Written by Meta Era 特邀作者「0xShinChan」

With the significant increase in the price of Bitcoin in November 2023, the Web3 gaming token market also showed significant growth, with a market capitalization increase of 62% from the previous month. In the midst of this market boom, the STEPN team’s new Gas Hero game is eye-catching. Not only does this game carry on the excellent tradition of the STEPN team, but more importantly, it has chosen GMT as the main token within the game instead of issuing new tokens, which undoubtedly brings new growth potential to GMT.

(GameFi market cap data displayed by Footprint)

According to the Find Satoshi Lab (FSL) announcement on November 1, Gas Hero is scheduled to run a community beta from November 24 to December 8, and certain user groups, such as Gas Hero badge holders, Find Satoshi Lab ambassadors, and partners, will be eligible for beta. As a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), Gas Hero unfolds its narrative in a rich sci-fi world, offering a deeply immersive gameplay experience and expanding its story setting into comic book territory, in stark contrast to STEPN’s campaign-driven reward mechanics. Gas Hero is more focused on providing a deeply engaged and strategic game environment. According to Footprint Analytics, in mid-November, Gas Hero saw more than 30,000 daily coupons minted, showing its popularity.

（Footprint Analytics Gas Hero 数据模版）

This research report aims to provide an in-depth analysis of Gas Hero’s gameplay, design philosophy, tokenomics, and game assets. We’ll explore how the game has made its mark in the blockchain gaming market and its potential impact on the value and utility of the GMT token.

Gas Hero: Post-nuclear revival and strategy game to explore power, fame, and wealth

Gas Hero, created by the team behind last year’s sensational chain game STEPN, marks an important step forward for the Find Satoshi Lab (FSL) team in the direction of creativity and immersive gaming. In stark contrast to STEPN’s campaign model, which engages users with simple game mechanics and token rewards, but lacks characters and story background, Gas Hero presents a grand sci-fi world and deep story, even extending its narrative into comics. The story of “Gas Hero” tells the story of how humanity after a nuclear war started from an underground struggle in a resource-poor environment and gradually moved to the surface in an effort to revive human civilization. The game’s players compete for power, fame, and wealth.

(Gas Hero 白皮书)

Gas Hero isn’t just a game, it’s a fusion of strategy and social. The game emphasizes the use of game theory, provides players with a rich variety of strategy options, and ensures the transparency and security of on-chain data through a decentralized trading platform. A highly participatory governance model is also introduced in the game, allowing players to be deeply involved in the management and decision-making process of the game world.

The launch of Gas Hero is not only an important strategic expansion for the STEPN team, but also heralds a new direction for the entire Web3 gaming space, with its in-depth exploration of game strategy, social interaction, and decentralized economy to bring players a new gaming experience.

Strategy & Speed: Uncover Gas Hero’s automated combat and character skills

In Gas Hero, combat is the key to earning resources, and players need to accumulate resources through individual or guild battles. Gas Hero introduces an automated combat system. Players need to pre-arrange their battle lineup before participating in various battles.

(Gas Hero 白皮书)

The roster includes six heroes, each with a unique codename and can be equipped with weapons and pets. Next to each hero is a vertical action bar that, when full, triggers an attack or special skill, and its charging speed depends on the hero’s speed stat.

Game Architecture: Strategy and Exploration to Rebuild Civilization

Gas Hero’s game map is divided into five levels, including City - District - 9 Guilds - 9 Clan - 9 Base. The game features 175 cities spread across a planet that has experienced a war of extermination, each of which serves as a new starting point for players to rebuild their civilization.

(Gas Hero 白皮书)

Each player will build their own base in unique world coordinates. Here, the player is not only a warrior, but also a rebuilder of civilization. They will need to find their place in this new and ever-changing world through resourcefulness and strategy.

Battle Mode Analysis: Auto Battles and Hero Strategies

Gas Hero features an auto-battle mode where players need to configure their battle lineup in advance and use it to participate in a variety of battles. The roster consists of 6 heroes, each with a unique codename, and each roster can only contain one hero with a specific codename. Each hero can equip a weapon and carry a pet.

Heroes, weapons, and pets

In the world of Gas Hero, players will encounter 48 unique heroes, divided into three categories: Output, Tank, and Healer. Each hero type has its own unique abilities and combat styles, providing players with a wealth of strategic options and combo possibilities.

During the creation of heroes, players will experience the charm of randomness. A hero’s five basic stats - Attack, Defense, Health, Mana, and Speed - will increase randomly during the initial phase, and will increase in the amount of the initial increase over the course of subsequent upgrades. This randomness not only adds to the fun of the game, but also makes each player’s hero mix unique.

In the combat world of Gas Hero, players can equip their heroes with unique weapons. Higher rarity weapons are equipped with more random attributes, increasing the uncertainty and strategy of combat. Gas Hero also introduces four types of pets: Dragons, Treants, Hermit Crabs, and Pandas, each with five rarities and seven different evolutionary levels.

In addition, the auction house mechanic in the game provides a unique market trading environment. Each guild and jurisdiction has its own auction house, which displays a variety of items provided by the authorities. This mechanic has a clever balance between supply and demand in the market, and players can look for opportunities in the auction house to acquire rare hero recruitment posts, and maybe even rare genesis heroes.

Economic Model Analysis: The Critical Role of GMT Token in the Game

Gas Hero cleverly uses GMT as the main currency for all in-game asset transactions, effectively improving the utility and liquidity of GMT.

As the native token of STEPN, a Web3 app that converges Game-Fi and Social-Fi, GMT has a total supply of 6 billion. 30% of this will be distributed to users through STEPN’s move-to-earn activities and governance engagements.

GMT hit an all-time high of $3.75 in April 2022 and has now fallen back to the 0.25 - 0.3 level. GMT plays multiple roles in STEPN: participating in governance, distributing staking rewards, and accumulating protocol revenue. In order to access in-app features such as sneaker upgrades and new shoe minting, GMT is burned.

GMT price trend over the past 90 days

GMT’s earning mechanism shows a unique strategy and economic dynamics in the STEPN application. The core of the mechanism lies in its level and energy requirements, ensuring that only users who reach a certain level and activity level are eligible for GMT. This design not only increases the threshold for participation, but also encourages active participation and long-term engagement of users. Its halving mechanism is similar to Bitcoin, ensuring the long-term value and scarcity of GMT, with the total amount halved every three years. By releasing GMT on a daily basis in an exponential decay mode, the mechanism ensures the sustainability of the token supply and provides users with potential value growth.

Gas Hero is cleverly designed to place GMT at the heart of its game economy, creating a deep reliance on GMT. In the game, activities such as the upgrading of heroes and bases require the consumption of GMT, which not only promotes the continuous demand for GMT, but also accelerates its circulation within the game. This mechanism effectively links the progress of the game and the player’s investment to the market value of GMT, so that the player’s game experience and the economic value of GMT are closely linked.

In addition, the guild system and complex five-level governance structure in Gas Hero provide a wealth of strategy and social dynamics that further deepen the game’s engagement and interactivity. These multi-layered social and governance elements not only enrich the gaming experience, but also create additional use cases and value for GMT.

Since October, Gas Hero’s aggressive marketing strategy and the recovery of the chain gaming market have had a significant impact on the GMT price. GMT prices have risen by more than 70% over the past month, reflecting the community’s high anticipation for Gas Hero, but despite Token Unlocks, there are still more than 2 billion tokens to unlock in GMT, and these uncirculated tokens will have a significant impact on future market performance. For GMT’s future performance, market demand and response will be deciding factors.

GMT unlocking information on Token Unlocks

Conclusion

The launch of Gas Hero could be a key step for the Find Satoshi Lab team to reinvigorate the GMT ecosystem. Its maps are based on the earth and city, which naturally appeals to STEPN’s global player base, breaking the language and nationality restrictions of current NFT games. As a simple but strategic battle game, Gas Hero is themed around the challenges of humans and AI, providing players with a simple battle experience and a more focused on tactical combinations and strategic layouts. This global player interaction setup undoubtedly adds to the game’s appeal and engagement.

Considering that STEPN had 700,000 daily active users at its peak and the team had achieved monthly revenue of over 100 million, these achievements undoubtedly brought valuable resources and experience to the team. However, following STEPN, the team’s Dooar and Mooar have not yet achieved the expected success, and the GMT price remains depressed.

GMT Dune Data Template

In the current bear market environment, whether Gas Hero can become a turning point for the industry and lead the GMT ecosystem to prosperity is the focus of all investors and players.

Source: Golden Finance