In the bear market, Era7 strives to retain users and keep them active; besides, Era7 also aims at its ecosystem.  Focusing on E-sports, it will hold worldwide E-sports events to attract more players. The League of Legends (LoL) held the "World Championship Series" every year in the world, has gained a lot of attention, and gradually become the benchmark of E-sports, greatly extending its lifecycle; In the meantime, as game marketing goes more and more professional, competitive, and global, great development has been achieved around its ecosystem: derivative IPs, streaming broadcast, training, sponsorship, cultural and creative products, etc. However, there is no reference yet for game ecosystem construction all over the industry of GameFi. 

A lightweight competitive game with a variety of rich challenges in 3 minutes. Although competitive games such as LoL and CS have gained a large number of fans around the world, not everyone has time to participate in an intensive and stressful game lasting 30 to 40 minutes. Furthermore, in the era of more fragmented and mobile entertainment, games that are time-consuming, competition-based, and hard-core appear a bit out-of-date.

Now it's the right time for lightweight competitive games. In a lightweight competitive game, players can speed up the battle and shorten the time in an automated way while maintaining immersive, competitive, and playable. Era7 is also a lightweight competitive game.

As a TCG GameFi on BNB Chain, the player needs to select a set of 30 battle cards from their assets, including both non-NFT and NFT, with different attributes, abilities, and values according to a certain tactic. Then the player will deploy their cards on a 3×3 battlefield. Following the turn order and the fixed rules, the damage, HP, spells, and effect of abilities will be calculated automatically.

The player only needs to deploy the cards and place the cards in positions and then a game "through thought-out strategy making" will be automatically staged. Both sides will attack and defend in turn according to the rules until one's physical strength is exhausted, and there is no chance to fight back.

Therefore, despite the three-minute game, the strategy can never stay unchanging, and it's hard to repeat; At the same time, when players deploy strategies, they will obtain positive feedback from adjusting card sets- trying the effect - optimizing the strategy - winning.

In the lightweight game, players can play in either PvE or PvP mode and will be rewarded correspondingly in Era7:In PvE mode, players can play the "Valiant Expedition" and "Campaign", both of which include nearly 100 levels. When players reach a certain level, GOT and new cards can be obtained as rewards. And players can also improve their skills and enrich their card sets in PvE mode.

While in PvP mode, it emphasizes more on competitive skill. Players can enter the PvP arena and match players of a similar level to obtain basic cards; they can also join the ladder race when they reach a certain level and get GOT rewards after winning the game.

Players with higher rankings have the chance to join the "World Cup Tournament": top players from all over the world will compete for the world champion from group competitions to the final, and the winner will also receive the sponsored BUSD and the governance certificate ERA (with a higher value than GOT) of the game.

To a blockchain game focusing on competition, "Play to earn" is more like a "Win to earn" mode with a threshold. There is a threshold from a beginner to a winner, while the process actually progresses from experiencing the game to knowing the rule, resulting in the sense of fulfillment and passing awards. And in the meanwhile, players will be more motivated to explore strategies and better understand the rules, which is much more attractive and interesting than boring "Play to earn" away from the keyboard.

And the game data seems to have confirmed its attraction. In the past six months, the number of new users and active users of Era7 ranked first among games in the BNB Chain, including nearly 30,000 daily active users, which is quite considerable in the field of GameFi.

Considering that there is no winning strategy in trading card games, a card set can be easily targeted. And if there are robots among active users, players can't ensure to win even if the robots play according to a fixed routine. If there are a few robots, the rest active users will form the base of the game except for the robots.

Card-trading games like Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and HearthStone are benefiting from the variety of rules; a core group of players will be formed once people start to play it. Despite changing game environments, there will always be various store competitions, regional competitions, and world tournaments every year.

This is the same case for Era7 from the data. Currently, it has attracted a group of faithful active players, which can ensure the floor of the GameFi–survives. It comes to the second half after a number of three-minute battles.

How to live better? What is the ceiling for games?

The high yield of play-to-earn used to be a key to these two questions. However, the results of the death spiral of most games have shown us the weaknesses of the model, which is unsustainable. Instead of being involved in the economic model and incentive design, Era7 chose to give an answer on game marketing.

In terms of improving loyalty to the game, according to Adam, the CEO of Era7, the top priority is to improve the sense of participation and experience of players. In terms of practice, players can clearly feel the changes as follows:Participation in game design. Readers familiar with card-trading games may fear being dominated by overwhelming card sets. By voting and governance mechanisms of the DAO, players can evaluate the functions of Era7. For example, when the cards are too powerful, they can weaken the attributes of the cards by voting proposals; On the contrary, they can also strengthen themselves with the most popular cards.

Different from the nihilistic governance of some projects, in the sense of gaming, changes in experience brought by governance rights are real. When the game balance is optimized as a result of changes in the attributes of the cards, players can obtain some right to change rules and have a better experience in the battle.

Easy to get started. Trading Card Game often requires a long time to play games for players to understand the purpose of each card, and novice players tend to be confused about the rules. Facing the threshold problem, Era7 has set up a series of tasks for novices to enable them to obtain a decklist for a basic experience when they are learning the rules and fulfilling the task; At the same time, for more advanced requirements, decklist leasing is provided so they can try a better decklist at a relatively low cost.

Optimized trading experience. With the increase of game cards, players will face the challenge of how they can choose an appropriate decklist when they trade cards on the NFT marketplace. Considering the time and economic costs, Era7 has been making efforts on the marketplace search and decklist recommendation so that players can find target cards faster and quickly understand the value and utility of the decklist.

If the actions mentioned above to improve players' experience and sense of participation are subtle details in marketing, conspicuous gaming competitions will be the highlight that attracts more attention and engages more players.

On November2 2022, it was announced that Era7 had acquired 35% of the shares of EsportsFi (ESFI), a network engaged in Web3 E-sports event management, with a valuation of 30 million US dollars.

After ESFI joined, Era7 soon launched the WCT Season 2.Compared with Season 1, in addition to a bonus pool for champion players, there will be player reward tasks and the Commentators reward pool to create a bigger ecosystem around the event together with cooperators; At the same time, the audience can also directly check information on ESFI, such as the prize pool, live broadcasts/videos, competition schedule and player rankings.

Era7 will release new card sets every 4 to 6 months to update the content and interest of the game periodically; At the same time, the GOT/ERA Token of the Era7 will also usher a new consumption peak because it can be used to combine functions of different cards and purchase cards.

From what they have done, we can see a clear marketing path based on gaming experience, aiming to expand influence, maintain interest, and balance the token economy. However, is it possible for GameFi like Era7, to establish a mature and stable ecosystem through marketing in the long run? A sustainable ecosystem of products, platforms, and markets as 3 pillars.

Era7 is more like a pioneer in the field of GameFi after embarking on the way to host tournaments, focus on marketing, and update game content in a cycle:There are few GameFi that survive by marketing or hosting competition events. And it's unavoidable soul torture to build its own ecosystem on the fire-new field.

In face of such challenges, it reveals that Era7 is making a top-level plan for a sustainable ecosystem. In the plan, game products, event platforms, and NFT markets will work together to form a long-term and sustainable ecosystem:

First, product capability is the foundation of the whole ecosystem. Playability is the start of TCG. While enriching the content and ensuring the competitive balance, it will increase the number of users and active users to strive for the TOP 1 of the TCG. With a certain number of users, Era7 may provide more plays based on traffic in the future.

As we have been observing on the whole GameFi market, the metaverse-themed games like land-trading and auctions and the appreciation of virtual assets held by players are all worth a try; At the same time, characters and stories can also bring more derivatives by using the IP of Era7.

Secondly, new formats and imagination can be developed in NFT markets. Currently, it is more of a transaction market for card assets in the game for the NFT market in Era7, where the experience of NFT Mint, sale, purchase, and lease is being optimized.

With increasing user viscosity, however, there is bound to be a demand for decklist recommendations and guidance: which cards are better, how to buy them, and how to match them well. On the contrary, other players can also reward them based on their recommendations.

This type of business is more inclined to the creator economy and live streaming commerce and is common to see in Web2, but it is a difference and innovation in the NFT trading platform of GameFi.

At last, the event platform can amplify the influence. From the recent action that Era7 acquired ESFI and held the second season of the World Cup Tournament, it's obvious that the original event platform of Web3 can organize, operate and publicize competition events instead of the game owners, that is, leave the professional things to the professionals. In the meanwhile, NFT-based tickets, contractual payment of the prizes, and release of NFT derivatives can be made in an original Web3 way;

In the long run, there will emerge a demand for professional competition with the increase in scale and improvement of professionalism. With help from the event platforms, it is logical to develop services such as player training, team formation, management, and package for E-sports teams and activate more interested parties around the E-sports events.

As a trading card GameFi project, Era7 brings the NFT market a traffic base. When players trade cards in the market, the supply and demand of assets in the game are regulated in the NFT market;

Moreover, the event-related commodities such as tickets/derivatives/prizes can be put on the shelves in the NFT market so that they can be found and purchased in the market, and the audience on the event platform also brings traffic to the NFT market;

Finally, it also brings traffic from competitors and audiences to the event platform, while the event platform amplifies the response and influence of the game.The 3 pillars have created a linkage among the different factors and have a positive drive for ecosystem construction, and the last problem is Era7's implementation.

Once the game and tournament become influential, it may achieve an ecosystem with more stable prosperity and will have the first mover advantages.