Roblox-style metaverse game Nifty Island concluded its play-to-airdrop campaign last week. Over the nine-month push, the game attracted more than 140,000 unique active wallets—but now it's preparing for the ISLAND token launch and airdrop.

Nifty Island entered open beta at the start of the year as a voxel-style sandbox title, letting players create and share their own game worlds (called Islands) to keep a potentially endless flow of fresh content on the platform. Since the play-to-airdrop campaign began, approximately 70,000 Islands have been made by users as the game's developers added new game modes and abilities, and improved the client.

"We now have a rock-solid foundation on which we can build the future of Nifty," co-founder Charles Smith told Decrypt.

Over its lifespan, the game has embraced over 400 crypto communities by directly integrating them in the game—like adding Pudgy Penguins playable characters. It's an element that Smith believes was a “massive accelerant” for the title.

Smith told Decrypt that the play-to-airdrop campaign has been a notable success, claiming that the game has grown to become the “most active 3D user generated game world in Web3.” He added that “on-chain prizes can drive intense engagement,” but admitted that putting money on the line creates uniquely difficult design challenges to keep everything fair for players.

Play-to-airdrop has become a go-to marketing strategy for crypto games looking to draw in players. One of the most successful examples is the Overwatch-style shooter Nyan Heroes, which launched a play-to-airdrop campaign alongside its listing on the Epic Games Store earlier this year. This move appeared to have been a catalyst that pushed the title into the top 30 games on the platform, bringing in 200,000 downloads during the initial playtest window.

For this strategy to work, the project ultimately has to release a token to complete the push and reward players for their efforts. This phase is now just around the corner for Nifty Island via its long-awaited ISLAND token.

“ISLAND is coming very soon. It's coming in a matter of weeks, not months,” Smith told Decrypt. “It will be paired with some exciting stuff we have been cooking. Nifty Island will be unrecognizable once we ship our next big updates.”

Exactly how much of the total supply will be allocated to the airdrop campaign has yet to be confirmed. The token will launch on the Ethereum mainnet, Smith confirmed, and could also be launched on other chains—though that has not yet been finalized. Nifty Island has previously released NFTs on Ethereum sidechain network Polygon.

Looking at previous play-to-airdrop games, such as Hamster Kombat, Catizen, and indeed Nyan Heroes, you’ll notice that many gaming tokens plummet in value in the days, weeks, and months that follow the airdrop. Many projects, including those that use the tap-to-earn model, fail to keep players hyped as a result.

“Play-to-airdrop games have proven capable of bootstrapping a community, but no one has made play-to-airdrop sustainable,” Smith told Decrypt.

He also commented on the recent success of Off the Grid, a battle royale shooter being built on Avalanche that recently launched in early access without its blockchain features implemented on the player side. It was a mainstream success, but Smith believes that de-emphasizing crypto elements is a losing play for blockchain games.

“Games like Off the Grid have done a commendable job making a splash while downplaying the crypto-enabled features of the game," he said. "I consider this a sort of Trojan Horse strategy that, while viable, is a pretty pessimistic view on crypto gaming. If we need to hide crypto, what does embracing the technology really do to give your game a decisive competitive advantage?"

Noting the play-to-airdrop model's unsustainable nature while remaining critical of Off the Grid’s lack of emphasis on the technology, Nifty Island plans to do something different going forward—something that Smith believes will shake up the burgeoning blockchain gaming space.

“Next we will work towards a totally new model for how Web3 games are monetized and interacted with,” Smith explained. “I can't share what it is yet, but what we're working on will be a new paradigm for Web3 gaming—as fundamental a shift as the emergence of play-to-airdrop was."

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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