A Review of Four FIFA-Endorsed Web3 Football Games
Author: @CC99Carol Compiled by: Wu Says Blockchain Recent centralized exchange collapses have dealt another heavy blow to the crypto market that was just beginning to recover. Market sentiment is generally negative and pessimistic, but fortunately, the 2022 Qatar World Cup is approaching, which may help restore market confidence to some extent. On November 13, 2022, FIFA publicly announced that it would launch four blockchain football games during the Qatar World Cup.
Author: @CC99Carol
Compiled by: Wu Says Blockchain
## Abstract
Recent centralized exchange collapses have dealt another heavy blow to the crypto market that was just beginning to recover. Market sentiment is generally negative and pessimistic, but fortunately, the 2022 Qatar World Cup is approaching, which may help restore market confidence to some extent. On November 13, 2022, FIFA publicly announced that it would launch four blockchain football games during the Qatar World Cup.
https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/fifa-unveils-range-of-new-web-3-0-games-ahead-of-fifa-world-cup-qatar-2022
In a sense, these four upcoming projects can be said to have received official endorsement. They are: "FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in the Upland Metaverse," "AI League: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition," "FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 on Phygtl," and "Matchday Challenge: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition." Today, let's take a brief look at these four projects.
## Introduction
For the recently sluggish market, the upcoming World Cup is undoubtedly a shot of adrenaline. Crypto investors are also gearing up to invest in World Cup-related blockchain projects. Meanwhile, with the rising popularity of GameFi, many Web3 developers are trying to connect GameFi with the World Cup.
Combining the World Cup with GameFi for projects is not surprising at all. Simply analyzing the logic behind it reveals the fan effect. The World Cup is a global hotspot that attracts worldwide attention, so one can imagine how massive its fan base is. Being able to let fans participate in related games, even interact with star players, build related communities, and have derivatives that can be traded in secondary markets for profit, allows fan groups to benefit while engaging - this is truly a win-win situation.
At the same time, the World Cup's own fan effect also increases the stickiness of GameFi projects, compensating for the weakness of traditional GameFi projects that easily lose players. With blockchain's inherent advantages, the global immersive gaming platform created by GameFi will inevitably become a hot track.
Currently, the leading GameFi projects are Sorare and Footium, which have received $680 million in Series B funding and $3.35 million in seed funding respectively, demonstrating their market potential. Apart from these two mature projects, FIFA has also officially announced the launch of four blockchain football games during the Qatar World Cup. Today, let me introduce these four projects.
## Project Overview
### 1. FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in the Upland Metaverse
https://www.upland.me/
Upland users can collect official FIFA World Cup digital assets, earn or purchase various World Cup-related digital items, including legendary video highlights of the matches. They can also purchase special-colored items to customize their homes in Upland, trade assets with friends, and win prizes.
Upland is essentially a virtual property trading game based on reality and blockchain. Upland has been described by media as "Monopoly on the blockchain," where players can buy, trade, collect, and sell virtual properties on the platform. Upland also aims to create an open market economy based on true ownership, blurring the lines with the real world, which lays the foundation for Upland's future development. As a World Cup-based game, it embodies Upland's economic planning aspirations.
Additionally, Upland doesn't have complex private key and wallet management - users only need to provide an email address, create a username, and set a password, providing great convenience. For payments, users can use common methods like PayPal, credit cards, and in-app purchases. All these allow Upland users to truly experience an open economic trading market.
### 2. AI League: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition
https://fifaworldcupaileague.com/
AI League is a 4v4 casual football game that uses AI-controlled characters. Players can act as coaches and owners of AI teams, formulate tactics, improve abilities through training, and build their own teams by collecting and trading their favorite characters.
The supporting AI decentralized protocol, Altered State Machine (ASM), is an agent platform for creating and training AI. ASM currently exists at the intersection of GameFi, DeFi, and NFT markets, with unique global patents and proven technology, promising to become a powerful economic layer for autonomous agents. With this protocol's support, AI League should be able to carve out its own market niche.
### 3. Matchday Challenge: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition
https://matchday.com/
Matchday is an AR mobile app that allows users to customize and take World Cup photos through casual social prediction games based on football cards, targeting the high emotions of football fans. The fun comes not only from "picking correctly" but also from being the best in one's social circle.
This project is still in early stages. Based on my research, valuable information is limited, so I personally experienced the project and registered an account on the official website. I found that Matchday gives new registered members some player card packs in the early stage, and specific game modes will revolve around these card packs. If you're interested, you can try it out.
### 4. FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 on Phygtl
https://www.phygtl.xyz/
Phygtl is a casual social game with football trading cards, primarily a fan-driven mobile application that combines football with blockchain to create the first fan-generated automatic reward gaming platform. It adds economic benefits and eternal value to World Cup images and video clips that fans love, and participating users can also predict World Cup matches.
Even FIFA Chief Commercial Officer Romy Gai stated: "This is a very exciting partnership as we embrace a new digitally native football fan and interact in a space where we know they are already active. As we continue to develop our gaming strategy for a long time to come, Web3 will certainly play an important role, and this marks the beginning of our journey." This is truly a win-win situation.
## Conclusion
As blockchain projects become more mature, the fields and demands they involve have increased accordingly. This combination with the World Cup is a good opportunity for blockchain to break into mainstream adoption and greatly benefit. It's important to note that blockchain can only attract more people to understand and participate by breaking down barriers with reality. At the same time, the World Cup can also increase its interactivity and actual economic value through this partnership - both sides can achieve mutual benefit, and fans and participants can also gain satisfaction and profit.
This combination of blockchain and the World Cup not only breaks dimensional barriers but also creates a new flow of attention. Whether this event can reawaken the sluggish crypto market remains to be seen.
Reference links:
https://web3caff.com/zh/archives/40486