By Darren Parkin
By day, Halil Keles is a systems engineer with considerable experience working in the public and private sectors, but by night, he is a keen gamer.
His favourite game growing up was Starcraft, and through countless hours of competitive gameplay, he earned the moniker ‘Memur’ – a name he goes by in the crypto sphere. Now a founding member of Heroes of NFT, Halil is joined by his three co-founders, fellow gamers and industry professionals Koray, Barış, and Eren.
Despite being a diehard gamer, Halil does not see an inherent conflict between gaming and blockchain, as is often touted on the emerging tech battlefield. At the moment, he tells us that he doesn’t have a lot of time for long gaming sessions, but his past as a gamer puts him in the best position to understand the needs of gamers.
“On the contrary, there is no fight with gamers,” he reassures.
“Asset ownership and transferability of assets are not possible in commercial games but are of course possible with blockchain – along with a whole range of other features. The two sides will converge over time and bring with them the best from both sides.”
For Memur, crypto began as a hobby from an early age, but by 2016, he began looking in earnest at the potential of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He was seeking a high-risk, high-return investment and started trading as much as eight hours a day. It was quite a jump from professional life to becoming a blockchain entrepreneur, but Memur had been looking to involve himself in start-ups for some time.
“With my three other co-founders, we began to look at putting DeFi and NFTs together,” he explained.
“I had played with football-themed physical collectable cards in my childhood, so I could see the attraction and potential.”
As the idea for Heroes of NFT developed, Memur realised that the role of the metaverse was going to become very important in the tech space, especially due to gamification and entertainment.
“We have physical lives, of course, but we also have digital identities too. We wanted to create a metaverse where people could develop these digital identities. This metaverse has many features, including land NFTs, and related DEFI applications for these NFTs, such as staking NFTs and single staking HON Token. The great thing about our metaverse is that it is designed by real-world architects and it is a great place to spend time together with the friends, thanks in part to voice chats and text chats.”
There is the possibility also for organisations to arrange meetings within the metaverse and brands will have their own places to promote their products and dApps in HON’s metaverse.
“Of course, not only the brands but also individual people will have chance to create their own community thanks to their land NFT with customised avatars inline with the metaverse fashion we have created”.
The HON team created a sizeable collection of more than 16,000 NFTs on the Avalanche network, specifically for their flagship PvP trading card game, based on 12 unique character identities and stories. There will be eight more characters added to the collection later. These characters each come with upgradable attributes and a series of base elements with scores for attack, defence, and other qualities. On top of this, players will have the chance to forge their own in-game NFTs and show their personality through their unique avatar.
The inspiration for HON came from various sources, but the gameplay itself will feel most familiar to those who have engaged with Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Marvel Snap, and Yu-Gi-Oh! However, the game mechanics and design are unique to HON, with players able to add new attributes to their NFTs using in-game items. This creates strategic combination opportunities to switch up the odds and add to the excitement of competitive gameplay.
At launch, HON released a player versus player (PVP) mode as a starting point. There are plans to upgrade and introduce multiplayer options, comprehensive tournaments, and the ability to view battles in real time.. All of these features will be built on top of next-generation blockchain gaming concepts that involve a real-value integrated economy through native tokenomics. Through these tokenomics and the use of NFTs, HON tokens, and HRM tokens, the foundation is set for a gaming experience with novel play-to-earn (P2E) mechanics and engaging reward paths that keep players coming back for more.
Heroes, as HON calls its community, can buy, sell, trade, and equip spell cards, weapons, and upgrades to customise and reinforce their characters. When not in use, these items will sit in the users’ crypto wallets. Some heroes may also choose to sell their consumables on the HON marketplace, increasing the volume of exchanges and leveraging the interesting economic design of the game for potential profit.
Social elements are built into the gaming experience too. Friends in a player’s contact list will be able to watch their games with a slight delay. Moreover, the game itself will help players to socialise with their HON friends by text chat, and when in the metaverse, voice chat will be available too.
NFTs are the heart, tokens are the brain
The core components of HON’s gameplay are the NFTs, the HON token, and the HRM token, which players can use to progress in the game and to challenge one another. Consumable digital assets (spell cards) and NFT assets also enrich the gameplay and make it more enjoyable, with the marketplace function adding a further dynamic. Some heroes may want to be warriors, others may want to be merchants, with things like weapon and cosmetic NFTs giving this in-game personalization that gamers desire.
The HON token is essentially what administrates the game, with the token holders being rewarded with governance over future events and decisions. Hard capped at 200 million tokens, HON has a sustainable distribution design that will take around five years for the entire supply to hit circulation. This will be achieved through yield farming, vault farming, and asset staking by the players seeking to make a passive income from their NFTs and HON tokens. In-game rewards will speed up the process for engaged players.
The marketplace typically drives the greatest demand for the accumulation of HON, with players saving up their tokens to purchase upgrades and consumables. A marketplace fee of 2.5% allows HON’s team to maintain some stability in the ecosystem, whilst the continuous flow of HON tokens allows governance to continually redistribute too.
The effects of the ‘Crypto Winter’
With the market downturn having widespread knock-on effects for the GameFi industry, Memur and his team have decided to slow down certain releases and updates, but they remain highly active. In May, they will be attending May’s Avalanche summit in Barcelona where they plan to showcase their products to gain more feedback from the wider community.
Built on the Avalanche blockchain, the AVAX community has already given incredible support to HON, now they seek peer review from further afield in pursuit of mass adoption.
Community ambitions
From the outset, Memur and his team have sought to build the project and community organically, avoiding “shilly” influencers and pump-and-dump schemes. Feedback from their community is vital to the development of HON and to that end, they are also looking for project ambassadors who believe in the HON mission to help accelerate its growth.
The HON community currently boasts 47,500 Heroes on Twitter, 20,000 on Telegram, and more than 25,500 on Discord. These numbers are all organic and have been grown through sheer determination, transparency, and creative engagement over time.
“We are confident in our project – by combining NFTs, games, and the metaverse, we are unique in this space,” Memur concludes.
The post Developing a metaverse personality with blockchain and NFTs appeared first on CityAM.
