Kevin is still a rough beast, but the rest of the artwork has been upgraded as Pixelmon reveals its redo roadmap.
In short
- Pixelmon, a Web3 gaming project that raised $70 million from primary NFT sales, has announced new leadership and development plans.
- The project was widely criticized after its artwork was exposed in February, but the original biological artwork was later replaced.
Perhaps no project reflects the over-and-speculative craze of the NFT world better than Pixelmon, which raised $70 million by selling NFT, promised to provide a Pokémon-like experience, and then released rough artworks, which were widely criticized and produced a large number of meme.
A Pixelmon founder even called this art disclosure a "terrible mistake".
A few months later, this Ethereum-based gaming project is making a comeback. Today, Pixelmon announced a new leadership team and, following a recent upgraded artwork, has made a comprehensive revision of the roadmap to transform the rough, Minecraft 10-inspired model into a more refined, smoother 3D creature.
Now Pixelmon's developers plan to turn collectable NFT monsters (up to 3 ETHs per in the initial sale) into interoperable 3D characters that can be used in upcoming Pixelmon online games as well as other meta-universe games. The development of
Pixelmon was taken over earlier this year by LiquidX, a Web3 VC studio that helped build NFT-based projects. According to a press release, LiquidX acquired a 60% stake in the project, and LiquidX co-founder Giulio Xiloyannis will serve as CEO of Pixelmon.
Initially, Pixelmon plans to launch a playable alpha beta version of the game by the end of 2022. According to the new roadmap, the game's alpha testing will begin in the first quarter of 2023, with the game's roadmap including the future launch of virtual land NFTs, as well as independent utilities and governance tokens to boost the Pixelmon economy. The complete game will be released by the end of 2023.
In addition, Pixelmon will offer a free game mode where anyone can play without having a monster NFT, currently priced at 0.36ETH ($475) in the top secondary market OpenSea. Another Pokemon-inspired NFT game, Axie Infinity, launched its own free game mode when it initially needed NFT to play.
Pixelmon may be trying to get rid of its widely mocked debut in many ways, but the project is also embracing memes that turn it into a disgraceful logo in the NFT space. Artwork like
was revealed in February this year, and a special monster, Kevin, attracted the imagination (and taunts) of NFT collectors and quickly became one of the most valuable Pixelmon NFTs. While other Pixelmon bio-artworks have been upgraded and overhauled, Kevin's blocky, ogre-like appearance is hardly touched by anyone.
