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Embersword is one of the Gen1 NFT based games that caused quite a stir around the Time of Axie. Taking advantage of the novelty of funding web3 projects through NFT land sales, the Embersword team caused a stir by becoming one of the first web3 games to promise an exciting play to earn opportunity for land owners — if only you got in early.
Embersword used a couple of manipulative techniques that other projects have used successfully to build hype — artificial scarcity and false exclusivity. Degods took a page from Embersword in that you had to get on a curated list after applying to be considered for the most exclusive land. And there was a very limited amount of land to be sold.
With little more than a Sandbox type world map and a couple of intro videos, Embersword was able to generate enough hype in its land sale to raise millions. But a few months into production, and issues started to rear up.
Play 2 Lose
A few months after the land sale, Embersword came out with vague descriptions of how people would earn money from that land. But the numbers didn't add up. Quite a few defi experts took to Youtube to do the math, and the consensus was difficult to argue with: You could basically never get your initial investment back as a land owner in Embersword. The game would have to grow to an almost impossible number of players to even get close (around 3 million), which did not seem possible with the level of competition and the amount of competence the team had shown up to that point.
Of course you had a few crypto influencers brag about how they had made money off Embersword, but this was strictly off land flips. There was not gameplay to speak of. The only way to make money was to buy land and a low price and sell it back to someone else on a secondary market at a higher price.
When the bear market hit, many people started selling land at a loss. Many Embersword community members began to complain about the lack of updates from the team (at the time of writing, their Youtube is basically dead, and Twitter is sparse). The only active social media channel is Discord, where the highlight is WIP Wednesdays. The team will share progress on design and drop lore nuggets here and there.
An NFT Grift
Criticism around the game today centers on two major points: 1. Updates are much slower than they were previous, and 2. the team seems to be setting up the community for yet another land sale, and this, above any production or deepening of the lore, is the team's priority. Hype around the game outside of the Discord has slowed to a halt. The only gameplay is centered around grifting people into buying more land, and the team has spent their time leveraging retail support into VC support that enriched them, but not the process.
The Embersword team was able to raise $2 million in VC capital, but that money hasn't seemed to speed up production. They have, however, expanded the team with people who have web2 experience. What I've personally found here is these hires are mercenaries coming over to grab a quick buck. Just because a web3 team snipes someone with web2 gaming experience doesn't mean the web3 team is suddenly amazing, and it has shown in the output. For the most part, these hires are done to raise feelings of FOMO in the core audience to lube them up for another sale.
$2 million is a drop in the bucket for VCs — the same as a retail investor giving the team $200 to move forward with production. And what a lot of these teams will do is a ping pong type game between VCs and retail, using fundraising success on one side to facilitate another round of funding with the other. This seems to be the main priority of the Embersword team, because everyone still paying attention to the process seems to agree that not enough is going on.
Perhaps this is the story of a team that just got in over its head. Or perhaps it is something more sinister. One thing I can say for sure — they definitely haven't worked out tokenomics to the point where any land buyer would ever ROI. So if you get in, you get in for the fun of it. But I don't know why you wouldn't just play one of the many complete 2.5D open world strategy games out there... for free.
