You Can Earn a $130k Bored Ape by Winning this Blockchain Game

BY Jex Exmundo •

August 30, 2022

The Alpha:

NFT tickets for the Web3 game called Internet Game minted today in anticipation of its aptly-titled second-phase Bear Market Battle. The sale will only last 24 hours, but will maintain an unlimited supply throughout the sale period.
Via minting an NFT ticket, you can play to win ownership of several high-end NFT projects. As of writing, the floor price for each ticket is 0.07 ETH, or a little more than $100.
The first announced prize? Bored Ape #4317 — currently valued at a cool 88.9 ETH.

Why it matters:

Internet Game, co-founded by Jordan Lejuwaan and venture partner Krish Jagidar, just hit its second stride. The noted NFT figure gmoney will host the Bear Market Battle, joined by actress and comedian Leah Lamarr. Characterized as a truly “one of a kind” event “both in and outside of the Web3 space” by Lejuwaan, the project hopes to provide a straightforward utility for its supporters: fun.

Beyond the high-ticket NFT prizes in store for players that can successfully clear the Bear Market Battle’s two stages, fun seems to be the guiding principle behind Internet Game’s design. “I think most blockchain gaming companies are putting the block before the horse — focusing on the use of blockchain tech rather than just aiming to make a really fun game. Which is especially backwards in gaming, where the entire point of playing games is having fun,” Lejuwaan said in an interview with nft now.

Obviously, securing high-end NFTs to be distributed as prizes would require significant funding. Thankfully, Internet Game’s got it in spades. Following a $7-million seed round, the project could soar to new heights in staunch defiance of the ongoing bear market. In addition to these funds, Internet Game’s first season also accrued more than $2 million in revenue, per its publicly available case study.

Internet Game also promises functional utility for holders of its NFT tickets. Although the public sale for these NFT tickets will only run for 24 hours, users will have plenty of opportunities to buy more once the games kick off on September 12. As with the first season, users can opt to keep playing or “cash out” at any moment during the Bear Market Battle’s two-week run by selling their tickets. Each user’s progress — and winnings — get saved to their tickets, enabling new owners to pick up where the previous owner left off.

What’s next:

Notably, one key investor in Internet Game is Rus Yusupov, founder of HQ Trivia. For the uninitiated, HQ Trivia is a free-to-play trivia game that comes with a very alluring promise. By playing the game, HQ Trivia offered its users the potential to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash prizes. Unfortunately, the game had one flaw: bad actors attempting to game the system. This led to several users receiving their winnings months after the fact.

With Internet Game’s reliance on the blockchain, it successfully waved off one of its spiritual predecessor’s most significant flaws. Although it might not be a simple free-to-play app like HQ Trivia, requiring its users to buy an NFT ticket upfront greatly ensures a secure and fair experience for all.

On top of this, Lejuwaan believes that interactive experiences like Internet Game might continue to pop up all over the entertainment industry. In the 2000s, reality television shows like American Idol offered viewers the chance to vote-in the results of the competition via text. Today, shows on Netflix like You vs. Wild and the Bandersnatch special are laid out in a choose-your-own-adventure format. But Lejuwaan says these examples are merely “scratching the surface.” He elaborates, “what we’re doing now with Internet Game is experimenting with different forms of large-scale, interactive entertainment, and doing so in partnership with massive consumer brands to bring them to the mainstream.”

But wait! There’s more:

Editor’s note: Two members of the nft now editorial team previously worked with Internet Game co-founder Jordan Lejuwaan at Futurism, but were not involved in the publication of this piece.