The Next Great Universal Franchise, Blockchain Scalability, and the Steam of Blockchain Gaming
FORGOTTEN RUNES WIZARD’S CULT
If you weren’t living under a rock you probably heard of NFT’s, and the insane bubble they went through in the second half of last year. I’m sure many of you heard the acronym for the first time and were in disbelief as you saw some of the valuations. NFTs were being created daily, doing 100s of percent gains overnight, and this was the norm for several months. This year, they coming back to earth along with the rest of the cryptos as they experience their first true bear market. However, compared to the initial coin offering (ICO) bubble of 2018 where many coins went bust in the following bear market, top NFT projects have held up remarkably well, relative to the alt coin bubble. Today, NFTs are far from dead and this is a great opportunity to identify the projects that are building and innovating for the long run.
Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult (FRWC) is one project in particular that stands out. Started just over a year ago with a mint of 10,000 on chain wizard PFPs at a price of .077 ETH. They were minted out within minutes and have seen some of the most steady, organic growth in all of the space. They peaked out at around 4 ETH and have since come back to around 2 ETH. However, regardless of floor price, there has been tremendous progress in the project as the creators have been relentlessly building along with the community.
The team has consistently been returning value to the holders through various airdrops and a unique burn to mint mechanism that increased the scarcity of the collection. Today the collection consists of Wizards, Ponies, Souls, and Warriors allowing for multiple levels of entry prices to the ecosystem. The anonymous founders, Dotta and Elf J Trull, have extremely high aspirations for this project and have been consistently delivering on their promises. By partnering with some of the most talented creators in their respective fields, they are slowly but surely bringing the “Runiverse” to life.
Imagine if you had the chance to invest in the Harry Potter franchise, Lord of The Rings, or the Game of Thrones universe. You may not even like fantasy worlds and characters, but no doubt these would have made for great investments had that been possible. This is what FRWC aims to become and that is what NFTs have made possible. They are building an open source, fictional universe, with the goal of becoming the number one grossing franchise of all time. FRWC is pushing the boundaries of how we understand intellectual property and the creation of a global media franchise. No doubt, this is a monster task and a long runway ahead for them. But, so far they seem to be making the right partnerships and attracting some of the biggest investors from both web2 and web3.
We know many NFTs are promising to become the next big brand or franchise, but few actually have the connections and backing needed to get there. In just over a year into development FRWC has teamed up with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, animation, and gaming. Together with these partners, FRWC is creating a massively multiplayer online game, a comic book series, and a television series. These partnerships have the potential to set them apart and create a fantasy universe that can capture the imagination of millions of people whether they hold a wizard NFT or not.
Creating a game is no easy task and takes a lot of time which is why they have outsourced that work to Bisonic Games. Bisonic Games, is a newly formed, web 3 gaming studio with a team of 30+ developers. The team consists of AAA gaming industry veterans that have turned their sole focus to blockchain gaming. The game and land sale itself is being backed by a group of venture capital firms. Among them, are billionaire internet entrepreneur and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Six Seven fund as well as 1Confirmation. You have probably heard of Reddit, but 1Confirmation is equally as impressive. They were early investors in many of the biggest crypto projects today including projects like Ethereum, Coinbase, and Opensea. On top of that, 1Confirmation recently announced a brand new $100 million dollar NFT fund to back early stage projects and creators. However, before that, the only NFT project in their portfolio was none other than Forgotten Runes.
The 8 episode tv series is being made by the creator of the John Wick movies, Derek Koldstad, in partnership with well know animation studio, Titmouse. Titmouse has done the animations for several major series that have been featured on top networks such as Netflix, Adult Swim, Amazon Prime and HBO. Together they have everything needed to produce a AAA tv show. There is already a trailer out that gives you a sense of how professional this project is, and how big it could be. You can read more about the animated television series here. I highly encourage you to check out the trailer and ambitions of this project in this thread from Dotta.
The Runiverse, which will be the online multiplayer world for FRWC is set to launch with a land sale this month. The mint of 3D rendered wizards will also take place this month on July 31. These 3D characters can be used in upcoming metas. The first pre-alpha game in the Runiverse was successfully completed a few weeks ago. The game will be PC based and available to anyone. This will open the door for all gamers, not just the NFT holders, giving it the potential for a much larger market. Whether bull or bear the team and community are relentlessly building and delivering.