Deviants’ Factions is a NFT card game on the Terra blockchain. The game will be available to be play in Q1 2022. The card game will offer play-to-earn tournaments where players compete using decks of unique cards. Some of the developers are experienced Magic The Gathering players. The treasury used to fund the prizes is deposited in Anchor. Prizes will be paid in UST generated from Anchor’s yield.

On November 10, 2021 Deviants’ Factions sold starter packs on Knowhere.art. Each starter pack contained 8 cards, which is enough to play the game. Starter packs were sold for 99 UST each.

In this post I look at various data from the starter pack mint sale. Some addresses bought multiple starter packs. I try to find what characteristics are associated with buying multiple starter packs. Finally, I provide recommendations to the team at Deviants’ Faction to ensure the game is a great success in 2022.

Gathering the data

I built a dataset using Flipside Crypto. My dataset includes:

Link to my queries on Flipside

##    TOTAL_USD_BALANCE NB_STARTER_PACKS_PURCHASED
## 1        13224892.85                        181
## 2          290256.09                        162
## 3           58899.45                        100
## 4            5487.29                         99
## 5           24703.26                         93
## 6              23.86                         90
## 7          218319.93                         78
## 8           38437.34                         77
## 9            4778.89                         74
## 10            278.19                         73

November 9 Starter Pack Sale.

A total of 9600 starter packs were put up for sale on November 9. This sale was only available to a whitelist of addresses. All packs were sold and minted in manner of minutes. (source: blog.deviantsfactions.com)

In the next section, I look at the characteristics of the buyers who purchased more than one pack.

Correlations

Our input variables are only weakly correlated with the total number of starter packs purchased by addresses. Total.Score represents an address’ LUNAtic score, Governance and Cash.Out.vs.HODL are two underlying variables used to calculate the LUNAtic score.

The wallet balance one day before the sales event is the variable that has the strongest association with purchasing multiple packs (R = 0.17).

Let’s observe the correlation between buying multiple packs and owning a Galatic Punk. Let’s also look at the association with having purchased NFTs on Random Earth before the starter pack sale.

These two input variables have decent correlation with the number of packs purchased. I am surprised by the correlation coefficient that we see for the number of Galactic Punks held by an address. Perhaps Deviants’ Factions should send a free card to all Galactic Punk owners. They seem to be a group that is willing to buy NFTs.

Limitations:

What is next for Deviants’ Factions?

While the sale we just looked at was a success, things seems to have changed since then. Deviants’ Factions appears to be having trouble selling more starter packs. On December 1 they added 25,000 packs for sale on Knowhere.art. Each pack goes for 250 UST. The sales page on Knowhere.art shows only 1,189 packs sold so far.

If the sales data is accurate, the public sale was not as successful as the whitelist sale. Perhaps this is because the price of the packs was 2.5 times higher for the public sale. In my opinion another factor worth mentionning is that this card game is not playable at the moment. After listening to a Terra Bites podcast episode on Deviants’ Factions I considered buying a starter pack. However I refrained from doing so because the price tag was too high to pay for a game that does not exist yet. Why pay 250 UST for vaporware when I can buy a Xbox Series S for $299? This may sound harsh but perhaps other potential buyers went through a similar thought process.

Takeaways

Deviants’ Factions is a card game that shows a lot of promise. It intends to build upon the success of play-to-earn mechanics pioneered by Axis Infinity. The development team is credible and they are committed to building a fun game. Card game players are a huge market that remains under-served in the crypto world. Deviants’ Factions will be offering the right type of incentives by paying tournament players in UST.

Recommendations for the team:

  1. Give a free card to all Galactic Punk owners. These owners appear to be very engaged in NFT projects. They may also buy additional cards to complete their deck.
  2. Do your next mint event on Random Earth and pay for advertisement on the platform.
  3. Send a free card to the addresses that have made the most purchases on Random Earth.
  4. For future whitelist sales events, the team should keep in mind that an address’ wallet balance is the factor which is most strongly associated with buying multiple packs.

Also note that in my opinion card giveaways will generate more impact when the game is available to play.

I will be following this project closely in 2022. I might buy a pack when the game goes live. At that point potential players like myself will be able to see if they will enjoy the game.

Thanks for reading.

Zook#2707

streamust

December 19, 2021