Article was originally published in MVHQ  on February 12, 2023 by JakeAndBake. Some information may be outdated.

 

The latest project to grab my attention is Pirate Nation. A Pirate game on Polygon where you quest, find treasure, & battle. It’s easy to play, doesn’t require a large time commitment, has an addicting game loop, and is built by a very experienced and successful team.

 

Big shoutout to HeartofTexas for helping me with research and peer-review!

 

Team

 

• CEO, Amitt Mahajan: Co-creator of Farmville
• Art Director, Craig: Former Art Director of Farmville, 25 years of experience
• Product Lead, Adam Fern: Cash App founding team, Head of Product at Square Loans, integrated bitcoin payments back in 2013, consulted for Circle on USDC launch in 2014
• Engineering Lead, Fariz: co-founded Me.Me (generates 1 billion memes daily) & SocialWeekend (reached 150M users)
• Chief Creative Officer, Mark: Co-created Farmville & CityVille

 

Investors

 

• Alex Atallah: Co-Founder of Opensea
• Gabby Dizon: Yield Guild Games
• Justin Kan: Twitch Founder

 

(Likely more that haven’t been announced yet. Amount raised not disclosed, but team says they have years of runway)

 

Full team page: piratenation.game/#crew

 

The people behind a project are by far the most important thing for me when determining whether I want to put money into it. The team at Pirate Nation is one of the biggest selling points for me. They are the creators of Farmville, a massively successful Facebook game that launched back in 2009 and peaked at an insane 34.5 million Daily Active Users in 2010. For comparison, League of Legends currently averages around 10 million Daily Active Users.

 

One of the big questions that people ask about web3 games is whether they have the ability to achieve mass adoption. This team is one of the very few that can say they have already done it in the past. Maybe they can do it again?

 

Current Game

 

The current game loop is pretty basic. You send your pirates out on quests once/twice a day, they collect resources, you craft things from the resources, and level up to do even harder quests. I realize this doesn't sound insanely compelling, however they continue to release new updates every week with updated features and bug fixes. They are constantly expanding the offering and improving the user experience. 

 

 

Every item that you receive in the game is airdropped to you as an NFT that you can sell on Arbitrum marketplaces (Opensea mainly). There are no transaction pop-ups and gas is 100% covered by the team, so it does not have the clunky feel that other crypto games struggle with. They do not have a native erc-20 token or plan to implement one. This is a great move imo. Managing an in-game economy is a huge task that no P2E game with a token has gotten right yet. Instead, their items are bought/sold with ETH on-chain. 

 

My current thought process with the game is: 

 

• I am going to grind out the quests each day to level my pirates & gather resources (about 5 min of my time per day).
• I’ll be in an excellent position once the anticipated features are added to the game and new users come in.
• If I choose, I can easily earn steady revenue by selling my resources. Or I can stockpile to use in the future.

 

Roadmap

 

Planned future updates include:

• PVP: Fight against other pirates
• World Bosses: Team up with other players to defeat deadly creatures
• Pirate attributes & skill classes
• Leaderboard rewards
• Group competitions
• High risk/reward adventures
• Decorate/customize your pirates & your island
• Free voxel pfp airdrop

 

A Founder’s Pirate is needed to play the game and there are only 10k of them, so the topic of expanding the supply is an important one. From talking with Tex, it doesn’t sound like new Pirates will be released any time soon. They want to have the game loop much more established. The team also is aware of how important it is to retain value for Founder’s Pirates. They actively listen to community feedback and have said many times that Founder’s Pirates are an access pass to the entire ecosystem.

 

Important Notes

 

• The team behind Pirate Nation is called Proof of Play. Pirate Nation is the first of several games that they plan to develop. Founder’s Pirates will be the genesis token for all Proof of Play games and will provide utility for those future games as well.
• There are two collections for Founder’s Pirates. One on ETH mainnet and one on Arbitrum. Combined total supply will always equal 10k, but circulating supply for each will vary. You will want to check prices on both before buying.

 

Conclusion

 

I just wrote a whole article about why I am bullish on this project, but please know there are always going to be risks, like any project. Risks that they don't execute to expectations, risk that adoption never comes, risk that game economy breaks, etc, etc. Always do your own research.

 

Resources

 

Website: https://piratenation.game/

Founder's Pirates (ETH): https://blur.io/collection/piratenation

Founder's Pirates (Polygon): https://opensea.io/collection/piratenationpolygon

Pirate Nation Items (Polygon): https://opensea.io/collection/piratenationitems

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateNationNFT

HeartofTexas article: https://heartoftexas.medium.com/hoping-for-a-treasure-chest-in-pirate-nations-3b441f2a7804

Info Packet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sWlp1mabgaBiOPF-Y_xh0a0OdZCHi5jLXs4Ky6tn8KM/edit