The National Football League (NFL) is getting a blockchain game. The league recently announced that it has partnered with the NFL Players Association and a blockchain game developer Mythical Games to create a new game called NFL Rivals.
In NFL Rivals, players will take the role of an NFL team’s general manager, with the gameplay being primariliy focused on roster building and competing against teams assembled by other players. Think Football Manager, but for American football instead of soccer, and with players tradable as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The game will feature all 32 teams currently in the league. However, because the game is free-to-play, all users will be given a starter team so that they can start playing without any sort of initial investment.
Interestingly, the term “play-to-earn” didn’t come up even once in the press release. Instead, the developers are using the term “play-and-own”. In an interview with GamesBeat, NFL Rivals’ executive producer Billy Schautz explained that the semantic difference is there simply because the team wants to put emphasis on the game first.
In another interview with Decrypt, Schautz said that NFL Rivals will have play-and-earn mechanisms, but so far he wasn’t quite ready to share any details regarding the topic. There are, however, plans for some Ethereum-based token for the game.
While so far there aren’t any screenshots or trailers of NFL Rivals, Schautz did mention the game being “an arcade style with 3D models”. Arcade is the keyword here, as NFL Rivals certainly won’t be trying too hard to provide a simulation experience like the Madden NFL series of games.
NFL Rivals is scheduled to come to the web and mobile web in early 2023. Ahead of the game release, the team will first launch 32 limited-quantity collections of unique generative 3D NFL franchise-themed NFTs. According to the developers, owning these officially licensed NFTs will grant access to special events, in-game rewards, and other unique features.
