Media
Mobile games platform and publisher Homa Games will host a game jam in February promoting Sorare’s Legend Cards soccer collection. The initiative is a joint effort to expand the presence of Sorare’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the mobile gaming industry. More specifically, NFT collectibles for legendary football players will be represented as characters in mobile games.
Homa Games, founded in 2018, specializes in the development of hyper-casual games which provide lightweight entertainment and can be played in a minute. Last year it raised $65 million and its portfolio of games has been downloaded more than 500 million times.
The company’s main product is a platform that provides mobile game development tools such as data on new trends, testing capabilities, and distribution and monetization technologies.
Sorare, which was valued at over $4 billion in its last round of funding, diversified from its blockchain fantasy football game through the Legend Card collection. The NFT collectibles are cards of legendary players who are no longer active on the field, such as Maradona, who passed away almost two years ago, and Platini, who became involved with UEFA’s government body after his retirement as a player.
The fantasy football game brings a lot of utility to players that hold the NFTs, but the Legendary Cards could fall into a collectible category that does not have much to offer holders beyond the collectible aspect. The partnership with Homa Games provides a potential outlet for collectors to make use of the NFTs for entertainment.
Homa Games and Sorare will select the game jam challenge winner, who will be awarded a pack of cards that consists of one unique card, two super rare, four rares, and 20 limited cards. The market value of the collection exceeds $7,000. Three other prizes consisting of one super rare, two rares, and ten limited cards at a value of around $1,500 will also be awarded to the developer presenting the best CPI (cost per install for a mobile game), playtime, and retention metrics. In addition, each subscriber will receive a special gift.
Participants will have a month to develop and submit a prototype of their game using the Legend characters. And in the meantime, Homa Games will provide masterclasses from experts in the mobile and blockchain industry, as well as resources to help participants develop and leverage their ideas.
“Video games have been a fertile industry for tech innovation for decades now, and we believe that NFTs open new possibilities when it comes to gameplay, community building on mobile devices,” said Homa Games co-founder and CEO Daniel Nathan. “Homa’s mission is to serve the gaming developers, and by partnering with Sorare on NFTs adoption we’re adding one other block to their toolkit”.
This is not Homa Games’ first game jam. In the past it has partnered with Nerf, Facebook Audience Network, and GameAnalytics for similar projects, although this is the first to include NFTs.
Meanwhile, the Australian Open launched an interactive NFT initiative, web 2 firm Zynga (now being acquired by Take Two) partnered with Forte for blockchain games, and Michael Jordan launched an NFT platform for athletes, HEIR.