Shrapnel

Introduction

SHRAPNEL, the world’s first blockchain-enabled first-person shooter (FPS) game, developed by a BAFTA and Emmy award–winning team of game industry veterans at NEON. SHRAPNEL presents a rich set of player-creation tools, combining combat, creation, curation, and connection into a community where players own the platform and decide its future.

Opportunity

Since early 2000, we’ve been thinking about a competitive, multiplayer FPS that players could mod and make their own. But the technology necessary to support the transaction volume and attribution complexity of such a game was out of reach.

Now, blockchain makes it all possible. SHRAPNEL will be the first moddable AAA FPS game entirely on chain, using new capabilities to empower players to collectively own the game and its future roadmap. Blockchain provides an approachable system to earn real money — sell and trade, play and win, create and own. Finally, with the SHRAP token and a blockchain-powered game economy, gamers can have the opportunity to be rewarded for the time they spend doing what they love.

The time is right. A generation of hundreds of millions of players has been raised on Minecraft and Roblox. They are getting old enough to earn and spend their own money — and are likely to choose competitive multiplayer games that also fulfill their desire to create and share with a community their own age. SHRAPNEL’s player-creation tools are designed for them, with a more realistic look and real-world value.

As the first competitive multiplayer FPS that empowers players to create, trade, and truly own their player-created content on the chain, SHRAPNEL has the potential to be the next industry-defining FPS franchise for a massive generation of players and creators.

GAME - Background Story

In the world of SHRAPNEL, a massive asteroid called 38 Sigma has collided with the moon, causing lunar meteorites to bombard a 500-kilometer-wide band around the Earth. The area, which becomes known as the Sacrifice Zone (The Zone), is left uninhabitable and walled off from the rest of the world.

The world speculates about what is being uncovered by the teams of paramilitary contractors guarding The Zone. Rumors swirl of a mysterious material called Compound Sigma that allows quantum mechanics behaviors to manifest in the classical physics realm. Nations and corporations begin assembling their own Mercenary Extraction Forces, or MEFs, to venture into The Zone. Chief among them is VELDACHA CORP. (V-Corp), a company that quickly corners the market on new technology born from these world-changing discoveries. Enter the players: MEF Operators battling in the bloody war for control over The Zone and its many secrets.

Gameplay

In SHRAPNEL, players are tasked with finding and extracting valuable resources, entering the The Zone as Operators for one of the MEFs. Many other operators are also vying for these resources in The Zone, resulting in a tense, high-stakes, competitive environment that encourages risk-taking and rewards skill.

Players outfit their Operators with gear to fit their desired playstyle before entering The Zone. Gear (in the form of NFTs) is dropped on death, forcing players to weigh constantly shifting odds of success in every choice they make. In addition to the gear dropped by Operators killed in action, players can also collect the mysterious Compound Sigma. After collecting their loot, players must fight their way to one of several contested extraction locations — and survive long enough to escape and claim it as their own. Successfully extracted loot (NFTs) are then placed in the player’s persistent inventory, which the player uses to build their loadouts in future sessions.

As the player pool shrinks and extractions become more dangerous, every choice becomes meaningful. Strategies will evolve, alliances will emerge and crumble, and the stakes will rise — with potentially dire consequences.

Operator Classes

Players can choose one of three Operator classes: Assault, Survivalist, or Infosec — each with its own skill-based progression tree. As players develop their Operators, they unlock a range of abilities and specialized equipment to improve their play. Weaknesses in one class can be complemented by strengths in other classes, encouraging dynamic strategies and alliances.

For players who are new or want to experiment without jeopardizing their equipment, a temporary Contract Operator character is available for lower-risk / reward play.

Gear and Crafting

SHRAPNEL’s strategic gameplay centers on how players create their loadout from both the gear they’ve extracted in previous sessions and the equipment they craft themselves. Equipment ranges from the lowtech, dependable weaponry of Contract Operators to the devastating but failure-prone advanced technology of a Corporate MEF. As players get to know the strengths and weaknesses of each type of equipment, they can remix gear to customize their loadout.

Player-Created Tournaments

Enterprising players can create their own tournaments within SHRAPNEL, making the rules, defining terms, and promoting their events. These high-stakes competitions offer both tournament creators and competitors opportunities to earn rewards.

Player Missions

All players can participate in goal-oriented missions related to extraction gameplay, content creation, and marketplace participation, with the opportunity to receive SHRAP Token rewards.

Creation

Player-created content is key to the SHRAPNEL experience. Our professionalgrade creator tools, built using the same Unreal technology we use for the game, will allow anybody to quickly get started creating their own SHRAPNEL content. Players can mint that content into non fungible tokens (NFTs), trade it in the SHRAPNEL Marketplace, and earn rewards based on its popularity.

Base Assets

To make it as easy for anyone to create high-quality and SHRAPNEL-ready vanity items, we will pre-seed the marketplace with a collection of base assets.

Vanity

Players are able to create their own vanity items and set a price and unique quantity. Their creations can then be added to and promoted within the SHRAPNEL Marketplace. Five classified vanity materials will be offered with a limited total supply. Vanity items made with these rare materials will include their own unique in-game expressions.

Maps

Map design and development is fundamental to the SHRAPNEL platform, economy, and player experience. Players will be able to create their own maps using both SHRAPNEL-provided base assets and prefabricated assets that offer novices a jump-start on creating high-quality content.

Discovery

Using SHRAPNEL ’s creator tools, the community is empowered to build a library of NFTs to use in-game, share with the community, and trade with other players. The process of promoting and discovering the best items and maps in this constantly expanding collection is critical to the creator ecosystem.

SHRAP staking drives discovery for all player-created content. Anyone can stake their SHRAP on vanity items and maps, which increases their discoverability. Stakers, creators, and other stakeholders receive SHRAP rewards based on how well content performs.

MEF Headquarters

Players will be able to join various MEFs, whose headquarters will be built into the game loops in the pre-game/post-game lobby. Within the HQ, members will be able to access MEF collective resources within their game sessions via an armory, show off their creative skills, and relax between games. HQs will showcase MEF gameplay achievements and stats and serve to promote content created by members, both within the HQ and to players outside of it.

MEF owners benefit from more players joining, and owners can completely customize the appearance of their HQ, which will be discoverable within the game to entice new members. MEF owners will have a variety of tools to allow players to use their resources for the good of the community.

Reputation System

As players participate in SHRAPNEL, they will take part in an innovative reputation system. A player’s overall Reputation Score will be based on three facets: Play, Creation, and Community.

Players with high scores within these areas earn rewards such as in-game boosts or new modding capabilities. A higher total Reputation Score will make a player’s profile and content more discoverable in maps and the SHRAPNEL Marketplace, which can lead to more opportunities for rewards.

The reputation system is designed to reward positive interactions as well as police negative behavior, including “time out” or “mute” time for players. Repeated bad behavior will result in a ban from SHRAPNEL.

Economy

The Shrapnel economy will allow several personas to participate in the ecosystem through play, creation, ownership, and governance, with incentives v persona.

The interplay between each persona creates a virtuous cycle of collaboration, discovery, and ever-increasing economic activity as more people participate.

Token

Governance

• DAO and sub-DAO votes / platform governance

• Voting on player-created content

Running Validators

• Payment to validators; fees subsidized by the Shrapnel protocol at no cost to end users

• Stake SHRAP on validator nodes in the Shrapnel subnet

Minting & Medium of Exchange

• Pay fees in SHRAP to mint player-created content, i.e. maps, prefabs, skins and vanities

• SHRAP is the default currency on the Shrapnel marketplace

Rewards

• Player-created content / gameplay

• Content discovery participation

Tokenomics

SHRAP will be issued as an ERC-20 token and deployed on Avalanche shortly afterward. At the token genesis event (TGE), 3 billion SHRAP tokens will be created as the total token supply, which will never increase. No other tradable tokens are anticipated to be created or minted. SHRAP tokens will be distributed and unlocked as follows:

Shrapnel Marketplace

SHRAPNEL will have a robust, order-book style marketplace where buyers and sellers can trade all game assets. Bids and offers will be entered in a sophisticated peer-to-peer marketplace for each level of gear, generic and premium vanity items, maps, and land. All transactions will be settled in SHRAP tokens but bids and offers will be represented in USD equivalent.

STAKING AND REWARDS

SHRAPNEL incentivizes the community to find, curate, and promote the best player-created vanity items and maps. Anyone can stake on any map or vanity item to earn staking rewards based on NFT performance through a two-tier program:

Market

PC core competitive FPS titles have revitalized the shooter genre, bringing high engagement, retention, and spending rates. FPS had the highest monthly active users (MAUs) out of all PC games in January 2022, according to data from Newzoo. PC shooters also boasted average daily play time of just over two hours. This strong engagement translates to revenues, as PC shooters see higher spend on average when compared to other PC titles. Much of this is driven by publishers experimenting with hybrid monetization mechanics, providing new player conversion and monetization avenues, leading to some of the highest revenue and conversion rates in the space. Games in the core competitive FPS genre show huge growth potential in the future, especially on PC and mobile.