Big Time is a free-to-play online game that incorporates NFT collectibles and a history-spanning adventure. There are hundreds of players who hack and slash through the game together.
To ensure that it is a non-pay-to-win game, all NFT items in the game are made cosmetic and can be traded, rented, and sold to other players. Big Time Studios is focused on developing a game owning NFTs to give players a great experience.
Creating adventure through time and space, Big Time Studios created games which give players ownership over their personal virtual properties through NFTs. This new developed company to create immersive online video games presented the first alpha version game for Big Time. The game combines combat, NFT collectibles, and a history-spanning adventure enabling the players to collect valuable cosmetic and decorative items in game.
As a free-to-paly third-person action RPG, Big Time takes players through time and space to face some of the most famous and infamous figures in history. Here the mission is to discover a mysterious threat aimed to tear down the walls of time and change history in unexpected ways. This experience allows hundreds of players to find a way to do the mission in Big Time all together.
Big Time Studios productions includes a set of Epic Games, Riot Games, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Decentraland. The founding team includes Matt Tonks (Fortnight, Gears of War) as chief technology officer; Carlo Arellano (World of Warcraft, God of War) as art director; Brian Alexander (Overwatch 2, Defiance) as lead writer; TJ Stamm (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor) as lead level designer; and Tom Zhao (League of Legends, Sky: Children of the Light) as lead concept artist. They aim to increase the number of game companies to adopt cryptocurrency and NFT technology. However, Big time first needs to build its own action role-playing game that enables players to acquire, hold, and trade NFT-based virtual items and solve the problems with the barriers present in most blockchain applications.
Knowing the bloom of NFTs in art, sport collectors and music, it is the time for video gamers to join and take benefits from NFT games.
Making NFTs for big game companies
Recently investors have been spending their money on game NFTs hoping to make big profits. Many believe that the market for in-game assets is massive, however no player has the right to own and trade the items they purchase, for the most part. In-game NFTs can give players true ownership and that will bring the virtual-reality world a step closer to fruition. Data on Ethereum blockchain suggest the high rate of spending on NFTs by those who play first-generation blockchain games compared to people do on traditional free-to-play games. So, it seems to be a very persuasive business case. Therefore, it is not only good for the players, as they can have better control over their items, but also good for the economy of game studios as the items are transferable.
Big Time is underway to develop for PC, with an announcement for the beta coming later this year. The team expect the game to launch in 2022.
How NFTs work for gamers
CEO Ari Meilich, the game of designer Thor Alexander, believes that by investing on NFTs players will be able to earn or find high-value items in the game, like killing a final boss in a dungeon. However, he argues that Big Time Studios won’t launch its own cryptocurrency token because it doesn’t want a conflict with what other possible distribution partners may use. Meilich agrees that the company should not focus on “pay to win” NFTs, as players may use them to gain victory. Rather, it would rather sell only cosmetic items, to avoid what gives players gameplay bonuses.
The game NFTs are built on top of Ethereum, which has smart contracts (programmability), good security, and mainstream adoption. The records of items created or purchased in the game are recorded in its own database, thoufh it does not automatically mint the NFTs on the blockchain in order to keep costs low – like Ethereum Gas fees, or computing costs that consume energy.
Players may gain a lot of funds on Ethereum, and since players will be able to take the funds outside of the game and trade them, the NFTs could be valuable. Also, NFTs could be fractionalized, which means they divide NFTs into parts so that the purchase price can be cheaper. Meilich suggested that Ethereum offers better support for NFT marketplaces, as more people are available to make purchases on it. But players won’t have to pay the fees if they use the NFTs in a game or otherwise they don’t transact with them. In addition, players can store the items in an off-chain custody system patented by the company, as a private database where both NFTs and regular items can coexist. As the result, hosted wallets could be created and make them possible to go back to users. Just like having an inventory in RPG, players may bring an asset from off-chain to on-chain at any point in time. Common interfaces such as Microsoft Playfab are provided to connect to the backend of the game. Therefore, if players wish to sell assets or take them outside the platform, they have to mint them and pay for Gas fees.
Big Time Studios discussed that, in long term, if the demand is met, the company will offer ways that players can withdraw their assets and move them to any blockchain.
