Review: Gala Games blockchain platform combines gaming and commerce

Crypto games that combine play-to-earn (P2E) and nonfungible token (NFT) mechanics found a huge boost in 2021, thanks to the success of Axie Infinity and metaverse hype. 

However, playability still remains a major problem, as most crypto games focus on tokenomics rather than providing a fun and enjoyable gaming experience. 

Apart from the earning aspect, they often offer nothing special compared to traditional PC or console video games, where players can find interesting plots, nice visual effects and addictive gameplay. Axie Infinity has become known for its repetitive gameplay, known among gamers as “grinding,” while The Sandbox and Decentraland don’t really provide attractive graphics.

There is one worth the attention out of the many games out there, which actually isn’t really a game itself, but a platform. 

Gala Games presents itself as a gaming blockchain ecosystem. Its digital fuel is the Gala Games (GALA) token, created according to the ERC-20 standard on the Ethereum blockchain. It is also compatible with the Binance Smart Chain.

The decentralized ecosystem of Gala Games aims to provide gamers with control over gaming assets. Thanks to decentralization, they not only own their game items but also have a right to influence the whole project. Players will be engaged through distributed voting mechanisms to help determine which games should be added to the platform.

The Gala Games ecosystem includes five components: the games themselves, the game publishing platform, the NFT marketplace, cloud hosting and tokenomics.

Gaming platform: A combination of everything

Gala Games has a video game platform like Steam, PlayStation Store or Xbox Store, but unlike these platforms, Gala Games doesn’t rely on traditional video games but on projects that combine P2E mechanics, NFTs and decentralized finance (DeFi). Gamers can play freely and earn money just by playing.

Another feature of the platform is that the players themselves decide which games to add to Gala Games. Voting will be held among all Gala nodes and any player can create a node using their PC. In addition to the choice of the game, users will also be able to influence the development of the platform itself such as features to add and where it is better to direct the efforts of developers like creating new games, improving the interface or fixing bugs.

In February 2022, users of Gala Games decided to add the game called GRIT, akin to PUBG, to the platform. 

Free P2E video game development

The second important component of Gala Games is the creation of video games based on the blockchain and NFTs. To do this, the company will open a separate division dedicated only to the development of blockchain games. 

Currently, there are nine games on the Gala Games platform, and only two of them are in beta testing: Spider Tanks and Town Star. The next game, Mirandus, was supposed to come out in December 2021, but the release was pushed back to the end of 2022 or even 2023. The launch date of other projects is also unknown.

President of blockchain of Gala Games Jason Brink told Cointelegraph that the main idea of the project is gameplay that will be interesting for gamers:

“The key differentiating factor for us is that we put the game and the gameplay first, before anything else. We believe that games and gamers should always be at the forefront of the gaming ecosystem. This is why we focus on AAA-quality game development. We deployed over $150 million in capital in January alone to acquire games for the platform. It is important to note that these are fully fleshed out AAA games from teams with decades of experience making winning games.”

Town Star is a mixture of a city sim and a farming sim like Zynga’s Farmville. It is currently the only fully released game available on PC. In October 2021, Town Star added an NFT and a P2E feature that allows players to earn money by participating in weekly tournaments, completing daily challenges and earning special rewards.