The Walking Dead Metaverse adds a new NFT collection

The Walking Dead media franchise is one of the most popular of the last decade. During its 11-season run, the show garnered impressive ratings, with more than 17 million people tuning in for the drama’s season five premiere in 2014. These numbers helped make it the highest-rated scripted show for viewers ages 18– 49 years. , not just on cable, but across all television shows at the time.

And while it’s true that ratings for the show dipped after its remarkable peak, The walking dead retains a dedicated and passionate fanbase to this day, one that has enthusiastically welcomed the IP’s jump into Web3 with several NFT drops this year.

In February, Striker Entertainment (the company that represents The walking dead for AMC) announced a partnership with digital collectibles maker Orange Comet to release the show’s origin NFT drop.

The Walking Dead Walker Access Pass collection dropped on March 3, 2022, and featured 5,000 “walkers,” each with more than 30 traits. Access Pass holders receive exclusive benefits such as access to future drops, autographed merchandise and personal events, and the collection sold out in less than 24 hours. The company released another collection called Daryl’s Motorcycles on April 14, 2022: a set of 5,000 motorcycles and 50 model kit bike NFTs that pay tribute to the character Daryl Dixon’s iconic bike.

Now, Orange Comet will release the Degenerative Walkers collection on July 28, 2022, according to a press release shared with nft now. Walker Access Pass holders will be able to mint one or more of 5,000, 1 of 1 zombie NFTs, and will later receive airdrops of three additional NFT versions of their zombie shown in increasing states of decay.

Each NFT sent to holders will have the same physical characteristics as the original NFT, but will look progressively more degraded and decrepit than the last. Those who purchase a Degenerative Walker NFT at any stage on the secondary market will inherit the remaining airdrops. From 5,000, the collection will grow to 20,000 Degenerative Walkers within a few months.

Building The Walking Dead Lands

“The response from the fan base has been incredible,” Orange Comet CEO Dave Broome said in an email exchange with nft now. “It was our hope that we could appeal to NFT collectors who weren’t fans of the show by doing the best quality work in the room, while also appealing to The Walking Dead fans who never bought NFTs but were excited about what they looked away from us.”

Orange Comet uses these NFT drops to build up the show’s metaverse, The Walking Dead Lands, a “post-apocalyptic open-world build-and-earn experience based on The Walking Dead universe.” Users will be able to buy land, build structures and earn in-metaverse rewards for doing so.

“The creative background of the collection refers to the fact that these walkers have been captured for research and experimentation,” Orange Comet’s chief creative officer and co-founder Dante Ferrarini explained in an email exchange with nft now. “So it is likely that some interesting changes will become visible in the later stages.”

As part of its ambitious plans, the company aims to release five Walking Dead-related NFT drops annually. One upcoming drop that the company has released little information about to date is the Avatars collection.

Orange Comet said it modeled and hand-painted these avatars in a highly detailed manner to create something like a digital twin of the show’s cast members.

“Along with walkers, human avatars will play a strong role in The Walking Dead Lands,” Ferrarini said. “We will be doing more human avatar drops, the first will be later this year, [which is] a set of detailed 3D recreations of some of the most notable cast members. Next year we plan to release avatars that collectors can customize at the time of release. In any case, these characters will convert to The Walking Dead Lands metaverse assets.”

The main goal of The Walking Dead Lands metaverse will be to rebuild the world after the walker apocalypse. Users will be able to build structures and defenses, use tools and vehicles to explore different biomes, and search for materials and rare resources.

They will also be able to “mine their own faction”, a unique ability granted to landowners who create a “fully realized” plot of land that generates excess resources. And users can even sell their “Faction NFT”, in addition to all characters and tools that come with it.

“There is quite a lot to discover and we will be revealing a lot more about this experience in the coming months,” Ferrarini added.