Gm!

Or rather, ahoy!

We’ve spent the past few weeks here on WASD taking a birds-eye view of onchain gaming by looking at two of its biggest ecosystems: MUD and Starknet.

Today, we’re going to shake things up a bit and look at an individual game: Pirate Nation.

Pirate Nation is a browser-based, pirate-themed RPG developed by Proof Of Play. Currently in semi-closed closed alpha, in Pirate Nation players complete quests and battle in combat in the pursuit of treasure, gold, and glory.

Pirate Nation has turned into one of my favorite onchain games, and the deeper I’ve dug into it, the more bullish I’ve become.

Could this be the next breakout onchain game?

Join me as I voyage into Pirate Nation to answer this question by discussing:

• Pirate Nation’s history and design

• My early impressions of the game

• Pirate Nation’s growth outlook

• Why I’m bullish

If you’re a researcher, onchain gamer, or degen, there’s sure to be something in here for you!

Now…let’s set sail!

(Yes, there will be corny pirate puns throughout. Sorry not sorry.)

History and Team

To start our voyage, let’s look at Pirate Nation’s history and team.

Pirate Nation was created by Proof Of Play and announced in April 2022 via a Medium post.

The Proof Of Play team has an extensive background in Web2 game development as its founder, Amitt Mahajan, was the co-creator of FarmVille at Zynga.

FarmVille was an immensely popular, farm-themed RPG on Facebook which had more than 83.7 million monthly active users (MAUs) at its peak in 2010.

Other core team members have experience across Web2 gaming, working for companies like Riot Games, Epic Games, and Activision on titles like League of Legends and Uncharted.

On November 8, 2022, Pirate Nation held a mint for Founder’s Pirates, a PFP collection used as playable characters in the game. Despite taking place in the midst of the FTX collapse, Founder’s Pirates managed to mint out on Ethereum in under five minutes.

The game launched in December 2022, with its contracts and items deployed on Polygon.

Shortly after, the Proof Of Play team decided to migrate Pirate Nation from Polygon to Arbitrum Nova in order to reduce gas costs. The migration took place in March 2023 and has paid immediate dividends, as there’s been a ~20x reduction in gas costs since the move.

Pirate Nation Under the Hull

Now that we have a sense of Pirate Nation’s history and the team behind it, let’s take a peek under the hull at how the game is designed.

Pirate Nation is built using an impressive custom architecture that utilizes several innovative design features.

Let’s touch on a few of these.

Mirroring

A unique aspect of Pirate Nation’s design is that it’s a true multichain game.

As mentioned above, Founder’s Pirates (your playable character) live on Ethereum, but the actual gameplay takes place on Arbitrum Nova.

This begs the question: How the heck is the team pulling this off?

Pirate Nation is able to do this through the use of a technique called mirroring.

At the highest level, mirroring involves utilizing a token on an L2 to track and copy the movements of a token on an L1.

Mirroring provides a significant boost to the overall game experience, as it enables Pirate Nation to benefit from the cheap execution environment of Arbitrum Nova while its primary asset retains the security and liquidity of Ethereum.

If you want to hear more about Mirroring, check out this talk from Matt Van of Pirate Nation here.

Although I’m not a dev, Mirroring appears to be a way to unlock cross-chain gameplay without players having to bridge or transfer tokens. I would not be surprised to see other games (or even other dapps) implement it in the future.

Game Wallets

Another key feature of Pirate Nation’s design is “game wallets.”

Game wallets are similar to burner wallets and arcade accounts which I’ve talked about over the past weeks, as they are generated and stored locally in your browser.

Game Wallets act like a delegate for your primary wallet (i.e. the one that holds your Founder’s Pirate), as it has the right to execute transactions on its behalf.

Although Game Wallets are custodial, they cannot access or transfer funds from your primary wallet.

(This means you should not ever transfer funds to your game wallet address, as they will be lost forever!)

Game wallets benefit Pirate Nation in two ways:

1. They enable signature-free gameplay.

Outside of onboarding, you’ll never have to confirm transactions while playing.

1. They enable gas free-gameplay through subsidies.

The custodial nature of game wallets means that Proof Of Play is able to pay gas fees on behalf of users.

As I’ll touch on later, this greatly enhances Pirate Nation’s gameplay and UX.

The Game Itself

An innovative design is great, but ultimately it’s all moot if the game itself is not fun.

Let’s dive into Pirate Nation’s gameplay and game experience to see if it's on-paper potential translates to onchain fun.

Quests

Questing is one of the two primary game modes in Pirate Nation.

When questing, you’ll spend energy to complete different tasks to earn resources and Pirate Gold (PGLD), an ERC-20 token that trades on Arbitrum Nova (albeit with VERY low liquidity).

PGLD and resources can then be used to craft ships for combat and items like daggers, sandcastles, or Tikis to flex on your island, a place that you can customize to display the loot earned from your piracy.

Ships and items are represented by NFTs and can be sold on traditional marketplaces, with many negotiations taking place in the Pirate Nation Discord.

Overall, the quest system is pretty engaging. I really like grinding to get a certain item, and it always feels rewarding when you finally craft it.

With that said, I do think there are some elements of pay-to-win that still exist within the game, given that most items are tradable. However, I think having a limited amount of energy, and the fact that some resources are soulbound, somewhat counteracts this.

Combat

The second main game mode in Pirate Nation is PVE combat.

In combat, you battle against other ships and monsters in the hopes of sinking them before they sink you.

In combat, you can choose from a variety of different attacks and ship types that vary in damage and accuracy. You can battle through combat quests and The Gauntlet, a string of battles against increasingly difficult enemies.

Another combat mode is World Bosses. These are global events where all Pirate Nation players can contribute damage towards defeating a single boss, and who lands the kill shot on a World Boss will earn a special, 1/1 NFT of it.

Overall, I enjoy combat and think it’s a nice compliment to quests. However, it’s relatively simplistic in its current form, though the team is planning an upgrade of it with a release of combat V2.

Onboarding

As an experienced crypto user, Pirate Nation’s onboarding is straightforward, but leaves room for improvement.

As previously mentioned, to get started playing you’ll have to purchase a Founder’s Pirate on Ethereum. This will put you out about $70, as its current floor price is 0.04 ETH.

While this is on par with Web2 game prices, at times it’s been much higher as the price of ETH and Founder’s Pirates increased. I think the game should become a lot more accessible once the game transitions to free-to-play.

Besides purchasing your pirate, all you’ll have to do is link your email and then you’re good to start playing.

Importantly, you don’t have to bridge any assets onto Arbitrum Nova, which I think is a big plus considering it’s not a chain that many people frequently use.

User Experience

Pirate Nation has great in-game UX.

As I mentioned, gameplay is signature and gas-free due to game wallets and subsidies.

This goes a long way in contributing towards smooth and cohesive gameplay and puts Pirate Nation in the top tier of onchain game UX along with Sky Strife, Shoshin, Primodium, and Roll Your Own.

When you’re actually playing, you wouldn’t really know that Pirate Nation is an onchain game.

My only UX gripe is performance related, as sometimes the game can feel a bit laggy in my browser. However, I’m playing on a generic, non-gaming laptop so it could be a “me” issue.

Graphics & Aesthetic

Pirate Nation is the best-looking onchain game I’ve played.

Its voxel art style and bright colors jump off the screen, and the islands, ships, and items look great. There’s also catchy, memorable, pirate-themed music that plays throughout the game and is now stuck in my head after doing the research for this piece.

Overall, I really like the aesthetic of the game, and think it goes a long way in enhancing the experience.

The Verdict Is In: It’s Fun!

Pirate Nation is a lot of fun, and it’s one of my favorite onchain games along with Sky Strife.

The gameplay is still rough around the edges, but it’s easy to get sucked into questing and combat as you want to craft a special item or build your fleet. It’s also continuously improving, as the team routinely ships updates and responds to bugs in Discord.

While onboarding is a bit clunky, the in-game UX is great, and it looks gorgeous.

Overall, despite being in its early stages, Pirate Nation is already fun and I think clearly has the potential to improve and refine itself over the coming months and years.

WASD is going to be playing Pirate Nation! You can track what we’re up to at: wasdgaming.eth

Growth Outlook

We’ve established that Pirate Nation has impressive architecture and fun gameplay.

But will it catch on?

Let’s look at its distribution and upcoming catalysts that could propel its growth.

Distribution

As with any product, distribution is critical to the success of a game.

This is especially true for onchain ones, as it’s very difficult to find and learn about them (which is why I’m writing this article!)

A big way in which Pirate Nation is addressing this challenge is through its listing on Treasure.

Treasure (formerly known as Trove) is a cross-between Steam and OpenSea, as it’s a launcher and marketplace for Arbitrum ecosystem games and their assets. It’s operated by Treasure DAO, one of the largest Web3 gaming (i.e. not fully onchain) ecosystems.

Pirate Nation can be accessed through Treasure, as Founder’s Pirates, Ships, and Items are all listed on it.

This integration should serve as a valuable distribution channel, as it helps put the game in front of the eyes of more players while aligning Pirate Nation with a major organization in the space.

It’s unlikely that normies will be playing onchain games anytime soon, so I believe that attracting players interested in Web3 games will be very important in the short-to-medium term.

I do think one distribution challenge facing Pirate Nation stems from the fact that they are not built on an engine like MUD or Dojo.

This means the game will not be able to leverage cross-marketing, partnership opportunities, and cross-game composability with the projects built in these engines. Furthermore, I think this could make it more difficult to attract and develop a robust modding ecosystem, though the team is working to address this (more on this later).

Catalysts

Pirate Nation has several key catalysts on the horizon which could contribute to its growth.

Let’s touch on a few of them below:

PVP Combat

The team has expressed plans to implement PVP combat, where players will be able to battle one another in order to win loot.

PVP games are always more fun as they heighten stakes and add a social element. I think PVP has a strong chance of helping Pirate Nation attract more players when implemented and coupled with combat V2.

Free-To-Play

As previously mentioned, Pirate Nation is planning to transition to free-to-play gameplay. This will be done through the use of Pirates, a free NFT collection.

I think this will significantly expand Pirate Nation’s userbase, as the volatile price of Founder’s Pirates can be cost-prohibitive and create a barrier to entry.

Launch of the Proof of Play Engine

At a talk during ETH CC in July, the team revealed that they will be releasing more documentation about the architecture behind Pirate Nation, as well as a framework for building onchain games using the Entity Component System (ECS).

Bullish Pirate Nation

While it remains far from a finished product, Pirate Nation is one of the most impressive onchain games that I’ve come across to date.

The game has a team with a strong track record in game development, and a proven ability to ship and execute within crypto.

Pirate Nation also has an impressive design with several infrastructure innovations in the form of multichain gameplay via mirroring and transaction-free gameplay with game wallets.

The core gameplay is fun and engaging, with great UX and a gorgeous art style.

However, onboarding is a bit clunky, and both combat and questing could use more refinement and depth.

I think Pirate Nation will benefit from distribution via Treasure as well as growth catalysts like PVP combat and the launch of Free-To-Play.

Proof Of Play’s engine release should also help address one of the biggest risks facing Pirate Nation: their lack of composability with other engines like MUD and Dojo.

I think in the long run, this could serve as an impediment to Pirate Nation developing a robust modding ecosystem and getting to leverage the potential for cool, cross-game interoperability that is afforded to games built using those frameworks.

With that said, I’m very bullish on Pirate Nation.

I think the wind is at its back.

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Thanks for reading!

If you liked this piece, you can collect it at the top of the page. It’s free!

For more Pirate Nation content, be sure to tune into our Twitter space with Matt Van from Proof Of Play! You can save the date for that here.

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See you all on Monday!