Epic Games is financially supporting Australia’s Grease Monkey Games, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, to develop a new blockchain-based motorsport game Torque Drift 2. The funding, an Epic MegaGrant, will be used to develop the motorsport title. It will be based on drifting.
The Epic MegaGrant, as per an announcement from Animoca Brands, ranges from $5,000 to as much as $500,000. It will be used to develop a realistic gaming experience that is on par with other triple-A games that use Unreal Engine, a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games. This has been utilized by many industries after the initial showcase in the 1998 game Unreal.
Greasy Monkey is creating a play-to-earn (P2E) game, which has often been at odds with blockchain gaming. It should be noted that Epic Games has a huge fan following from the traditional gaming sector. The upcoming drifting motorsport, Torque Drift 2, will feature a tuning garage for players from Q3 2022. The full release date is scheduled for 2024. The game will use NFTs, cars, decals, and other items that players can use to build up their car and profile. They will also be able to create their own paint job and car tune non-fungible tokens which can be shared and sold within the Torque Drift 2 marketplace. Greasy Monkey, a traditional game developer, has been publishing original IP games since 2014. It has a record of over 45 million downloads worldwide. Animoca Brands acquired the Australian game developer in February 2022.
Incorporating blockchain verifiable NFTs into games provides digital ownership over in-game content. It allows players to sell items when they are finished playing or want to exchange their items for new ones. This is referred to as P2E. Players get rewarded with economic value for participating within the ecosystem.
