Magic: The Gathering Creator Richard Garfield Partners with WAX Studios on Blockchain Brawlers

The legendary tabletop and video game designer himself dives into the Web3 space, joining forces with WAX Studios to create a PVP mode for Blockchain Brawlers!

The quality of talent working on blockchain games has just entered a whole new level.

Richard Garfield, best known as the creator of the wildly popular Magic: The Gathering trading card game – credited with ushering in the TCG genre itself – today announced a partnership with WAX Studios, creators of Blockchain Brawlers, to create a player-versus-player experience for the game.

An in-game screenshot of Blockchain Brawlers.

Since Blockchain Brawlers held its beta launch on March 30th of this year, the game has generated an outstanding $431mil USD in revenue – but some have been critical of it’s simplistic nature and repetitive gameplay loops. All that is set to change.

Speaking of the announcement, Garfield remarked;

�It’s a pleasure to bring a PVP element to Blockchain Brawlers. I am aiming for a game that is entertaining and immersive with real strategic choices and opportunity for risk taking – yet easy enough to learn that it opens up Blockchain Brawlers to a broad player audience.�

Michael Rubinelli, CGO of WAX Studios, added:

�We set up WAX Studios because we feel Web3 gaming is in urgent need of redefinition. Right now, it�s more about farming than having fun. Bringing in Richard Garfield and his beautiful, mathematical, and strategy-driven mind to the creative team behind our new PVP layer will boost Blockchain Brawlers to entirely new levels and raise the bar on Web3 gaming.�

Blockchain Brawlers has partnered with 2x Hall-of-Famer, 16-time World Champion Ric Flair, alongside developing a WAX to Binance NFT bridge.

Opinion

In my initial interview with Michael and our subsequent podcast interview,�it was clear that there were big plans for both Blockchain Brawlers and WAX Studios as a whole, but this top-tier partnership has come completely out of left-field – and I couldn’t be more excited for it.

Richard Garfield’s expertise stretches far and wide, and alongside still contributing to Magic: The Gathering to this day, he’s been a game designer and consultant for Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Valve and many others, lending his creative expertise, strategy forte and mathematical prowess to a plethora of games, both physical and virtual.

The combined experience of Garfield and Rubinelli is a force to be reckoned with, and is a huge power play for WAX Studios.

So, what does this really mean for Blockchain Brawlers?

Blockchain Brawlers’ April roadmap.

Speculation

Garfield’s expertise is rooted in trading card games, so could this PVP mode for Blockchain Brawlers include some TCG elements?

Card games have become a staple of blockchain gaming, with notable examples including Splinterlands on WAX/Hive, Gods Unchained on IMX, and Skyweaver on Polygon. The genre’s popularity and ease-of-translation to a play-to-earn model, combined with Garfield’s world-class knowledge of the space, makes it an obvious choice – but a wrestling game? Combined with trading cards? It’d be an unusual combination to say the least!

In any case, whichever way Richard Garfield and the WAX Studios team bring PVP to Blockchain Brawlers, it’s sure to inject fresh life into this burgeoning blue-chip entity, and will help further it on its path to blockchain gaming stardom.

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