Card games have always been a great alternative to kill time while having fun. Over the years, they have taken many faces. For instance, back in the time of kings and queens, parlor games involved a lot of card games like Bridge or Gin. Even the Wild West used cards in saloons to gamble and assert dominance.
Eventually, card games became more complex. To start off, they began as trading cards. These came in a variety of forms in many sectors of the entertainment industry. For example, baseball, WWE, and Pokemon cards were very popular. Now, these rare collectibles are worth thousands. Then, we switched to digital card games. While these games do come in physical copies, they became popular online for global reach.
Now, gamers across the globe could connect and form a global community. This also allowed gaming companies to get more creative with games. Such games come with deep and rich lore and can be story-driven. Popular examples are Magic: The Gathering and Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. The next stage brings us to the present. What would a digital card game look like with the presence of blockchain technology and the metaverse?
A Digital Card Game Braving The Metaverse
Cross The Ages is a digital card game that runs on the blockchain. What’s special about Cross The Ages is that it combats counterfeit cards with its unique NFC solution. Non-Fungible Cards (NFCs) allow gamers on the platform to create their own card and turn it into a unique physical card that can never be replicated. It comes with blockchain-approved and smart contract facilitated ownership.
More incredibly, the card game is gearing to deliver an experience. It hopes to shift from a play-to-earn blockchain philosophy and introduce the play-and-earn philosophy. Here, gamers will play and earn an elevated experience along with so much more. Besides, the Cross The Ages team is giving their all to build a cohesive, active, and dynamic story for their world.
For instance, they have written 7 books to facilitate the lore of the world. They have also hired international artists to create the most breathtaking visuals and stunning, mesmerizing, and detailed artwork. No doubt, the art and lore rival that of Magic: The Gathering. Ultimately, Cross The Ages aims to bring their world onto the metaverse.
Here, gamers can create a character that immerses themselves in the game. Within the metaverse, they become their character, their avatar, much like the characters in Ready Player One. Within this realm, they can experience a ‘realistic’ in-game life. Get ready to experience a new world with deep lores, captivating tales, and magnificent visuals!
A Game With A ‘Soul’ Will Outlast Them All
The books, the art, the story, the technology, the team, the platform, the ideology, all these were essential to nail down for Cross The Ages to deliver their ultimate goal. To highlight, this was all in preparation for the game’s release in April 2022. Just a few days away and the world will see if Cross The Ages is truly a contender to Magic: The Gathering.
To celebrate their excitement before the launch, Cross The Ages came to Dubai, UAE to attend the SiGMA Asia and AIBC Asia Summit 2022. The 3-day event took place between March 20-22, 2022. The game’s co-founders Sami Chlagou and Christophe De Courson sat down with CMO Ting Peng and other significant contributors to the game during many panels at the event.
In detail, Sami begins by explaining the drive and passion behind the game. He, along with the co-founder of Swissborg Ventures — Anthony Lesoismier-Geniaux, share their deep passion for gaming. Both have spent numerous amounts of time and money in their youth playing a wide range of video games. So much so that when free-to-play (F2P) games came to be, they both felt the experience it provided would fail. However, upon seeing the success of F2P gaming they saw the potential that lies within it.
Specifically, Anthony says they signed with the project because they saw a soul within it. He says that having a 10-year plan proves that the company is here to stay. In particular, Sami saw the infinite possibilities that could come with the world’s latest technology. To specify, the popularity of NFTs, the security of blockchain power, and the untamed potential of the metaverse together paved the way to what Cross The Ages will be.
A New Experience: Non-Fungible Cards (NFCs)
Cross The Ages will be out on the Polygon Network next month, its $CTA token will be listed following after. More so, its fully-functional metaverse experience will arrive sometime next year. As mentioned before, the ideology of NFTs is further explored to bring NFCs. As we understand, NFTs work in the process of creating art and turning this into an NFT, then inserting it into the digital world.
On Cross The Ages, users will be able to make NFCs (non-fungible cards). These are physical cards that confirm possession and ownership using smart contracts. This eliminates the possibility of counterfeit cards. Does this mean anyone can make their own card and add them to the universe? This is true.
<embed>https://twitter.com/CrossTheAges/status/1485658664287412226</embed>
The Cross The Ages team wishes to build a detailed-fictional universe filled with intensely rich lore. To deliver this, the team has written 7 books to incorporate a massive story. Using these, players can create a character within this world and create a story around what exists. For instance, a gamer can be a character on the game and truly experience the game via the metaverse.
A Shift From Play-to-Earn to Play-and-Earn
The true goal here is to put the player in the middle of the gaming experience. Sami hopes to change the ideology of Play-to-Earn into Play-and-Earn. He believes the former makes gaming seem like a job and hopes to bring the gaming sector back to focus on the ‘fun’ aspect of gaming. Thus, fun-to-game is something he hopes to bring to life with Cross The Ages.
In fact, this was a recurring topic throughout the 3-day event. It seems all GameFi enthusiasts were intrigued by this new Play-and-Earn point of view. Most speakers at the event were adamant about creating a ‘true metaverse’, one that belongs solely to the people. While the metaverse will be open to big corps, they will have no monopoly over the metaverse.
No more will gamers have to give their all and invest passion, time, and money over a character that cannot exist outside one game. Once a game discontinues, that character ‘dies’. Now with the blockchain and metaverse, gamers can live as their character forever, across thousands of platforms as the metaverse continues to grow.
A ‘True’ Metaverse Will Be Free For All
In an adjoining panel, speakers highlight how ‘Meta’, once ‘Facebook’, is trying to monopolize the metaverse. Speakers say, much like with the ‘Libra’ project, they will fail. The metaverse will only ever be the metaverse if it will belong to a decentralized power. Niko De Jonghe, President of Blockchain Valley, compared Facebook to dinosaurs. He says, “They are big, but they are also extinct”.
In the same panel, another speaker said that the hardest thing about the metaverse is simply the fact that it offers so many opportunities in a variety of fields, that many are still deciding on what they want to do.
Another iconic comment from a panel about the NFT effect and how the metaverse should belong to the people came from Jayden Sage, Founder of Skywater. When asked what would happen to big corps who will enter the metaverse with the mindset of monopolizing it, Jayden says, “Centralized corps will be fractionalized and NFT’d into oblivion”. He also said that the most exciting metaverse projects are the ones that haven’t come out yet.
There you have it, the leading figures say that the metaverse is coming and it is ready to change everything as we know it. For now, the metaverse is starting with the gaming industry, many interesting projects like Cross The Ages and Oly Sport are leading the charge. Above all, the space is certainly gaining momentum and the world awaits to see what will come next.
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