08/07/2024 Ubisoft will add NFTs into Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles

Shot from Champions Tactics' YouTube trailer.

Ubisoft has announced a new partnership with doublejump.tokyo for its upcoming NFT RPG,Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles, doubling down withimplementing NFTs in gaming, despiteNFTs being an obvious market failure. This marks a continuation of its'Quartz' NFT initiative established in 2021.

The new development from Ubisoft isn't too surprising. Back in November 2023, Ubisoft partnered with Immutable, another NFT-focused gaming company with a lineup of three existing NFT games. Since those games are all built around NFT ownership, it stands to reason that Ubisoft's planned games are Immutable and now Doublejump. Tokyo will also be centralized around NFT ownership.

This leaves Ubisoft's own NFT initiative, dubbed Quartz when it was announced in December 2021, in a strange place. Ubisoft claimed that Quartz remained active as underlying infrastructure at the time, but these partnerships would lead one to believe Ubisoft is instead leaning on Web3 partners for these needs.

At least, it would seem thatChampions Tacticswill be built upon doublejump.tokyo's backend rather than Ubisoft's.

Champions Tactics - Alpha Gameplay Trailer - YouTubeChampions Tactics - Alpha Gameplay Trailer - YouTube
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Champions Tacticscertainly...looks like a video game. If you've played any Free To Play card game for mobile devices or PC in the past five years, you've basically already played this.

The provided gameplay trailer gives no information whatsoever on how NFTs are implemented within Champions Tactics, though presumably, Ubisoft's reported partnership with "double jump. Tokyo" will allow them to properly implement the blockchain in its most wasteful form into an RPG. Maybe the advertised "thousands of unique heroes" will correspond to NFTs.

In any case, tracing this story back to aJune 3 doublejump.tokyo postreveals a bit more information, as well as a few official website, trailer, and Discord links. The most pertinent piece of information is thatChampions Tacticswill be using the "HOME Verse" blockchain, which is run by doublejump.tokyo, and certified by Oasys. Doublejump.tokyo is also partnered with the likes of Square, Bandai Namco, and Sega fortheirNFT gaming projects, none of which have experienced success.

Arts

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/ubisoft-will-implement-nfts-into-champions-tactics-grimoria-chronicles

Interesting NFTs
The Harvest
An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower “node”, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads “uWu”. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).
Metarift
∾ 2160 x 2160 px, Video (46.5 MB)
Coldplay Fan Kitty Yaw
Good morning! I'm Coldplay Fan Kitty Yaw. I'm a professional Private Dancer and I love apple pie. I like to listen to Coldplay while grooming. Don't judge me. I look forward to sweating through my feet with you.
Wink
The eye of providence blinks. Originally posted to tumblr June 26, 2012.
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.