Could ‘Reaper Actual’ be the breakout crypto shooter?

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A new ambitious shooter game is in development.

Distinct Possibility Studios has just come out of stealth after two years and revealed its flagship title: a first-person, open-world military extraction shooter game with blockchain integrations, dubbed Reaper Actual.

A pre-alpha “Foundation” version of the PC game with some onchain assets is expected “in the coming weeks,” according to a release.

Game industry veteran John Smedley is behind the new studio. Smedley is a gaming exec and developer who worked in Sony’s gaming division for over a decade. He ran two other smaller gaming studios in between his time at Sony and Amazon Game Studios, and created the 1999 MMORPG EverQuest before all of that.

Reaper Actual is billed as an “open-world persistent shooter.” This means players (Reapers) won’t be loading into copies of the same generic, untouched map with fresh randomized loot in every match like they do in Call of Duty Warzone and Fortnite.

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Instead, the virtual world will be changeable and those changes will matter more. And when you log off and log back on, the world may be very different than when you last left it.

The game’s island map of Marova is expected to be larger than game maps we’ve seen before in CoD-like titles. It’s slated to have PvPvE action, meaning a mix of player-on-player violence and environmental targets and hazards for players to tackle.

The team is planning to charge for the game upfront at first, with plans to transition to a free-to-play model over time with rewards for early buyers.

By the numbers

Distinct Possibility has raised $30.5 million in funding for its project in a round led by gaming-forward VC firm Bitkraft and Brevan Howard Digital.

The Tezos Foundation, Delphi Ventures, Shima Capital, Hashed and others also invested.

$30 million in funding is substantial — and pretty unheard of in crypto gaming these days. But is it enough to make an ambitious AAA-level live ops shooter game with MMORPG elements and market it to the masses, competing against titles with nine-figure budgets?

Based on a post from an engineer at third-party game development studio Iron Belly, plus Distinct Possibility’s website, it looks like Distinct Possibility is using multiple outsourcing firms to build the game, including Iron Belly (which Shrapnel also used), Big Moxi, and Secret Dimension, in addition to its own team of over 40 staff.

Big Moxi has 47 employees listed on Reaper Actual’s site, and Secret Dimension has half a dozen. That means at least 93 people are working on the game, if the website’s numbers are correct.

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There are other ways to get more cash besides VC funding, though, as we’ve seen other crypto shooters do in the past to varying degrees of success. Deadrop sold NFT avatars and in-game item packs (before it shut down), and Shrapnel has sold tokens and NFTs as well.

That said, it’s debatable whether selling items to prospective players ahead of time is a good idea, as it increases expectations and speculation around an eventual launch.

Blockchain-optional

Reaper Actual is using the EVM L2 Etherlink (that uses Tezos rollup tech) for its blockchain elements. Gamers will be able to trade in-game items as well as custom items they create using the Etherlink rails.

The game is also using Sequence’s full stack, according to the crypto gaming infra firm. Sequence offers software and tools for devs, including integrated wallets, custom marketplaces and other features, with a focus on supporting EVM-compatible chains.

I wonder how the mainstream gamers will react when they realize there’s a blockchain version of the game.

“We look at it as an awesome game first full stop. Then we have enabled an amazing ecosystem that is entirely optional,” Smedley told me in response to my tweet about the game.

“In fact play on Steam or Epic and you never have to look at it. We think people will take notice in how we are doing it. Ethically and fairly,” he wrote.

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