Introduction
Boy, I had so much fun last night going for a walk with the DEFY app! It was the first time and I made a lot of mistakes, but it still was so much fun!
DEFY is a Move-to Earn (M2E) mobile game that puts the user hacking crypto wallets scattered around in the actual map of their surroundings. It requires GPS and Internet connection. The player needs to move to specific locations to interact with the game and earn rewards. So people find it reminiscent of Ingress.
The purpose of this post is not to explain the game mechanics. For that you can read this really well made Medium post. You can also take a look at this other Medium post for a comprehensive list of relevant articles. What I want is to share my experience and illustrate how this game-centric approach works as a strong incentive for some people to go out and exercise - with incentives both financial and recreational - and how this could easily become a very successful economical model when executed properly (read: minimal crypto friction), in the sense that it creates an engaging game that stands on its own for the experience, which effortlessly drives people into spend money on it - even without the crypto return aspect.
I have been trying out M2E apps for the last few weeks. Some are quite boring token farms, others are okay, few are interesting. I don’t particularly like running, so I have been walking at a fast pace. With the Winter approaching and the temperatures getting lower, the extra layers of clothing are enough to get me quite sweaty by the time I'm back home. It’s been great honestly, I’ve been having fun and enjoying the exercise. But DEFY did something the other apps couldn’t do: it got me to run to try and be successful at the game.
Mask up to play the game
To be able to play the game, one needs to buy a Virtual Private Mask (VPM) NFT. Great start right here with the name. There are in-game purchases that make playing the game easier or unlock more content. Owning more masks allows for longer play sessions and a smoother experience with less pauses. Many game loops are still in development.
There are 3 Mask collections at the moment. These initial masks will have advantages compared to future editions, but those features are not yet implemented.
- DEFY Genesis Collection https://opensea.io/collection/defy-genesis-masks
- Phantom Galaxies x DEFY Masks https://opensea.io/collection/defy-pg-genesis-masks
- DEFY Uprising Collection https://opensea.io/collection/defy-uprising-masks
The masks can be bought at around 0.01 - 0.08 ETH. Even the limited edition, best possible / ever Genesis masks are still available at very affordable prices.
Day 1 playing DEFY
So I started with a very fuzzy idea of what the game was about. This was around midnight. Initially I wasted some Energy repeating stuff that wasn’t necessary (and by the way, don’t let the phone shutdown the app, you will lose progress) and failed a few challenges trying to figure out how they worked. To unlock the rewards, the game asks you to find random character patterns in a square matrix and move on to the next phase of the game. This part wasn’t too bad and I eventually figured out the basics.
So I started moving around in my neighborhood to reach the different sectors, hack towers and steal the exposed wallets. I stole a couple of easy wallets in 2 different sectors, and got some loot. I also noticed warnings about enemy drones in the sectors, but nothing bad happened and I was still figuring out everything that was showing up on my screen.
Eventually I walked into a harder sector. The puzzle logic was different from the easier ones, so the first time I couldn’t complete it in time. The second time though I knew what to do. And I was only able to find 3/6 patterns before the time ran out! There is definitely room to practice and get better, the harder part of the game is certainly not trivial.
So I gave up on this sector and moved to an easier one. At this point it was past 1 AM and I was still fully engaged with the game, sorting out strategies to get enough Energy and where to walk to get in range of the virtual sectors displayed on my screen. And I found an easier adjacent sector, but this one had a lot of wallets. This time I noticed a drone moving on the map towards one of the wallets near me, while there were 2 wallets really close together on the other side of the sector. The drone retrieves the exposed wallets from the hacking and takes them to that tower, making them unavailable for the player to loot. So I started walking quickly towards the location of the 2x phat loot while the enemy drone was busy with the single wallet closest to me.
The first problem was this location was actually in the grounds of a very large public hospital! The hospital obviously doesn’t close at night and gates were open and unguarded, but would I get in trouble if a security guard found me inside walking around, phone in hand? I didn’t want to waste time, there was a drone coming after my loot!
Adding to this, there were some emergency medical staff wondering around the closest gate. I hesitated. Should I go around though another gate? No, it was too far. Should I engage with the staff and explain I was just playing a GPS game? Nah. But the drone was approaching and I was running out of time. I was getting worried.
Suddenly the staff moved inside somewhere as I approached the gate. I went into the hospital grounds, someone was ahead of me getting into a car and nobody interrupted me. I was close to the wallets! But so was the drone, which by now was already moving in my direction, to grab another wallet. I sprinted briefly to reach the wallet’s location. I started hacking them. But the hacking process takes a few minutes, and once I started it, the drone that was already half-way turned red and started chasing me! I looked at the map. I was in the corner of the sector. If I cross to another sector, I lose the wallet. My only chance was to try and run way from the drone while the hacking was still going on. But I was on a path in the middle of several buildings, it's not like I could go anywhere I wanted… The drone was really close now. My only option was to run. So I started running. I tried running away from the drone, phone in hand to see where I could go. I went one way. It was too close to the edge of the sector, so I backtracked. The only route I could take would put me going in the direction of the drone chasing me. I was trapped and I had nowhere to go. I started running again, but the drone caught me. The app shutdown on my phone and when I opened it again I had zero Energy. Game over. And I was out of breath.
What to do next? It was 2am! I went home. Walking home took another 15 mins - which is not bad by itself as exercise - thinking how awesome this was and how I couldn’t wait to try it again the next day. It got me wondering if I would do better on a bicycle or cheating with one of those new battery-powered scooters 😜.
Later I read some more and found even more nuanced strategies to play the game and in-game purchases to help deal with the drones (EMP weapon and a friendly drone). In the meantime I’m also planning to buy another mask, as the Energy stacks and allows me to play longer or with less wait time between actions.
The game stands on its own as a great experience
So you see how quality engagement with game mechanics can drive purchases, without dangling profits to the player with the very boring and uninteractive loop of buy > grind > breed > sell > buy that other crypto M2E games use to entice users to keep playing? This is the way to go. Granted, many people prefer to exercise in peace, but there is definitely a market for people who enjoy this sort of engagement.
Notice how outstanding and out of the ordinary this app is compared to the competition. It manages to create an engaging game environment that rewards moderate physical exercise without even bothering to count steps or distance to reward the player. It's a masterclass in game design.
The crypto friction needs to go away
However, the ultimate problem is crypto itself. You need to install Metamask on your phone. I had to double check which network the masks were minted on - they are in Polygon and OpenSea doesn’t really make that hugely clear at first glance.
I needed to bridge ETH to Polygon and make sure I was using the correct address and carefully figure out the whole procedure. The tokens can be bought on Bybit and need to be sent to your wallet first and then to a bridge before they can be used in the game app.
There is a non trivial amount of reading necessary to understand how the crypto (tokens and NFTs) work, how and where to buy. I am a fairly proficient crypto user and I find this confusing, convoluted and slow. It’s very easy to get confused and make mistakes. As long as these hurdles remain this will always be a niche thing. The friction is so high that anyone struggling to understand crypto will have no chance getting this going. This is the biggest barrier now - not so much creating an interesting game that people want to play and pay to use, but making it easy to get started and deal with tokens and NFTs in a transparent way without all these hurdles and lengthy steps. Until this is solved, it will remain a niche for a handful of crypto enthusiasts that enjoy playing games while exercising - no matter how fun and engaging to a wider audience the game actually is.
But the game is still in Alpha, which is quite surprising considering the quality of the gameplay already in. So we're still early in development and there is plenty of time to iron out the crypto friction before the official public launch. Hopefully the dev team will be able to make the crypto experience as high quality as the gameplay already is!
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