Zynga, the gaming industry’s biggest mobile games developer, announced its first-ever blockchain game, Sugartown, on Monday, according to an initial report by Decrypt.
Best known for its popular 2009 games Farmville and Words With Friends, Zynga quickly made a name for itself after launching one of the first few games on Facebook, bringing in over 80 million people playing their games.
Last May, it was acquired by Take-Two Interactive for $12.7 billion, where the mobile gaming giant would bring its most popular games over to Take-Two, including Farmville and Words With Friends. As a gaming powerhouse, Take-Two currently manages some of the industry’s most popular franchises, including, but not limited to Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, NBA 2K, BioShock, and more.
Inside Sugartown
The game will leverage Ethereum-based NFTs that bring gamers into an alternate dimension where they will be introduced to creatures known as ‘Oras.’
As the game begins, gamers discover that three farm animals from another dimension have accidentally opened a wormhole intoSugartown, with creatures known as ‘Oras’ entering the city and transforming it into a gamified landscape that can only be accessed by gamers holding one of 10,000 Ora NFTs.
These Ora NFTs will not only unlock the ability to play in Sugartown, but also provide holders with access to its embedded free-to-play minigames. Gamers will also have the ability to “stake” or lock their Ora NFTs in exchange for receiving Sugartown’s in-game currency, called “Sugar” that enhances and enriches the overall gaming experience. The in-game currency is not a cryptocurrency.
A Zynga representative told Decrypt that Sugartown is expected to release at “a later date,” but did not provide an exact date. However, the Ora NFT collection, according to that representative, is expected to be released later this year.
“We created Sugartown to appeal to a native Web3 market,” said Matt Wolf, Zynga’s Vice President of Web3 Gaming, in a statement to Decrypt. He also said that their focus is to scale the game much further over time while they build up a community of Ora NFT holders.
On Tuesday, Sugartown held its first official Spaces with Zynga’s Wolf and its Head of Product, Tommy Ngo, diving deeper into the game.
