Champions Ascension, launched by the well-known mobile game company Jam City after completing a 350 million yuan financing and being spun off from the original company, saw its co-founder of Jam City secure a $32 million seed round of financing from a16z.

By Zen

This month, Champions: Ascension, a large-scale Web3 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), announced its launch on Amazon Prime Gaming, achieving simultaneous landing on three mainstream game platforms: Steam, Epic Games, and Amazon Prime Gaming.

Different from the vast majority of blockchain games, Champions: Ascension was originally developed by the well-known mobile game company Jam City after completing a 3.5 billion yuan financing and being spun off from the original company. The co-founder of Jam City secured a $32 million seed round of financing from a16z for this game. This has provided Champions: Ascension with ample financial support in game development, and it is still in the testing and continuous development stage.

Jam City co-founders split due to different paths, Champions Ascension moves towards independence

Mobile game company Jam City was founded in 2010 by former 20th Century Fox executives Josh Yguado, early social media network MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe, as well as Aber Whitcomb and Colin Digiaro. In the fierce competition of mobile games, Jam City rapidly developed into one of the most successful mobile game companies with popular casual games such as "Cookie Jam," "Panda Pop," and "Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery." In mid-2021, Jam City abandoned its SPAC listing, and subsequently announced a $350 million financing, acquiring the South Korean game studio Ludia for $165 million, increasing its team to over 1300 people. At that time, Jam City had over 1.3 billion game downloads, 31 million monthly active users, and total revenue exceeding $2.5 billion.

At the end of 2021, Jam City announced the launch of the "AAA" next-generation blockchain game Champions: Ascension, and subsequently established a blockchain department for this purpose. Aber Whitcomb, Chief Technology Officer of Jam City, stated in a declaration: "We use blockchain as a tool to create value for players, directly impacting game design and digital ownership opportunities." "As players seek more freedom in digital experiences, our history of creating high-quality, easily accessible games firmly positions us to bring next-generation Web3 products to everyone."

Due to the softness of the global gaming industry and increasing internal competition, in August 2022, Jam City decided to carry out layoffs and restructuring, resulting in approximately 17% of employees being laid off. In addition, Josh Yguado, who was responsible for core business areas such as marketing, product management, and corporate development, believed that Jam City was no longer able to continue investing heavily in blockchain games and should adopt a wait-and-see attitude towards web3 games. On the other hand, Chris DeWolfe and others were enthusiastic about blockchain games and intended to fully transition to the Web3 field. When the Champions: Ascension project was announced, Chris DeWolfe had high praise and expectations for blockchain technology: "We have always been at the forefront of mobile technology because we believe that mobile technology is the next major revolution in computing. However, we believe that the impact of blockchain is more profound and on a larger scale."

In January 2023, co-founders DeWolfe and Whitcomb, along with a 50-person development team led by design director Johnny Casamassina, officially left Jam City and founded Plai Labs—focused on building the next generation social platform utilizing AI and Web3, with their first entertainment product being Champions Ascension. The initial appearance of the new project also brought another piece of good news to its gaming community: based on the experience of DeWolfe and others in social media, game design, and technology, Plai Labs received strong support from top-tier crypto venture capital firm a16z. This allowed the startup to successfully complete a large $32 million seed round of financing in the deep bear market stage, with a16z Games and a16z Crypto as the lead investors.

Introduction to the gameplay of Champions: Ascension

Champions: Ascension aims to build its game world "Massina" into a virtual universe, allowing every player to play, improve, socialize, and create new content in its arenas and vast cities. The computer game is currently in the Pre-Alpha stage. In order to reach a wider player base, Champions: Ascension is designed as a completely free game, allowing players to download and enter the game without any upfront or subscription fees. In addition, Champions: Ascension aims to lower the barriers for Web2 players by providing wallet-free connectivity, allowing players to link their game accounts directly to their email accounts without setting up a separate wallet. The game currently supports multiple languages such as English, French, German, and Italian, but does not yet support Chinese.

Like many MMORPGs, Champions Ascension's rich 3D game will be filled with various game modes. In "Massina," players can participate in high-risk arena battles, own real estate and upgrade their homes, exchange secrets with back alley rogues and swindlers, or relax with friends in a tavern. Its core gameplay involves players exploring, completing tasks, crafting equipment, and engaging in intense battles with opponents based on their "Champions" characters. The game supports various combat modes, including 1v1 and 3v3 battles, 10-player free-for-all, and team PvE.

"Massina" world consists of 12 "Champions" families, divided into 6 levels (classes), with 2 families in each level. Each "Champion" belongs to one of these families and can obtain core strength from 7 essences, as well as equip 6 types of functional and decorative "parts," each with unique statistical data that enhances the overall statistics and abilities of the "Champions" in different ways. Therefore, each "Champion" is unique and has different advantages in gameplay. Through various game modes and activities, players have the opportunity to earn in-game resources such as essences, bones, and gold, allowing them to unlock and strengthen "Champions" without spending any money. For players who want to progress quickly, they can also choose to use real currency to purchase in-game items and resources.

In addition, "Champions" are also divided into 5 levels (tiers), from low to high: Challengers, Gladiators, Eternals, Elemental Eternals, and Prime Eternals. The higher the level, the more benefits and features players can enjoy. Players can upgrade "Champions" from Challengers to Eternals, with the top two levels being owned by limited edition NFT holders. The number of Prime Eternals is only 7,622, released in early 2022, and exclusive benefits include special breeding options, early access, free forging, and airdrops.

Abandoning game tokens, focusing on NFT game assets

In May 2022, Champions Ascension released the first version of the whitepaper, in which the game designers did not provide detailed explanations of game tokens, only announcing three unlimited supply tokens. Jam City also expressed its hope for the game to be operated by DAO as soon as possible.

• $ESSENCE: This is the most important token in the game, used for all game mechanics such as crafting and breeding. ESSENCE can be obtained through daily tasks, exploration, battles in PvP and PvE, and many other auxiliary game modes.
• $MASSINA: Used to manage certain land in the game, this token can be obtained by staking Prime Eternals.
• $DIAMOND: This token allows players to access diamond equipment and items, and can only be obtained by staking Prime Eternals.

In the first quarter of this year, Champions: Ascension, the flagship game of Plai Labs, updated its whitepaper and released version 2.0. This version abandoned the rudimentary token economic model from the first version and no longer mentioned any information related to the token economic system. The project now defines Champions: Ascension as a Play to Own game, providing players with a way to mint and own NFTs through the game. Whitepaper V2.0 mentions: "Play to Earn games focus on generating or distributing ERC-20 tokens as the primary way for players to create and exchange value, while Play to Own games focus on generating assets with specific in-game utility."

However, Plai Labs stated that it will use the compliance framework of the blockchain game platform Forte to create a new currency that can be exchanged for fiat currency and used in the market. According to the announcement released by Champions: Ascension in October, the core economic elements of "Massina" currently include gold, Chrono XP, raw Essence, and Essence crystals. Gold is the most mainstream form of currency and can be used to recruit or train new soldiers, create Essence crystals, and purchase goods and services.

To expand the player base and optimize digital assets, in June of this year, Champions: Ascension announced that all related digital assets of the game will be migrated from Ethereum to Polygon, ensuring players enjoy a smooth gaming experience with high throughput and low latency, and significantly reducing the gas fees generated by trading digital assets, with all migrations to be completed by the end of this year.

In the coming months, the development team will focus on the Alpha experience, add and release more game content, optimize and iterate on existing game systems, and launch more systems, while removing outdated elements. As a Web3 game that can simultaneously land on multiple mainstream game platforms, the subsequent progress of Champions: Ascension is worth continuous attention.

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