The King of Fighters ARENA is a new fighting game from Netmarble, based on SNK’s The King of Fighters IP, which will run on blockchain technology. As announced at the booth of YGG Japan over at Tokyo Game Show 2022, expect to see character NFTs and game tokens when The King of Fighters ARENA launches. This title is developed by Netmarble NEO, the team which previously made The King of Fighters ALLSTAR and Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds.
According to a representative from Netmarble Japan, The King of Fighters ARENA “is being developed not only for crypto users to play to earn, but also for all smartphone gamers.” It brings together main characters that appear in the KOF series and makes dream battles a reality. It was mentioned that the game has no gacha and no character collection elements, with free characters being added through updates. It was touted that the game also has a “growth system within the range that does not destroy the game balance.”
While controls for The King of Fighters ARENA is optimized for mobile devices, there is actually no manual input required during fights. The “fun” comes from “tactics and battles unique to fighting games.” Wow, Netmarble couldn’t really be more vague with this description. I just had to add this comment, lol. The main mode is 3 vs 3 team battle, where each of the 6 player controls 1 character.
I do not want to dive too deep into the blockchain and Play To Earn crypto bullshit, but players basically earn Fight Money (FM) after winning games to exchange for tokens, while players who do not invest (F2P) earn Mastery Points after winning. Mastery Points cannot be exchanged for tokens, but is part of the system for character growth alongside Fight Money. The wallet used here is Netmarble’s own Marblex (MBX) platform.
For the Play to Earn feature, a element known as “Fighter Cards” is introduced without needing players to play the game… Wow did I just say that? Netmarble believes the current P2E structure is not an attractive factor for investors and wants to reform the profit structure, hence this new idea being implemented in The King of Fighters ARENA.
For example, if a player bought Kyo Kusanagi’s fighter card from the marketplace and have it in his wallet, a certain percentage of the total Fight Money acquired by others players who selected Kyo Kusanagi during the in-game season, can be acquired as a dividend at the end of the season. The ratio of dividends that can be obtained will also fluctuate depending on the speculative value of the fighter cards. It was hinted that the more the fighter card of a character is selected, the larger the dividend given out.
Pre-registration for The King of Fighters ARENA begins on 28 September (no region mentioned, most likely global), with Netmarble already planning an e-sports tournament. This will not end well. Stay tuned for updates!
