In this post, we provide an analysis of a commercially successful 4X / MMORTS game, Rise of Kingdoms, setting an example in order to illustrate our play-and-earn crypto-gaming thesis in Part 2.

In addition, we conduct a breakdown of the gameplay into economic, spatial, military, social and political gameplay factors. Afterwards, our analyst shares their personal story as a king in the game, stewarding almost a thousand players in their kingdom. Finally, we signpost towards how we can potentially expand these billion dollar businesses with play-and-earn.

Rise of Kingdoms: Lost Crusade is an ‘MMORTS’ (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy) 4X game with unparalleled degrees of freedom. Think Age of Empires, but where diplomacy, politics, and your relationships actually matter.

Or think Clash of Clans, except you can really affect other players and you share a concurrent, real-time world. Games historically have been great at simulating wealth and power (Diablo’s loot comes to mind), but bad at simulating politics and the games that come along with it. Competing in Rise of Kingdoms is closer in dynamics to Eve Online than Clash of Clans — with levels of risk and potential loss.

You can have dictatorships, democracies, and everything in between to organize resources, and manpower within your kingdom.

Oh, and you can play on your mobile phone, PC, or iPad… and pay for basically any resource within the game… except loyalty.

Gameplay – a Game of Power

This game comes from a lineage of games, starting with Game of War: Fire Age, which remains one of the top grossing mobile games of all time, with over 2.8 billion USD grossed (Sensor Tower, 2018).

There are multiple aspects to the game: economic, spatial (territorial), military, social and political – note that all the aspects are interlinked, but we choose to break them down and then discuss how they relate to the other aspects of the game.

Rise of Kingdoms recreates the feudal structure similar to Game of Thrones – with the king at the top. There are thousands of players playing in a kingdom at any given time, but there can only be one King. Below them are the lords (individual alliance leaders) and knights (warriors), and lastly the peasants who farm resources, log on, and occasionally get drafted into war.

Feudal Government

The core loops revolve around five main actions, “build up your city, train up troops, advance your research, level up your commanders and craft equipment”. At a glance this looks like the core loop of a build & battle game like Clash of Clans – however, the introduction of a spatial aspect as well as a deeply social MMO aspect with thousands of players in a concurrent world brings it to another level.

Each building is a city. Your power is shown in the top left – 14,320,477. (Credit: ChisguleGaming)

At the individual level you have your city, amongst many other cities, and your power is literally metered (image: top left), reminding you of your place in the power hierarchy. Naturally, there’s a rank function so everyone can see who’s currently the most powerful in the kingdom.

Economic

A kingdom needs an economy.

The core gameplay loop of Rise of Kingdoms is all about economic efficiency – depending on how much I’m willing to spend – how do I use my resources effectively to contribute and achieve my goals, based on the band that I am in?

So, there are actually multiple magic circles that exist here:

Core gameplay (Combat)
- Free-to-play / low-spender magic circle
  - How do I get myself into the top alliances?
  - How do I maximize the resources and progress I have, given what I’ve invested?
  - How do I create an impact in war and feel relevant?
- Whale magic circle
  - How do I convert my spend into effective clout?
  - How do I ensure that my investment is recognized by other players?
  - How do I surround myself with active and intelligent players?
  - How do I create an impact in war and feel relevant?
Political magic circle
- How do I convince other players to engage in combat, for my causes?
- How do I build up loyalty and my clout amongst other players?
- How can I ascend up the ‘pyramid of power’ to become more influential in the realm, or become the King?

At the heart of all of these magic circles are behaviorist mechan