We’ve known Mutant Kaijus are coming for a long time, but the details of the drop have been unclear.

So when we got a cryptic message like this, the Kaiju Kingz server lit up.

A wild journey began of people playing out this story line. People put on their uniforms, started to blend in and contribute to the research happening in the lab.

People starting showcasing their talent by submitting art, videos, poetry, reports and more. The most outstanding submissions were given a spot on the Mutant List, the opportunity to claim a Mutant Kaiju when they are released.

There were other challenges, like creating propaganda and solving puzzles all staying within the same theme and lore. It was an experience I hadn’t seen before. The team was hyper engaged, responding to messages all in character. And everyone else joined in, creating this culture where the whole server was participating in the storyline.

The culmination of all of this was the highly anticipated, play2mint game, Rooftop Rampage. Watch the teaser video and then you can go ahead and play the game. The idea was that the top 100 scores over the course of three 24 periods would get mutant list spots.

How valuable would a mutant list spot be? Well, we know that failed experiments will be revealed as mutant kaiju and they’re currently trading at 1.3eth. So if you assume that’s the value of a mutant, then a mutant list spot is worth around $4,000.

Play a video game and potentially get the opportunity to mint something worth thousands? Yep, that’s how wild the NFT world is.

But unfortunately when so much money is on the line, there is a large incentive to cheat, and game the system. About 20 hours into the first gameplay period, it was discovered that people found a way to cheat and were posting high scores that were not possible to get fairly.

While this isn’t the news anyone wanted to hear, especially those who had played for 10+ hours to get on the leaderboard, I give credit to the team for addressing this concern.

I personally spent hours playing over the past day. I’ve sent it to my friends, talked about it in twitter spaces and shared it with the project team I’m on with Lamb Duhs.

It’s the first NFT-related game I’ve felt hooked by.

It’s actually fun to play. I knew I would never get a high score that would be in the top 100, but I was motivated to beat my own scores and keep improving at the game.

As I write this post I keep going back to the game site to play more. There have been plenty of thoughtful critiques written in the discord about the tweaks to the gameplay that could make it better. Overall the game is super fun and addicting. The soundtrack is incredible. You eyes get a little messed up if you play for a while, and the game is very hard and frustrating at times, but that’s also what makes it so fun.

One idea to reduce the incentive to cheat in this circumstance would be to have a certain score enter you into a raffle for a mutant list spot. That way people still play, and maybe they get a slightly higher chance to win the raffle based on their score, but they also don’t have the deterministic outcome of knowing a high score will lead to a high value NFT. For example:

Score above 1000 - 1 entry

Score above 2000 - 2 entries

Score about 3000 - 3 entries

Score above 400 - 4 entries

Then you raffle from there (and hopefully have a way to prevent one person from entering hundreds of times).

What this launch means for the NFT space

Kaiju Kingz raised the bar with this experience. The game is amazing. The whole story and role play around the mutant launch has brought so many people into the Kaiju world like never before. I’ve spent significantly more time in the Discord trying to keep up with what they’re doing since this launch began.

The amount of thought, preparation and intention put into making all of these pieces come together is something to be admired. There are so many components, all of them fun, and on-brand that have made this the most impressive launch I’ve participated in.

It’s clear the team is serious. They can deliver a top notch experience, and that makes me excited for the future. This is just the beginning. See you all in Sorashima!