Mummy x Polkastarter Gaming AMA | Part 1 — Crypto Gaming’s Future
A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of a Twitter Space conversation about all things Mummy and blockchain gaming with the wonderful Omar, the Head of Gaming at Polkastarter Gaming. We’ve gathered the highlights here, in a nutshell, alongside some new insights into the Mummy worldbuilding and game development process. This first article follows the discussion between Mara and Omar, while the second article goes over the questions from the Polkastarter Gaming community. You can also listen to the Twitter Space here.
The conversation between Mara, the lore creator of Mummy, and Omar, is edited for clarity and conciseness, but the meaning remains the same.
“I genuinely think this is probably one of the best-looking RPGs right now.” The space is buzzing with enthusiasm and sheer enjoyment for building Mummy, a project driven by a passionate team of gaming and business professionals with vast experience working for Square Enix, Sea of Thieves, IBM, and Ubisoft, among many others.
“We chose to create Mummy as a web3 game that is play-first, that offers a very exciting experience for both traditional players and crypto enthusiasts.” Mara elaborates on the motivations behind the team’s decisions. “Owning your in-game assets, NFTs with various utilities offers more than entertainment value to our community and opens up the gaming environment to potential collaborations and opportunities, perhaps even in real life in the future. At Mummy, we’re all passionate gamers, and after spending countless hours in these virtual worlds playing and battling monsters, it’s so much more exciting to know that you own something — whether it’s just a digital art collectible or has additional utility.”
“So what does that look like? For example, do I own my character? Do I own my weapons? Could you talk to us a bit more about that?” asks Omar.
Mara emphasizes the beliefs and values of the Mummy team when it comes to games — free to play and available for as many people as possible because “the barrier to entry of owning a character to enjoy the game can become very exclusive and keep a lot of people out.” Both Omar and Mara acknowledge the reluctance most traditional players feel towards NFTs and the importance of a play-first approach to game design. This commitment to quality gameplay and entertainment strives to appeal to passionate gamers just as much as to crypto enthusiasts and can be a catalyst for mass adoption in the space.
“Even if someone has never heard of crypto before, they can enjoy the game without having a crypto wallet, and we will keep their NFTs and earnings in escrow. We’ll notify players at various time intervals to let them know — Hey, you’ve won this cool NFT, or you’ve gained that amount of $MMY — If you want to take ownership of them, then it takes five minutes to create your wallet and to transfer those assets.”
This ease of access, guidance throughout the onboarding process, and emphasis on blockchain education really appeal to Omar. “I think that’s super powerful. In terms of the approach, we’re definitely fans of it. We always recommend the free-to-play approach because it’s audacious of games to ask you to spend a thousand plus USD just to try the game. I think the new kind of free-to-play model that we see — not new in general, but new in the web3 space — is probably going to be the way to go moving forward.”
Mummy aims to nurture a friendly, safe, and inclusive virtual world in which players have a choice between three characters — Sorceress, Warrior, and Ranger. Gameplay requires collaboration between players with various abilities, which will encourage friendships as they’ll have to “work in synergy to battle certain monsters.”. The game builds in complexity as the abilities of different characters are combined to tackle various tasks and challenges.
“Players can own various items such as weapons as NFTs.” adds Mara. She’s also thrilled about the Primordial NFT collection that the team has been planning for a few months. This might come out in Q4 2022, sooner than anticipated in the Twitter Space. There will also be a land sale next year. “Land adds another layer of complexity to the Mummy world. If you own land, you can build various constructions that have different roles within the game. You can employ other players to help with building, mining, and crafting. The land is rich in various types of resources. Landowners will have to trade these resources with one another to obtain the materials necessary to build various types of construction, such as workshops, taverns, temples, shrines, or many others.” Furthermore, Creators — developers and digital artists — will be encouraged to contribute to the space in the design of custom buildings and be rewarded for their work in $MMY.
"How do you foresee this playing out? In terms of scale, what’s the end game for Mummy? Are you planning to launch new chapters? Is it an open world? Could you walk us through the game experience itself?” asks Omar.
“There’s going to be a narrative line so that there’s a progression in the game, but we don’t have an actual ending in mind. There’ll always be a bigger boss just around the corner. There will be various chapters in the future in the actual game and milestones that players have to achieve down the road.”
The Mummy team hopes for the world to keep expanding and offer players more than Ancient Egypt to explore, to delve into other mythologies as well. “Mummy takes place in an alternate Earth-style universe. We have lots of original lore. We’re not an Assassins’ Creed kind of game.We don’t aim to be historically accurate. There are lots of fantasy elements, so hopefully, that will keep the excitement going. The gods can give players various blessings, which also influence their battle strategy. So you have these additional abilities and you can change factions based on the deity that you pledge allegiance to. Some of them are fighting for the Chaos faction, others for Order, but the gods are also very volatile, and they have their own agenda. So they may change their allegiance too.”
Omar considers it a very fun approach to “see someone that’s standing for stability and peace go for chaos” and to have creators and other community members as active participants in the creation of lore and storylines that can become canon.
The conversation then steers toward the Tear of Aaru NFT, the story behind it, as well as Mummy’s marketing campaign. Mara explains that the Stela NFT is a fragment of the Tear of Aaru, a very ancient artifact that was found by Neferure, the chantress of the city of Nefr'Akhet, where Chapter 1: Battle of Ankahur the Fallen takes place. After the Clash, Set destroyed it, and now, players can be whitelisted to earn a Stela by connecting their wallets to the Mummy website.
“We see the very accelerated effects of this conflict where the ancient lands turn from lush and filled with people living in harmony into ash, ruin, and suffering. This is meant to mirror the severe and sudden climate change that Egypt underwent several thousand years ago.”
Part 2 of the Polkaster Gaming x Mummy Twitter Space gives answers to buzzing questions from the community. It will be available soon.
More about Mummy.io
Mummy is a next-gen open-world MMORPG set in Ancient Egypt with a robust play-and-earn model powered by Unreal Engine 5. Unlike most Gamefi play-to-earn games, Mummy is free-to-play and offers an enjoyable gaming experience to the players. The game is created by a team of seasoned game developers from Ubisoft, Square Enix, Sea of Thieves, and IBM. The 1st playable Demo Chapter 1: The Battle of the Ankahur the Fallen releasing this summer.
