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Tenth Planet, a game studio started by former TikTok game leaders, plans to launch ambitious blockchain games.
The company is working on ambitious games including Mech Angel, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game inspired by Genshin Impact, and a digital chat metaverse called Alien Meow.
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The studio was started by William Wei Chen, a former head of game development for TikTok, and his partner Kevin Yeung. He started Mokun Technology and sold it in 2019 to TikTok owner Bytedance for more than $ 250 million. His company’s games have generated more than $ 600 million to date. Chen’s role is head of production.
Chen took the money and launched TenthPlanet to create a series of new games to take advantage of Web3 technology, which uses blockchain to validate unique digital objects. TenthPlanet has more than 100 game developers working on Unreal Engine and Unity titles with triple-A production values, Yeung said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“We’ve been building mobile games for 10 years,” Yeung said. “Our goal is to make games that will last a decade. We have established ourselves as founders of digital nations, founders of the digital world.
Chen’s former team at Mokun Technology was responsible for creating One Piece, which launched in April 2021 and generated more than $ 200 million in revenue for TikTok. The rest of TenthPlanet’s management team and advisors work with Final Fantasy, Forbes, Solana, Tencent Gaming, NHN and Hashed.
In total, Chen’s 10 games have generated more than 200 million users and he has managed more than 1,500 game developers. Yeung previously worked at Morgan Stanley and made various venture capital investments.
While the founders are from Hong Kong, TenthPlanet is a virtual production house designed for “new gaming economies driven by digital ownership, with a deep understanding of blockchain community engagement , “Yeung said. Most of the team is in Shanghai.
“We believe in the free exchange of virtual assets, the decentralized management of online communities and real digital
possession, ”said Yeung. “To build and realize this future of gaming, we assembled a top-notch production team, with a proven track record in gaming / blockchain / VC, with M&A and side releases.”
angel on the clock
Self -funded titles include Mech Angel, a Unity -based MMORPG available on mobile and PC platforms. The mobile titles have completed beta demos, and the team hopes they will have hundreds of hours of gameplay by the time they launch, Yeung said.
The animated world is similar in style to the anime in Genshin Impact, and it features young women fighting Japanese-style mechanical robots. The company has invested more than $ 6.5 million in the game to date. The game has player-versus-environment shooter gameplay and is friendly for onboarding new players, Yeung said. And it also has player versus player gameplay.
Mech Angel has already debuted in playable demos on Android and iOS this year. The company is completing a funding round for these titles and is developing in-game wallets, an NFT marketplace, virtual assets, and more. during the second semester. The company will make a demo PC version for the fourth quarter and launch the PC beta version in the first quarter of 2023.
“We’re very close to finishing this game and we’re very excited,” Yeung said. “We have hundreds of hours of play now. As we saw at Genshin Impact outside of Asia, animation is taking over the world right now. You can see how much Netflix has come from its animation genre.
Alien Mews is a digital cat life simulation metaverse. It’s a digital world of breeding and cat breeding built using Epic Games ’Unreal Engine 5. It’s a virtual pet game that allows players to try to make in-game value from breeding, such as CryptoKitties. The company has invested nearly $ 2.5 million in the game to date, Yeung said.
They describe it as a wide open playground that can be home to any kind of pet in the galaxy, where players can collect, breed, upgrade, train, tame, and compete in mini games with some pets.
companions in the most fun and rewarding metaverse experience since Nintendog met Pokémon.
Each cat is very detailed and has up to 500,000 strands of hair. Alien Meow is expected to have a video demo in Q3 and a playable demo in Q4. The goal is to launch a beta version of the chat metaverse in the first quarter of 2023 with several mini -games.
Team building
Yeung said the company has started raising funds from outside gaming companies. He thinks it’s good because the team has a history of making hit games including One Piece, Fighter of Destiny, Three Kingdom, Project Ragnarok, and Heroes of Storm. Most of them are hits in China.
Other leaders include Tony He, the head of technology, and Vanessa Tso, the head of the blockchain.
Consultants include Yoshihisa Hashimoto, technical director and producer of Final Fantasy; Jeff Yam of Forbes; Neo Liu, head of Tencent Gaming in the United States; Alex Shin, founding member of Hashed; Paul Walborsky, founder of AI Reverie; and Kit Low, formerly of Goldman Sachs.
Why blockchain?
The company is focusing on the blockchain because it feels that the needs of mobile users have not been met in the past decade when it comes to trading in-game assets. Such trading is “less efficient and less transparent,” said Yeung.
“If you go back a decade, people would physically meet offline to exchange usernames and passwords with each other and exchange money,” Yeung said.
Now, blockchain technology will allow players to trade smoothly and transparently, he said.
“It makes a pure entertainment experience a fun and economical experience,” Chen said. “Players invest a lot of time and money into a game and it’s a one-way spending experience,” Chen said. “We can’t do this alone. But we are very inspired by what has happened in the last 18 months. We believe there are many partners we can be with.
Chen added, “With or without blockchain, it has its own economy. And blockchain just gives us a transparent platform for the end to happen. The second point is that we are very experienced in open worlds, as in you can see from some videos of the One Piece game we made.Some of the One Piece virtual assets are very popular with users to buy.So we are excited about a transparent and transparent economic platform that is finally we can do with blockchain in the future.
He knows that Western gamers have expressed opposition to blockchain technology in games, because they are worried about overmonetization or scams. But Chen said there is a big difference between Web2 gamers and Web3 gamers. Not everyone in the game will participate in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
“It goes back to the basic idea of whether the game is a fun experience,” he said. “Our job is to let you enjoy your dollars on screen time. Players no longer have to think about the blockchain when playing our game. It’s just like any other fun experience for normal players.
He added: “And if they want the blockchain, they can own the wallet, then they can start trading in NFTs, virtual assets, virtual land and improve their speed of the weapon flow.”
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