokens inside the game. There’s a user-generated content layer and an esports layer. But at its core, it’s a free-to-play hypercasual game, he said.

The game has new features, including new pickups, a magnet slowdown ability, vehicles and bikes, stickers and profile items and a social layer. But the core gameplay of running is pretty similar.

“The new meta is basically an esports tournament,” Tucker said.

Tucker hopes this kind of Web2.5 game can get millions of people playing in the Web3 ecosystem.

“It’s a legit play for the mass market, and it’s so intuitive and lightweight when it comes to the friction around it,” he said.

Creator mode

The creator mode integrates Faraway’s user-generated content platform. In this mode, players can customize their experience using cosmetics and skins created by themselves, or by others. The UGC platform gives players access to more content and a creator-centric community.

This generates UGC sales for all players, but creators can earn up to 90% of the price of their created content, which is significantly higher than what other UGC platforms offer.

You can built content for the game and you can sell it on the Faraway platform. You can play the game and win Golden Plungers which are a kind of access pass for the esports tournament that will happen once a quarter with a sizable prize pool starting at $1 million.

The game combines a kind of Roblox-like user-generated content with Web3 interoperability where the items in the game can be used in other Web3 games.

“The goal here is to take Web3 to the mainstream and create a very intuitive kind of low-friction onramp for players across the globe to start to appreciate some of the value that Web3 brings to players specifically in the form of like interoperable owned content,” Tucker said.

Tournaments, competition and prizes

The structure of the game is set up with weekly tournaments that make up a seasonal competition. The end of the season culminates in an esports tournament. We will be enhancing our feature set throughout the season by adding new content and competitions leading up to the esports tournament.

Weekly, players will compete for in-game content, including Golden Plungers, which represent access to the esports tournament. There are a limited number of Golden Plungers available each season.

The esports tournament will initially have a $1 million prize pool. Future tournaments will have prizes that have yet to be announced.

Those who do hold Yuga Labs Ethereum NFTs like Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Kodas, Bored Ape Kennel Club dogs, and HV-MTL Forge NFTs will be eligible for “token benefits,” according to the company. The trailer posted to Twitter shows ApeCoin logos, suggesting the Ethereum token for Yuga’s Bored Ape ecosystem will be given out as rewards. However, a Yuga Labs representative would not confirm that detail.

The new Dookey Dash: Unclogged game will be released for iOS, Android, Mac desktop, and Windows desktop users.

Faraway has more than 100 people and it has multiple games under way with the goal of creating interoperable assets and interoperable economies, said Paley, a former Scopely mobile game veteran, in an interview with GamesBeat.

“The assets used in Dookey Dash: Unclogged can be used in other games, and this creator mode gives creators the ability to build content that grows in value over time,” Paley said. “The value stems from it being utilized in more places over time. So the more games we build, or that our partners build, means that the content is used in more and more places, which adds more value to the creator assets.”

Paley believes that major streamers are going to pay attention to this game as the esports tournament gets under way. The game will likely go global in May.

Playing nice with Web2.5

Tucker said that the game is adhering strictly to the requirements of Google and Apple for Web2.5 games in the app stores. There is nothing you can get with an NFT inside the game that other players cannot get for free. Yuga Labs will not be able to sell anything outside of the game that gives players an advantage inside the game.

“The goal here really is to grow the Web3 gaming audience and bring this game to as many people as possible. And so we’re not trying to do anything that’s going to risk our ability to introduce the broader mass market to the value of Web2.5,” Tucker said.

Faraway has been careful to make sure the Web 3 players don’t have an advantage over the Web2 players. There’s no token or currency purchase requirement in the game. There are no NFTs that gate the content, as that is a requirement that the app store platforms Apple and Google require. There are, however, potential “conversion points” where players can choose to get more integrated into Web3.

They can go to the Faraway web shop for content like skins and vehicles that have been created by other players.

The benefit of buying the NFTs and making an investment in the game comes in the form of the ability to use your Bored Ape in a wide variety of games and to enhance it with the creator mode. In the full Web3 ecosystem of Yuga Labs, players can use assets across games.

“A person can go into a shop, buy an asset and use that asset in a variety of games,” Tucker said.

During 2024, Dookey Dash: Unclogged will likely get some big updates and new IP coming into the game from some of Yuga’s partners and other brands.

“That will be another vector for pulling people in,” Tucker said.

The company is working on other big games as well, some that is still in stealth mode.