Player Count Surpasses 110,000: Exploring the Reasons Behind Pixels' 20x User Growth from a Data-Driven Perspective
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Player Count Surpasses 110,000: Exploring the Reasons Behind Pixels' 20x User Growth from a Data-Driven Perspective
Pixels UAW reached an ATH of 119K in November, achieving a 20x growth since September and becoming the top game on Ronin.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Harry Liu, Founder of APE Accelerator
From Big Time’s launch to Merit Circle’s rebranding, blockchain gaming has once again returned to the public spotlight. Within this space, Pixels stands out as a unique and highly watched game. Though not a 3A title, through strategic collaborations such as its partnership with Yuga IP and migration to Ronin Network, this pixel-style management game recently achieved an astonishing 119k Unique Active Wallets (UAW). Today, we analyze its progress by comparing November data with the previous two months, aiming to extract meaningful insights.
Background
Pixels is an open-world farming and space exploration game where players can gather resources, upgrade skills, build and customize structures, interact with various NPCs, form social relationships, and explore storylines and quests across the Pixels Universe. The game is free-to-play, but purchasing land NFTs allows players to expand their in-game operations and increase earnings for a richer experience.
Players can log in via phone number, email, or wallet. Pixels supports integration with major NFTs such as BAYC, Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, Mocaverse, and mfers. NFT holders can use their assets as avatars and gain access to exclusive experiences.
In October 2023, Pixels migrated from Polygon to Ronin Network. The in-game token $BERRY (an uncapped supply token earned through gameplay) has liquidity deployed on Ronin. The core token $PIXEL has not yet launched.
Key Data
In November, Pixels’ official website received 3.17 million visits and 17.9 million page views, with an average session duration of 9 minutes. In September, site visits were only 152,000, rising slightly to 162,000 in October—highlighting the explosive growth seen in November.
UAW (Unique Active Wallets) was just 5.9K in September, surged to 58.5K in October, and surpassed 100K in November, reaching 119K—an over 20x increase within two months.
Reasons Behind the 20x UAW Growth
Analyzing traffic sources, most users discovered the game through gameplay experiences and tutorial videos shared on YouTube and Twitter.
53% of new traffic came from YouTube. Dagdag Kita, a content creator from the Philippines, exemplifies this trend. Since February 2023, he has been sharing GameFi content including Pixels, growing his YouTube channel to over 45,000 subscribers. Many viewers began playing Pixels after watching his videos and continued subscribing for advanced strategies and insights. Numerous similar creators share gameplay tips and grow their audiences through engaging content.
Another factor is the active and engaged player community. By analyzing player IP distribution (with some data variance), we see that from September to November, players from India, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian countries accounted for over half of all users. Indian players alone grew by 50x.
By November, Indian players reached 91k, Philippine players reached 69k, and Brazil had 28k players. Indian players averaged 32 minutes per session, while Philippine players averaged 8 minutes. Players from Southeast Asia not only play longer but are also highly active in content creation—Dagdag Kita being a prime example.
During an offline talk, Axie and Ronin co-founder Jihoz.ron affirmed the importance of Filipino players in the Web3 gaming world. He noted that non-bot Filipino players reached 82k, accounting for 25% of Pixels' total player base. While there's a discrepancy with earlier statistics, both figures highlight strong Southeast Asian participation in Web3 games.
Similar to the above-mentioned talk, Pixels also made appearances at other offline events, such as roundtable discussions and dedicated experiences during the YGG SUMMIT.
The offline event was highly successful. On November 21, IRL activities combined with virtual activations drove Pixels’ daily active users to a record high of 119k (ATH). Even better, 51% of these users became deep engagement players. Beyond this event, Pixels partnered with Bored & Hungry, a California-based burger restaurant tied to the Bored Ape IP, to create mini-tasks—players who complete them get to enjoy delicious burgers made by the monkey-themed eatery.
While offline events and partnerships like the one with YGG pushed DAU to new highs, social content remains the foundation for sustaining this level of engagement and achieving strong retention. As previously mentioned, over half of Pixels’ traffic comes from YouTube. Video content effectively showcases the game’s appeal and conveys creators’ personal insights, creating strong resonance among viewers and driving FOMO-driven user acquisition.
Another key factor is Animoca Brands’ network effect. Previously, Pixels leveraged Yuga Labs’ BAYC IP for special challenge events, generating significant brand exposure. Recently, it integrated Mocaverse PFP NFTs into the game. As a core product within Animoca Brands’ portfolio universe, Mocaverse has recently gained attention due to the launch of its Moca ID product. Pixels built a dedicated club building in-game for Mocaverse holders to gather. Through broad IP collaborations, Pixels gains increased visibility, attracts more traffic, and acquires a batch of high-net-worth users.
The final reason is the network effect of Ronin Network. As mentioned earlier, the majority of players come from Southeast Asia, and reaching this audience would not have been possible without Ronin Network. Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain developed by Sky Mavis, the team behind Axie Infinity. Due to its close ties with Axie Infinity, Ronin already has a large established user base in Southeast Asia (the original Axie player base). An increasingly mature ecosystem also makes game deployment and player onboarding faster and more convenient.
Conclusion
In summary, Pixels achieved an ATH of 119k UAW in November, representing a 20x increase from September, making it the top game on Ronin. This success stems from a combination of offline IRL events, active Southeast Asian users, social content virality, Web3 IP collaborations, and the network effects of Animoca Brands and Ronin. Of course, none of this would be possible without a solid core game product—each growth strategy acts like a different booster rocket, collectively propelling Pixels toward broader adoption.
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