Overview
GM folks,
We’re beginning a new series -Weekly Game Reviews. This week we’re covering one of the first football-themed web3 games-CyBall. LFG!
CyBall is a football simulator card game in which players can collect and build a team of NFT Cyborgs (called CyBlocs) and go to war against other players, obviously on a football turf!
If one-to-one matches are too easy for you, don’t sweat it. Cyball has in-game modes like Leagues and Tournaments that will keep you hooked for a long time. The game’s refreshing take on strategy card games, along with its dynamic visuals and engaging gameplay, has made it a fan favourite in the web3 gaming space. In August 2021, Aaron Yee, an ex-Animoca product manager with over 10 years of experience in game development launched CyBall with CTO Tin Tran and two other co-founders.
Entering Cy-Ball-Verse
Before you put on your metaverse sneakers and score some goals in CyBall, here are some key pointers.
Classes
CyBlocs come in five distinct Classes in CyBall. Each class represents the rating range and rarity of a CyBloc. The five classes are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Legendary.
Traits
Each CyBloc comes with unique traits when it is minted. You can think of them as the personality traits of your Cyborg footballer. A few examples of CyBloc traits from the game are Maestro, All Rounder, Super Striker, Show Off, etc. Traits are different from classes, meaning that a Cybloc from a higher class is not guaranteed to have superior traits.
- Traits affect the character and performance of a CyBloc in the game.
- Traits come in three levels of rarity: common, rare, and super rare.
Skills
"Skills" refer to a CyBloc’s footballing attributes. They also represent various actions a player can take during a match. The six football skills in CyBall are Tackling, Dribbling, Crossing, Physical, Shooting, and Passing.
Level and XP
All CyBlocs are minted at Level 1 and can evolve up to Level 100.
To level up their CyBlocs, players need to earn 100 experience points by winning matches. A level 1 CyBloc, for example, can advance to a level 2 after gaining 100 experience points, and then to a level 3 after gaining another 100.
It's important to note that the level and XP of a CyBloc are reset to 1 once it's traded or transferred to another player. This means that capital-rich players can not buy their way to the top in CyBall.
Game Modes
CyBall features four in-game modes: Exhibition, Leagues, Tournaments, and Training.
Here’s a breakdown:
Exhibition: These are casual player-versus-player matches. Exhibition matches are ideal for practicing your skills and earning some digital rewards.
League: In league mode, players compete to reach the top of the leaderboard. Ratings are used to classify leagues into different tiers. A player must sign up with a team of 7 CyBloc before the season begins in order to participate in a league.
Tournaments: These are league matches, but for the best teams in the game. These are invite-only events; the tournament organizers must call for players to participate.
Training: In the training mode, you can improve your tactical skills without risk.
Mentoring
Mentoring is an in-game feature that allows mature CyBlocs to mentor newly minted CyBlocs.
This enables the players to transmit the Class and Traits of the mature CyBlocs to their newly minted characters.
CyBall NFT Marketplace
CyBall’s NFT marketplace is the native platform of the game where players can buy, sell, and trade in-game assets such as CyBlocs, CyPods, and Stadiums.
CyLoans
CyLoans is a scholarship system introduced by CyBall wherein players can loan out their CyBloc NFTs to new users in exchange for a small fee.
Tokenomics and Utility
Now that you’re up to speed with the basics of Cyball, let’s put our nerd hats on and go deeper into the game's economy. Pro Tip - If you’re investing significant time and capital into a web3 game, ALWAYS go through its tokenomics.
CyBall, like Axie Infinity, has a two-token economy. Its tokens are CyBloc Battery Token (CBT) and CyBall Token (CYB).
CyBloc Battery Token (CBT)
CBT is the primary utility currency in the economy of CyBall. Translation - this is the token that you’ll use to make all transactions in the CyBall economy. It's also the token that you’ll earn by winning matches in the game. CBT runs on two blockchains— Ethereum and BNB.
CyBall Token (CYB)
CYB is the governance token of the project. CYB can be earned as a reward for:
- Staking
- Participating in League and Tournament Matches
- Supporting the CyBall Ecosystem
Players can use their earned CYB tokens to participate in CyBall's governance or mentor new CyBlocs.
CYB is an ERC-20 and BEP-20 token.
In the next section, we’ll look at some of the factors that’ll give us some insight into the financial state of CyBall’s economy. The analysis will be limited to CBT as it's the primary utility currency of CyBall.
Demand
As of July 13, 2022, the price of CyBall’s CBT token is $0.003282. The value of CBT has slumped 99.16% from its all-time high of $0.3796. The number of unique wallets interacting with the game's smart contracts has also declined from 17,000 in May 2022 to 10,000 in July 2022.
Supply
CyBall’s CBT token has a circulating supply of 15,000,001. Note, that the figure is not audited by any third-party data aggregators like CoinMarketCap but self-reported by the CyBall team. Game developers are still figuring out the ideal tokenomic design for the project, which is why they haven't set a cap on the maximum token supply for CBT.
Competition
CyBall currently ranks 33rd on DappRadar’s list of top blockchain games. The biggest competitors to CyBall are games like Axie Infinity (AXS), Farmer’s World (FWW), and Alien Worlds (TLM), which have a dominant hold over the attention and transaction volume in the market right now.
Here’s the 24-hour transaction volume of Cyball, Axie Infinity, and Alien Worlds.
Transaction Volume (in a 24-hour period)
- CBT: $154000
- TLM: $24 million
- AXS: $74 million
CBT may appear to be weak in comparison to these top P2E games. But these titles had a multi-year head start over CyBall. Moreover, the tokens of both Axie Infinity and Alien Worlds are down almost 90% from their all-time high.
Note that the transaction volume mentioned here is seen in the secondary market. The in-game transaction volume for every game mentioned here will be significantly less than the above-mentioned figures.
Other than these market leaders, CyBall's primary competitors will be up-and-coming titles in the football niche like Dribblie and Urban Ball. Both of these projects are currently in development but are already making noise in the market. Dribblie is coming up with an innovative deflationary asset model—that will reportedly make in-game assets more valuable with time. Whereas, UrbanBall is bringing football icons to the trading card NFT space.
Stats Table (CBT)
- Current Price- $0.003468
- All Time High Price- $0.3796 (-99.08%)
- All Time Low Price- $0.003169 (+0.25%)
- Current Market Cap- $52408
More Remarks
Shocker! Most players in the play-to-earn gaming space are in it for the money. It appears that speculators and hustlers left CyBall as the price of its token took a dive. The good news is that the developers of the game are here to stay. CyBall’s got a great team of builders with years of experience in blockchain and game development. Despite the bear market, the CyBall team shipped its Reborn update that has a new and improved user experience and an upgraded matchmaking system. The developers are pushing to bring CyBall to every operating system, including Android, iOS, and macOS. We also had a Twitter Spaces with one of the co-founders Benji recently, you can listen to the recording here.
Community
Here's a breakdown of CyBall's social media audience.
- Twitter - 60.6k Followers
- Discord - 94463 Members
- Medium - 970 Followers
CyBall is a relatively new game compared to OGs like Axie Infinity, Spinterlands, etc. Still, it has managed to build an impressive community. Building a web3 game is hard, especially in the bear market when everybody is doubting you. If you enjoy the game, go show some love on their socials. Ciao!
