SunSpear partners with Immutable zkEVM on Web3 RTS game

“Developing our first RTS game has been a dream of ours. As a company founded by revered StarCraft modders, we are committed to offering players a choice on what and how they interact with our game. This partnership will allow interested players to enjoy unique Web3 benefits within Immortal: Gates of Pyre’s ecosystem.” said SunSpear Games CEO Kevin Wagner, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to work with Immutable and their host of resources and tools to enhance the gameplay experience for players.”

The partnership grants SunSpear Games the opportunity to utilize Immutable’s advanced suite of tailored Web3 gaming tools including the Immutable Protocol Passport for user authentication, the Immutable Orderbook, and Immutable Checkout.

“Things are going well on the game for a while. We’ve been building the studio,” Wagner said in an interview. “We’ve been working on bringing on more team members, building the art team, building the engineering team.”

The company has about 50 people now and it has raised about $7 million to date, including a grant from Immutable.

This integration will provide a seamless onboarding experience and enhance player engagement, such as allowing players to collect or trade ownable digital assets for completing certain goals in IMMORTAL: Gates of Pyre. These assets may include cosmetic skins and mods for Immortal characters, as well as displayable traits that reflect player status.

SunSpear Games has also been granted $IMX tokens by the Digital Worlds Foundation to support Immortal: Gates of Pyre’s ecosystem.

Immutable and SunSpear Games will ensure a smooth and cost-effective user experience, with the Foundation supporting SunSpear Games on gas fees for end-users to facilitate transactions on the Immutable platform. Costs of any on-chain transaction will be paid through the support of the Foundation.

In a statement, Immutable president Robbie Ferguson said, “We are thrilled to partner with SunSpear Games, a company that shares our passion for innovation and pushing boundaries in the gaming industry. The integration of Immutable zkEVM into their platform opens up a world of new possibilities for players, providing enhanced scalability, security, and seamless gameplay experiences.”

Ferguson added, “This partnership not only allows us to bring groundbreaking games to the community but also unlocks new opportunities in Web3 gaming. We couldn’t be more excited about what the future holds for this collaboration and the value it will bring to the player community.”

In the game, players assume the role of an Immortal, leading massive armies as godlike generals in an eternal war for magical resources and power in a lushly detailed world that blends the best of science fiction and high fantasy.

Initially announced in 2021, Immortal: Gates of Pyre has amassed a dedicated community of supporters, evidenced by the success of its Kickstarter campaign which earned more than 400% of its original goal.

The development team reflects some of PC gaming’s most highly respected modders, including some of the top creators of The Elder Scrolls: Skywind, StarCraft II mod Starbow, and TheCore custom hotkey layout.

Immortal: Gates of Pyre is available for Wishlisting on Steam. Players can sign up for upcoming playtests by joining the SunSpear Games Discord or visit the official SunSpear Games site.

Hybrid Web2 and Web3 game

Wagner said the game started as a free-to-play Web2 game, but then it shifted to a hybrid of Web2 and Web3 starting a couple of years ago.

“We’re always looking at new technology, business models, new ways of doing things. And so a couple of years ago, I started looking at Web3 and about how there is a way it can do something for us. Does it enhance the player experience? For me, it’s got to be about making a better experience for the player.”

With Immutable zkEVM, Sunspear received funding and it will remain focused on it as its sole blockchain. He said they are great to work with on a technical level, and he said the Immutable Passport wallet system will help in terms of making the game work with players on different wallet platforms.

“We think it’s really important that Web2 players be exposed to Web3 in a way that allows them the choice of whether they want to engage with those elements or not. Maybe it works for them. Maybe it’s something they’re curious about,” Wagner said. “We want that experience to be seamless, to be frictionless.”

Wagner said the player-versus-player combat is looking very good and the core game loop is fun. The one-versus-one and 2v2 multiplayer is working. Now the team is working on 3v3, larger maps and a single-player campaign.

The game has two factions and SunSpear is working on more. It’s also looking at co-op experiences and PvE single-player. The lore has also about 1,000 pages of detail on the history of the rich world.

How fans and platforms view Web3

Steam has some restrictions on the balance between Web2 and Web3, Wagner said, and his company is complying with that, as the team believes Web3 should enhance the player experience.

“If somebody wants to engage with it, they can,” he said. “It’s like free to play if you want to spend money on market transactions or use money to speed things up. Web3 is the same way. It shouldn’t change the experience if you decide not to engage with the Web3 side of things, or if you wait to decide to engage with them later on. We don’t want that to change the experience at all.”

He added, “On PvP side, where it’s meant to be very competitive — we don’t want anybody to have an advantage in the game because of that. But we do want in Web2 players to see that there are some advantages to having assets, owning them, having NFTs, being able to have true ownership. So we think Web2 players are getting to see the benefits there, and once they get curious and start exploring and playing with it, we think that they’re going to love it.”

Players should not feel like they’re renting their assets for as long as the game servers are live, he said. And over time, Wagner wants more than one game set in the world, and he hopes players will be able to take their assets from one game into another. And he thinks NFTs will draw players in through their friends, adding a social layer to a game. He said the company can add details to assets like when a sword was made and how many kills it has and how many battles it has been in.

During the past few years, the company has gotten feedback from casual players to hardcore players and it has done a lot of testing and iteration to see what works for players.

Regarding the resistance Western players have had to Web3, Wagner said, “We’ve had lots of conversations with our community about it. We’ve got members of our community that have been with us for years now and really engaged with us while we’ve been developing. We had some conversations with the community about why we’re doing it. At the end of the day, our conversation revolves around putting this in there as an option. Our deal with games in general is that everything should be a choice.”

And he added, “If people want to engage with something, they should be able to. The community said loud and clear they are OK with that. Our community accepted that really well. They said it sounds good as long as you’re not changing our experience in negative way or penalizing us.”

State of the industry

Regarding the state of the game industry and the large number of layoffs, Wagner said he believes the industry goes through a cycle like this every five years or so.

“It’s difficult for everybody. I think one of the things that has worked for us is that we come from modding. Because of that, we have a background in really focusing on building a great game and that has always helped us,” he said. “We’re doing this for the love of the game, the love for the process, the love for the community. And so we didn’t start as a studio where everybody was making a ton of money, and we were raising money.”

Overall, he hopes the industry will be stronger when it breaks out of its funk.