Game-First: How Dark Taverns is using Stardust to create the next era of games

Dark Taverns is a free-to-play open-world MMORPG set in a unique fantasy world filled with hidden secrets and magic. Players can explore the deep forests and discover mythical creatures and items, create guilds with friends to combat new threats, or explore the world on their own. As players embark on an unforgettable journey in a brand new fantasy world, they can now own like never before. 

Powered by an ever-growing 39-person dev team, consisting of formerly Ubisoft and NCSoft Devs with extensive AAA game experience, Dark Taverns’ main focus has always been creating a good game.  The question of how can a game be better constantly comes up, so when Web3 gaming came to the forefront last year the team was immediately intrigued. 

As more and more emphasis is centered on player ownership, they began to look for the answer to what people actually want to own.  For Dark Taverns, the taverns in their game are the central hub for everything in the world. Players enter the world in the taverns, respond back, socialize, rest and recover there.  The team began to look into ways the taverns could create more utility for players. 

As Web3 progressed, the notion of virtual real estate grew from an idea to a reality. Dark Taverns explored just what this could mean for not just players inside the game, but people outside the game as well.  

Tavern Ownership

There are 10,000 taverns in the game, all of which are available for players to purchase. Once a player owns a tavern, they will be able to customize the experience at the tavern, rent rooms at the tavern, as well as hold meetings and events. The customization of the tavern experience lies with the owner.

A tavern can have a public area for anyone to enter as well as private areas. The private areas can not only be ticketed or whitelisted entry for events within the game itself, but people not in the game ecosystem can log in and enter a private room. Taverns are a virtual space that are not only a central hub to the game, but a central hub for a variety of virtual experiences. 

An owner can do things like hold concerts, have comedians perform, or hold a virtual conference for people both in and outside of the game.  

A Good Game first with full Web3 Functionality

As Web3 grew in popularity, the Dark Taverns team dove right in to learn more about the capabilities of the technology. Their team can program all Web3 elements themselves. Co-founder / Game Architect and Producer Tony Hobdy said, “we know how to, but spending our time figuring out the best way to program Web3 made it less of a ‘let’s make a great game’ endeavor and more of a ‘let’s find a better way for games to incorporate Web3’”. 

Dark Taverns wanted to enable players to experience the benefits of blockchain gaming, without making it mandatory or the central focus of the game.  Players can earn or purchase items that they can either resell within the game ecosystem or they can mint the item and sell it on the marketplace. It’s up to the player.

Partnering with Stardust and IMX

While the team was looking at how to best incorporate Web3 technology into their game, Dark Taverns explored many possible solutions. They initially wanted to mint the taverns on Ethereum because that’s where the top marketplaces are for resale.

Due to the high gas fees for users with this option, Dark Taverns began conversations with Stardust and IMX.  Dark Taverns felt that these partnerships would allow them to uphold their internal principle of good game first, which should cover all aspects of the game, including the Web3 experience.

For Tony, “the main reason we chose Stardust is that we want a seamless experience with no gas fees and no requirement for users to have to set up a wallet. We are not restricting the game to Web3, anybody can join the game because of Stardust and their product’s functionality.”

“Blockchain is paving the road for the next era of gaming, combining immersive game play with player ownership,” said Canaan Linder, founder & CEO of Stardust. “We are excited to see games use Stardust technology to bring this vision to life.”

You can check out the trailer for Dark Taverns below and look out for their taverns mint in early August.