Million on Mars:

“Martizens” A 10k unit NFT PFP Collection on Solana

NFT’s dominated the web3 headlines in 2021 and 2022. From boom and bust cycles with high flying prices for Bored Ape’s and Doodles to the epic rug-pulls, NFT’s have been buzzing. The team at Million on Mars watched all of this hoopla in the market, and shrugged… we were launching 2k-5k fresh NFT’s every week and selling them out to our in-game audience every Thursday since November 2021! But we felt like we could up-level the NFT experience by making something truly unique that worked great for an ACTUAL game like Million on Mars that our player audience would love.

Enter Martizens - 10,000 unique PFP’s with real in-game utility. Our focus was bringing to life the 18 characters from the Million on Mars IP, but also offering up real in-game utility for our players, giving them massive ROI on their investments. Our PFP’s were more than just flashy jpeg’s, they were unique NPC’s that players could assign to their own buildings and settlements. Martizens could automate buildings, raise morale, even take on time-consuming and mundane tasks so human players could focus on playing & having fun. Additionally, every Martizen came endowed with in-game currency drops that started 1 week after our public mint. 

We found an amazing partner in Justin Kan’s Fractal.is platform, an NFT marketplace 100% focused on the emerging web3 gaming space. We worked closely with the Fractal.is team over the 1 month lead up to our pre-sale launch. With the Fractal team, we decided to release 10,000 NFT’s, the first batch would be 7,000 units in June and then a second subset in July would be 3,000 units. 

We decided to give our (very excited) player audience the first chance to get a Martizen and give them guaranteed access to our mint. We we sold 4,000 units in a pre-sale experience that was built into the Million on Mars game, which sold out of all 4,000 units in less than 5 days. (this was the week AFTER the first Crypto crash in May). 

We then launched an in-game tournament with Fractal, offering up exciting rewards, bundles, and surprises to the players for finding “fractal shards” hidden throughout the game. Collected fractal shards could be exchanged for deeply discounted items, rare products, and even access to the Community whitelist for our now sold-out mint. Our existing player audience and the new audience from Fractal loved the tournament. We had over 14,000 players engaging in the leaderboards that we used to track and rank players. 

At the end of the Fractal tournament we kicked off the mint of the Martizens over 4 days. 

• Day 1 - Pre-sale mint (4,000 units) - for all the players who pre-purchased a martizen from MoM, this sold out in less than 24 hours, as they had already paid for the units and gotten a hefty discount in doing so

• Day 2 - Community Mint (1,500 units) - this was the first time members of the fractal community could buy Martizens and it nearly sold out in 24 hours. 

• Day 3 - Public Mint (1,500)  - This mint sold out in 72 hours

• Day 4 - Reveal day - This is the day we revealed all of the Martizens to the players / purchasers. Martizens were granted unique traits across 50+ parameters including Bankroll (in-game currency drops), celebrity, and the table stakes of truly unique designs.

All of this happened during the start of what is now being called ‘crypto winter’ where we saw all crypto token pricing drop significantly. But our sales were strong, the player community loved it, and they loved being able to take their PFP’s and put them into the game almost immediately, rather than waiting for some over-promised, over-hyped, vaporware game that may never come. (cough Star Atlas cough)

Did I mention we made 10k images, and I got to QC all of them about 30 times in one week?

Martizens are a new collection of 10,000 unique NFT’s which tie directly into the Million on Mars game. The Martizens are inspired by characters from the Million on Mars Universe, and each Martizen comes jam-packed with in-game utility:

• Special & Rare In-Game Traits

• In-Game Currency Drops

• Gorgeous 1 of 1 Art

• Special Future Surprises for Martizen Owners

• And Much More!

Build Your NFT Empire On Mars

One of the challenges with launching our PFP project was our existing audience was very excited about the in-game utility, but new audiences (like Fractal’s) didn’t know much about us, and onboarding into the game was a friction-filled experience.

So we made a fun video that tried to demonstrate to new audiences not only was there an actual GAME in here, but that the game was fun, deep, worthy of their time, and worth the investment in a Martizen.

Fractal Radio: Craft, Earn, and Settle the Planet!

We had a wonderful interview with Fractal founder, and former Twitch-fonder, Justin Kan. "I like how this game is about building something positive for the future, and how deep it is."

Results

• 4,000 pre-sale NFT units were sold out in less that 5 days through our private in-game store

• 3,000 units sold through on our community and public mint in less than 5 days during bear market conditions

• Thousands of ecstatic & satisfied players who loved the art and utility of their Martizens.