YouTuber Dr. Disrespect previews deaddrop gameplay to thousands of viewers

Gamers hate NFTs, you say? Not in Deaddrop’s world.

Popular YouTube streamer and former pro esports player Guy “Dr. Disrespect” Beahm started his own game studio Midnight party back in 2021 with plans to create a top-tier first-person shooter. Plans for his first game, Deaddrop, ruffled feathers among crypto-haters because Midnight Society released 10,000 optional Polygon NFTs called “Founders Passes” for the unreleased game last year.

Now in its pre-alpha phase, Deaddrop was publicly tested with much fanfare on Friday night by the likes of esports stars Dr. Lupo, ScumZlaner and other professional players.

The three-hour event was held at the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas and had a sizeable audience, with one content creator attending in person, Spikesays Decrypt that there were “about 500 people” at the event and a long line to get in.

In addition to the IRL audience, Dr. Disrespect’s live stream of the event saw approximately 22,000 concurrent viewers, and Scump’s stream of the event received 10,000 concurrent viewers. All things considered, there is a huge audience for a game that offers NFTs to players.

Opt-in NFTs

For those concerned, the document’s NFTs don’t seem to interfere or alter gameplay at all. Actually the 10,000 Founders Pass NFTs seem to function more like tickets to some sort of membership club, granting holders a unique PFP whose visor can be used in-game, voting rights on game items, access to Midnight Society events, priority for items, access to game builds, and other benefits. The current floor price for a Founders Pass is 0.4 ETH, which is approximately $726.

Gameplay

During the pre-alpha gameplay test, Midnight Society co-founder and former “Halo” developer Quinn DelHoyo explained that not only is Deaddrop person-vs-person (PVP), but it also has a core person-vs-environment (PVE) element. This combination is often referred to as PVPVE in games, which, while a hefty acronym, accurately describes the gameplay centered around taking out other players while slowly climbing up to a recovery point before a death freeze sets in.

“It’s a whole 720 degrees of carnage,” DelHoyo told the crowd about the game’s vertical challenges.

The PVPVE nature makes Deaddrop a bit like other PVP Battle Royales Call of Duty: Warzone or Apex Legends, but Deaddrop has a unique retro aesthetic. While Midnight Society developers reminded viewers that all of the landscapes in the game were still in their very early, unfinished stages, they also expressed a desire to create a world permanently set in the 1980s and 1990s—an aesthetic that matches Doc’s eccentric personality .

Image: YouTube/Midnight Society

One element of Deaddrop that makes it relatively unique compared to other shooters is the fact that “teaming” is allowed and actually encouraged by the developers. Teaming is when several players form groups in the game and agree not to kill each other, even though they can do so and reap great rewards. However, teaming in Deaddrop has its own problems, such as accidentally shoot your friends or struggling with the impact of betrayal.

Some netizens were annoyed that Deaddrop charged players who didn’t own the NFTs $25 to test out the pre-alpha game. To some extent, this confusion is understandable given that The Midnight Society’s website says Deaddrop is “free to play.” A player also reported frame rate problems with the game, which is developed in Unreal Engine 5 with ray-tracing.

While Twitter users argued over whether Doc is “possessed” with NFTs, and others claimed that the Midnight Society team is “highly focused on NFTs”, there was no use of the reviled acronym on stage during the Friday night event.

Instead, the focus remained on hyping up the new game features to the crowd.