In March 2016, Clash Royale was officially launched. This game that combines elements from collectible cards, tower defense and multiplayer online battles is still considered a classic by most players due to its strategy gameplay, which is rather impressive.

The hype of the metaverse and play-to-earn (P2E) games — that constitute one of the main elements of the metaverse — has come to the attention of the public in recent years. The P2E model is verified as feasible because virtual asset ownership in games has been solved by blockchain technology. Meanwhile, ever-expanding P2E blockchain games are varying thanks to experienced game developers who integrate traditional games with P2E and improve continuously.

Among all the classic P2E blockchain games, Dragon Master, created by Magic Hat Studio, was officially launched on March 21. 

Dragon Master — a game with the elements of collecting, raising, defending, advancing and fighting in a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) — brings players the familiarity and epicness of Clash Royale.

“In fact, our inspiration for creating Dragon Master began with Clash Royale,” said Lucas Adams, a team leader of Magic Hat Studio. “Clash Royale is a classic game with appealing gameplay that requires players to buy card packs and then build decks to battle. However, we think there is improving space in this traditional gameplay. Our idea is that everything the players put into the game ultimately generates real investment value for them. Just as in the real world, you can increase the value of your capital by investing in stocks or real estate. So, an idea of fighting for players’ rights and the traditional gameplay of Clash Royale are constantly colliding and grinding together, resulting in what is now Dragon Master and its multiple nonfungible tokens (NFTs).”

Adams shared the main design idea of Dragon Master NFTs, which is, “Game first, then decentralized finance.” 

For Dragon Master’s gameplay, it is the first blockchain-based metaverse game that blends real-time strategy, MOBA elements, collections and P2E.

The land system will be introduced in the future, allowing players to freely develop their own hometowns, defend against opponents through appropriate deployment, empower themselves through battles and resource plundering, and engage with groups.

Adams introduced that players need to build their own teams to fight with others through NFTs, which have a variety of dragons as components. The NFTs can be used in addition to the game but also constantly bring players profits.

A set of dragon NFTs is created and can be obtained by players via random breeding. Players who collect the whole set can summon a Legend Dragon with bonuses in smart contracts. 

The Legend Dragon can share the revenue of the Dragon Master marketplace, with daily transaction fees and income in Ether (ETH) being automatically paid to the player’s wallet every day via smart contracts.

In the white paper, the team introduced a method to solve the NFT inflation problem:

“NFT inflation is a problem that most games encounter, and we’re working on solutions. There might be normal breeding and mutation breeding, and the concept of ’combined skill’ — called mutation — is introduced based on the dragons’ features.

“In normal breeding, one egg with a random basic skill is produced by two-parent dragons. In mutation breeding, a second skill can be unlocked to the egg by chance, and the parent dragons can be sacrificed in the process. In this case, one rare dragon with two skills is produced by consuming two dragons, and the second skill is heritable.

“Thus, the problem of NFT inflation can be solved by ’one plus one equals one,’” Adams said. 

Adams said that in the early stages of the project, Dragon Master NFTs will be handled by Magic Hat Studio’s core team, and he expects that community members will be able to participate more in the future, which requires decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance to move forward.

Finally, Adams shares the future vision: Dragon Master will grow from a blockchain-based P2E game to a Dragon Metaverse featuring virtual characters, residences and even careers. Artists and developers will be able to earn rewards in the future. At the later stages of the project, there will be a fully decentralized DAO governance, with community members choosing the development and operation teams.

It is worth mentioning that, as a dark horse project in the blockchain game circle, Dragon Master has recently become the focus of many game guilds. IndiGG (IGG), a sub-DAO of Yield Guild Games being built in association with Polygon to create a P2E-gaming hub in India, has announced its cooperation with Dragon Master, which became the first project of IGG to support P2E and helped IGG expand the Indian market. Moreover, as a quality NFT project and Polygon’s partner, Dragon Master received funding from Polygon Studios, which is responsible for blockchain gaming and NFTs under Polygon.

White paper: whitepaper.dragonmaster.co