Legends of the Mara, a new GameFi Metaverse by Yuga Labs, is mounting up to become a cornerstone of web3 development. The game represents a culmination of effort and investment into the Yuga Labs brand of assets and is set to be displayed in a unique environment that is decentralized and virtual. 

If done correctly, Yuga Labs will have turned the next chapter on blockchain adoption and application. Announced in March 2023, the game already has unique partnerships with brands such as Gucci that will help populate it with familiar identities to help spur enthusiasm.

What is Yuga Labs’ new game?

The game itself will take place in the Otherside which has about 100,000 unique plots that were distributed to BAYC and MAYC holders in 2022. Holders are set to receive a vessel that will be airdropped to their wallet addresses.

According to Yuga Labs, these vessels offer three different types of gameplay experiences: hunter, farmer, and enchanter. Kodas, which adorned the rarest of tiles, will also be decoupled from their land plots and offer the holder exceptionally powerful bonuses to the three gameplay types. 

Turn around GameFi?

The game, which has only been advertised to web3 enthusiasts and NFT collectors, has received a lot of praise due to the sheer size and ambition of the project. After two years, Yuga Labs is showing that investment into NFT collections can create real change, giving them the ability to bring their own creative imaginations as gamers to life. 

It would be no surprise if other successful NFT collections are starting to look more closely at The Legends of the Mara and how to deploy capital correctly. Despite many false promises in the past, we’ve seen a number of projects turn themselves around such as Pixelmon which had an infamous reveal. 

If The Legends of the Mara represent the largest metaverse and GameFi experience; surely there will be many smaller projects that follow. Not only would this be a boon to GameFi, but it would also remove the notion that every NFT is a scam.

Otherside is the biggest NFT metaverse now

If there’s one problem to The Otherside and The Legend of the Mara it’s that a player base derived solely from the BAYC and MAYC would lack in comparison to other mainstream games such as Fortnite and the World of Warcraft. Fortnite has nearly 9 million daily players and World of Warcraft has half a million while the BAYC and MAYC only make up about 40,000 members total.

Fortunately, Yuga Labs hinted that there will be interoperability with other NFT collections when they first teased the Otherside in 2022. If this is true, the Otherside and The Legend of the Mara will only be the start of what becomes a robust, decentralized virtual environment. 
Along with that, Meta’s announcement that they are removing NFTs from their metaverse pursuits also positions the Otherside at the forefront of metaverse technology and development along with their community which has shown significantly more interest in the concept than Meta’s userbase.