First ‘Bored Ape’ NFT Game Costs $2,300+ for Three Weeks of Play – Ars Technica
Owners of Yuga Labs’ infamous “Bored Ape” non-fungible tokens (and related crypto tokens) get free access to a simple endless runner/tunnel racing game called Dookey Dash Today. But some members of “exclusive” Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is already selling a chance to play the limited-time game for thousands of dollars on the secondary market.
Listings on the OpenSea exchange show a current floor price of 1.49 ETH (approximately $2,293) for a “Sewer Pass” NFT that provides access to Dookey Dash until 8 February. In less than 24 hours, the exchange has seen 8,394 ETH (about $12.8 million) in Sewer Pass transactions, with some passes selling for as much as 5.75 ETH (about $8,770) [Update: As of Friday morning, the floor price is now 2.044 ETH, or about 3,200].
While laundry trading and/or crypto-laundering may be the driving force behind some of these Sewer Pass transactions, it is clear that some players require access to Dookey Dash and are willing to spend to get it. But that demand isn’t driven by any kind of novel or transcendent gaming experience that Yuga Labs offers. Instead, NFT speculators are trying to use the game to get in on the ground floor of what they hope will be the next artificially scarce, high-demand digital asset.
Avoid obstacles for high score
As seen in an extremely scatological trailer released this week, Dookey Dash looks like a slightly modernized version of everyone’s least favorite level from Earthworm Jim. Players fly through a sewer tunnel from an over-the-shoulder perspective, avoiding obstacles and collecting items to score points, much like you do in countless free-to-play mobile and online games.
Warning, this trailer may not be safe for work (or humanity).
In a comprehensive FAQ, Yuga Labs describes Dookey Dash as a “skill-based coin.” It means a player’s highest score i Dookey Dash is linked to the player’s sewer pass NFT (one sewer pass allows as many attempts as a player can withstand before the deadline of February 8 arrives). Sewer Pass holders will then be able to exchange their pass for a mysterious “Power Source” NFT during “The Summoning”, which starts on February 15th.
The quality of these power sources will apparently be tied to each Sewer Pass’s relative position on the game’s final leaderboard, with rarer “moves” being associated with higher scores. The player at the very top of the leaderboard will be the only one to get the “ultimate power source”, whatever that means.
Yuga Labs promises it has “anti-cheat checks” in place to ensure human players are generating the high scores, and it says it will review gaming sessions that “raise red flags.” But players who want to gain a legal advantage in the game can get a point boost with a higher level Sewer Pass (generated by better levels of Bored Ape and/or associated digital pets). Players can also spend crypto ApeCoin on a “powershart pack” (yes, that’s the actual name) for limited-time boosters, putting money directly into the pockets of Yuga Labs in the process.
Let the speculation begin
Dookey Dash’s the structure makes the game a little different from previous games to serve games that Axie Infinity. There, game skill was less important than spending time using your rare axes to farm digital resources in extremely simple turn-based battles. The structure led to players in developing countries earning a living wage in the game (à la World of Warcraft gold farmers) before the game’s economy predictably collapsed due to lack of interest in the game.
Here is the value of the power sources which Dookey Dash players can earn is tied to their supposed role in Yuga Labs’ still amorphous “Otherside” metaverse project, which raised $450 million in seed funding last March. As the company says in an FAQ, power sources “can be used in future minigame sets to reach the Evo 2 stage and beyond” — again, whatever that means.
For speculators, however, the eventual function of a power source is hardly important. What is important is that these NFTs have a strictly limited supply; only a few thousand sewer passes will be made available to existing BAYC members, and the power sources sourced from the best Dookey Dash scores will still be rarer.
Of course, that scarcity does not make any of these NFTs valuable in themselves. But speculators are essentially betting that these NFTs (or future NFTs generated from the current ones) will gradually be in demand among Otherside users who will appreciate their role in Yuga’s metaverse (if and when it is released). And even if the inherent, game-based demand for these NFTs never actually materializes, speculators can still hope to sell at other speculators (bigger idiots, if you will) who believe in the future value proposition.
Who knows – maybe the ultimate source of power earned by the best Dookey Dash player will eventually become NFT gaming’s version of Magic the Gathering‘s Black Lotus, a rare card that can sell for close to a million dollars. For now, though, thousands of dollars seems like a lot of money to spend on a few weeks of yet another endless runner.
