Building up towards a launch later in 2024, Autoverse Studios recently announced it had received $8 million in funding for its web3 drag racer Auto Legends.

A game designed for car enthusiasts, Auto Legends is taking on a new shape with blockchain-based features such as car ownership and player-to-player trading and transfer of assets. Going from high-stakes competitive drag racing, the developer now looks to redefine the genre with enhanced social play including esports. With features like tournaments, team competition, car customization and tuning, Auto Legends aims to bring something new to the web3 scene. Being cross-platform, the game is currently available in early access via Epic Games Store, with a forthcoming release for mobile.

We thought it a good time to find out more from Autoverse Studios’ head of product and tech Dinko Tontchev. With over 10 years in game development, Dinko has been working on Car Town and Racing Rivals, in addition to being the lead platform engineer at Glu Mobile/EA. 

BlockchainGamer: Unlike many blockchain games, you’ve kept very quiet about your activity to-date. Why did you take this approach?

Dinko Tontchev: We wanted to focus entirely on building a great game and re-engaging our fan base. We are also bringing new innovations to this genre, a genre we invented, so we wanted to keep those under wraps until we were further along.

Why do you think blockchain is a good fit for racing games?

For car enthusiasts, cars are treated like assets. Special cars appreciate in value, and every car is unique, with mileage, color, and even ownership history factoring into the market price. In our prior racing games, this drove a lot of player-to-player trading and even allowed players to make money – blockchain is not just a great fit for us; it’s a solution for existing player behavior.

How do you plan to police features such as pink slip races, which could potentially involve the transfer of very high value assets?

Our in-game assets were already highly valued in the past, so we had to be diligent about security, monitoring, and enforcement. Our past experience in this area will be critical to our success.

Why have you included spectator wagering as a feature in the game?

There is wagering, but to be clear, for spectators, it’s experience points rather than currency. The wagering in our game is on skill-based play. 

A key pillar of our game is making the experience social, so having people spectate your race and see who they think will win is a big part of making it as much about pride and embarrassment as it is about winning and losing. Spectating is just as fun as racing in our game. Spectators signalling who they think will win heightens the social connection between them and the racers.

As a cross-platform game, how will you manage to ensure feature compatibility across PC versions and versions released through platforms that have specific restrictions around monetization etc?

Straight line racing is particularly well-suited for this exact purpose, due to the limited controls required. The shorter races are just as competitive as turn-by-turn races but more exciting for spectators due to their shorter format. Think of a drag race as a short and addictive TikTok reel compared to a circuit race that is more like watching a longer movie.

What’s your roadmap in terms of the games and other items such as NFTs etc?

There’s a lot more to come around player ownership, branded parts, player-hosted tournaments, teams, different types of races, and more – a lot more. 

Auto Legends is currently in closed alpha. You can sign up for early beta access via the game website. Stay up-to-date on the game via its X account and Discord channel.

Is 2024 finally the year blockchain and web3 gaming will break through? This question was discussed by our panel of experts at PG Connects San Francisco x Game Connection 2024.

To evaluate whether web3 games are about to see their major breakthrough and reach mass adoption, the first question needing to be addressed is why blockchain gaming is still struggling to gain general traction?

One factor pointed out by Horizon co-founder and chief storyteller Michael Sanders is that games take a long time to build, but as we’re expecting some of those games to launch this year, we should also start seeing more players enjoy those games and understand the benefits of web3. He is positive that “with attributes such as ownership and tradability, and other rewards and incentives, players will come to demand those things from the next generation of games.”

Auto Legends CEO Peter Pham is also realistic about the time frame and adds that even though his studio is launching its game this year, it’s going to take time to bake in the player experience and bring in web2 players.

Meanwhile, Immutable Strategic Partner Success, Cathleen Lyu finds evidence of the future breakthrough in crunching past data, commenting “In the last bull market during 2021 we had about 800 web3 games launching, the year before that about 80 and the year before that 40. Last year, in 2023’s bear market we still had 220 games launching. So looking at this year, the crypto bull market is back, I do think in the context of web3 that this year it will be a breakthrough. I still remain hesitant because the UX is still a bit clunky, but there are a lot of innovators building in this space.”

Hit Box Games owner James Seaman highlights how his team has intentionally adopted two different ways of onboarding web2 and web3 players, “Web2 players who don’t want to be involved with web3 don’t have to, we can create non-custodial wallets for them, and all their in-game items will go into that wallet. Then we show them in the tutorial that you can trade these items with other players, so we’re kind of baby-stepping them into it. 

On the web3 side we built a backend where you can come in with any chain and trade your token, so you’ll never leave the game. In this way the whole onboarding process for both web2 players and web3 players becomes very simple.”

Dive into the full discussion, moderated by Yoda Labs marketing director Bobby Kunta, from PG Connects San Francisco 2024.

Are you interested in attending any of our forthcoming PG Connects conferences? On 1-2 May we return to Dubai for the GameExpo Summit 2024 powered by PG Connects, which is running alongside the Dubai Esports and Games Festival, and on 1-2 October we return to Finland for our popular PG Connects Helsinki event.