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Author: FaultProofBen
Gm!
Apologies in advance: But I’m about to quote Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Yes, I know that movie sucks and is a disgrace to the franchise.
However, it does have a few good quotes, like when the force-projection of Luke (Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen this abomination) visits Leia towards the end of the film and says:
Anyways, this is reference is just my attempt at finding a creative way to say that Words3 is back!
Words3 is a PVP world-building game developed by Small Brain Games.
In the game, you compete against other players to form words, score points, while paying ETH for every letter you use.
This is all done in the hopes of accruing profit, or taking home more in ETH rewards than you spend.
Words3 has launched two public rounds to-date, with the most recent being in August 2023.
It’s now been revived, as WASD and our friends at [WE], in collaboration with Small Brain Games, are hosting weekly Words3 community rounds Thursdays on Base!
Our first round is this Thursday, January 18, at 6:00 pm UTC.
The will be 15 minutes long (Yes, just 15 minutes), open to anyone, have a spending cap of 0.5 ETH per player.
You’ll be able to play at: words3.xyz
In honor of this glorious event, I thought it would be fitting to provide you all with a primer on Words3 by breaking down:
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The game’s history
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It’s underlying design
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It’s gameplay and some profit maxi strategies
By the end of this piece, you should have the information you need to be ready to go for the round.
Now…let’s get into it!
If you’re interested in participating and staying up to date with Words3 Community Rounds, be sure to:
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Follow the official community rounds X account
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Subscribe to our Luma calendar
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Join our Words3 Discord
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Play at words3.xyz
The History of Words3
To start, let’s get some context on the history of Words3.
Words3 is ancient by onchain gaming standards.
The first public round for the game was held over 14 months ago, in November 2022.
This round lasted 6 days, had 100 players participate, and saw 1212 words placed.
Over the following months, Small Brain Dev held playtests and iterated on the game.
These events were public, took place in the Small Brain Games Discord, and typically consisted of short, 15-minute rounds.
I was able to attend one of these over the summer, and it was a lot of fun.
Not only do I enjoy trying out new onchain games, but the compressed round length meant that the game was fast-paced, frenetic, and chaotic.
After these playtests, Small Brain held the second mainnet round for the game on August 9, 2023, on Base.
Coinciding with the launch of the L2, this round lasted 4 days and attracted 122 players who spent $22,422.98
The top player, saucepoint.eth, won in thrilling fashion, taking home $1379.42 in profits (6.1% of the total spend) and just eeking out jdcook.eth by a mere $23.85.
In a well deserved victory lap thread, Saucepoint stated that they were able to win by creating a script to help create and places with a high points-per-dollar (PPD).
(We’ll touch on that more a bit more later).
For those of you who may be wondering, I played and was not remotely close to turning a profit.
I lost $54 and finished in 104th.
Anyways, Words3 has remained in hibernation in the months since that round…until now!
Under the Hood
Now that we have some background on Words3, let’s look at the game’s design.
As previously mentioned, Words3 is built using MUD.
The veteran onchain gamers among you likely know what it is, but for those newer to the space (gm, btw), MUD is a framework for developing Ethereum applications created by Lattice.
Most commonly used to build onchain games, MUD eases the development process by providing teams with a suite of contracts, tools, libraries, and more.
Words3 was recently upgraded to the latest version of MUD (MUD2) over the last several weeks, and its contracts are fully open-source.
Recently, the contracts have been upgraded to include the ability to:
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Whitelist addresses
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Take a transaction fee as a % of player spend
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Cap the amount of ETH a single address can spend
These new parameters, along with existing ones like round length and the dictionary of eligible words, enable a greater degree customizability to the game.
Small Brain has also stated in past interviews and tweets that he’s developing a “botkit,” i.e., resources that democratize anyone's ability to build a bot to play Words3.
The Game Itself
Now that we have an understanding of Words3’s history and design, let's dive into the actual game itself.
Gameplay Overview:
Words3 is like “onchain Scrabble,” but with some crypto-native twists.
As previously mentioned, you’ll compete against other players on a global, infinite grid to form words and earn points while spending ETH for every letter you use.
Each letter has a different point value and cost that fluctuates throughout the game based on its usage.
Letters are priced via a Variable-Rate-Gradual-Decay Auction (VRDGA), which (At a high level that small brains like myself can understand) increases the price of letters when demand to use them is high and decreases it when demand is low.
Notably, unlike “TradScrabble,” there are no turns, so you can play words whenever you want.
Besides the ones you get post-placement, you can earn more points by building on word multipliers, letter multipliers, and when other players build on your existing words.
As I discussed earlier, each round has a different length, which can be as short as a few minutes or as long as a few days.
This drastically impacts the feel of the game, as shorter rounds are pure pandemonium while longer ones resemble methodical, strategic battles.
While I like both, I prefer the shorter rounds, as scrambling to form and place words is fun and feels similar to when you frantically try to ape into a coin or mint an NFT.
Strategies and Profitability:
Throughout a round, the ETH that players spend accrues into a prize pool.
At its conclusion, this ETH is distributed to players not based on their raw point total – But on their profitability.
This means the true objective of Words3 is to maximize profitability, which is based on the number of points you earn relative to the amount of ETH you spend.
When playing, you’ll want to maximize point efficiency or, as Saucepoint put it in his thread, points-per-dollar (PPD).
Although I confessed to being unprofitable, I can still share a few keys to maximizing profitability from the thread and the Words3 wiki created by Small Brain:
1. Use Multipliers
Building on letter and word multipliers is a great way to boost PPD, as they give you more bang for your buck.
2. Location, Location, Location
Choosing the right word location is critical, as it will allow you to stack points throughout a round at no additional cost when other players build on your words.
3. Be Early
The earlier you are to a round, the lower the cost of buying letters will be, and thus the higher your PPD.
This is less of an issue for shorter rounds (like the upcoming 15-minute one) but can certainly swing an outcome in games that span multiple hours or days.
Of course, these are all just high-level strategies.
There are many other more sophisticated tactics and tools you can use to try and maximize profitability.
For instance, I tried to use ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) to help find optimal words during a testnet round.
As you can see…this was not the most fruitful endeavor.
Getting Started with Words3
It’s very easy to get onboarded into Words3 if you’re a crypto native.
To start playing, all you have to do is:
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Bridge some ETH to the game’s host network (Base, in the case of our upcoming community rounds)
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Head to the game site: words3.xyz
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Connect your wallet
And that’s it!
Words3 Is So Back
Words3 is so back – And I’m incredibly hyped.
I think the game is a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to play again over the coming weeks!
Furthermore, I hope these community rounds will help bring some new people into the space.
As a final remindooor, this week’s round is January at 6:00 pm UTC on Base, and just 15 minutes long.
I hope to see you all there, and may the most profitable players win! 🫡
To end today’s piece, I want to take a moment to thank you, the reader, for your support over the past ~6 months.
WASD recently received 74,534.56 OP in Round 3 of Optimism’s RPGF funding.
This is a life-changing sum, and far more than I ever thought possible.
This would not have happened without the continued support of every reader, Twitter follower, community, and Guild member.
I’m incredibly excited to use this funding to help grow WASD so we can continue to pill the world on onchain games.
Thank you all, and the best is yet to come! ❤️
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Fire Eyes is a leading organization for onchain governance.
They are active players and contributors to onchain games, and care deeply about furthering the development of the Ethereum and DAO ecosystems.
Fire Eyes is a great outlet for any team looking for in-depth feedback on community sentiment and token design.
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