Author: CaptainZ Source: X, @hiCaptainZ
I have been researching blockchain games for almost two years, and have seen almost all the game projects on the market. From the initial excitement to the confusion later, and then to the surprise when I saw the full-chain game, it was full of ups and downs. Here I try to make a summary of my thoughts on the future development of blockchain games, hoping to help VC investment and game builders.
As the application end of the web3 industry, blockchain games once entrusted the heavy responsibility of mass adoption in the industry, but as everyone can see, almost all projects are short-lived. Lao Bai (@Wuhuoqiu) of ABCED mentioned that there are three directions for future blockchain games, namely:
3 A-level GameFi (games with strong playability, blockchain is only used to issue coins)
Casual game-level GameFi (games with weaker playability, blockchain is only used to issue coins)
Full-chain games (game logic written into smart contracts)
I also agree with this statement, but I have a different view on the results of development.
Let's talk about the first one first. The popularity of blockchain games started with projects such as Farmer World and Spaceship. To put it bluntly, there is no playability, just a Ponzi scheme for virtual mining. But everyone thinks that the game is not playable enough, so from 2020 to 2022, various VCs invested heavily in traditional studios that can produce excellent games. So, can a game that reaches 3A level of playability break through the circle and become a successful blockchain game? Not necessarily.
Here we first need to introduce the two concepts of "investment users" and "product users". Tracy (@CTracy0803) first mentioned these two concepts in the article "Web3 Marketing Thinking Transformation: Building a New Framework with Investment Users as the Center":
Product users: refers to consumer users, who focus on the user experience and functions of the product itself, and expect to get satisfaction or convenience through the product.
Investment users: refers to those user groups that expect to get a return on investment through products. Their focus on products is not only on the user experience, but also on the economic value and future development potential of the product.
Obviously, the typical users of Web3 are investment users, or in other words, they are degen (gamblers) with a very strong speculative mentality. You can't expect such a user group to play a 3A game honestly. They don't have the time or the mood. If you set the play to earn rate of return a little higher, it will soon collapse. The production cost of 3A games is still quite high. If the collapse is too fast, the cost cannot be recovered.
It is obviously inappropriate to put 3A chain games in the Web3 circle. The logic doesn't make sense. This is called PMF mismatch. What should I do? In fact, you can go to the traditional game circle, just change the customer group from Web3 to Web2. Isn't it very playable? Isn't it AAA level? As long as the quality is good, the billions of potential users of Web2 are the target, why bother to focus on the hundreds of thousands of potential users of Web3? And even if an extremely low rate of return is set, players will never get tired of it and be grateful.
Let's talk about the second one, the casual game level GameFi, which currently has two forms: those relying on social platforms and those not relying on social platforms. A typical example of the former is Hamster Kombat, and an example of the latter is The Beacon. Hamster Kombat is a click game based on the Telegram applet. Users only need to open the game link in the mobile phone Telegram (actually an H5 page) and keep clicking on the Hamster avatar to generate points, which can be exchanged for tokens later (but the tokens have not yet been issued). The game is extremely simple, but the number of participants is also extremely large. The official said last week that the number of players has exceeded 150 million (although we know that there are many bots, the remaining volume is still huge). The Beacon is a dungeon clearance game incubated by TreasureDAO. The playability of the game has been improved. Players use the keyboard to control the character to avoid and kill various monsters in the dungeon (in fact, a full-stack single-player game studio can make it in 3 months). Currently, the game only supports computer browsers, not mobile phones. It is estimated that the cumulative number of Beacon gamers should be only a few hundred thousand.
Currently, neither game has issued tokens. The reason why people participate is obviously because of some kind of "airdrop" expectation. We can even say that the day when the tokens of the two games are issued is the day of death. Although Beacon is more playable than Hamster, Web3 users are basically investment users. They even think that Hamster's mass adoption is much higher than Beacon, so should the market value also be higher (refer to NOTCOIN)? Therefore, I think that blockchain games based on social platforms have more development prospects, because:
Social platforms are all mobile apps, which makes it easier for users to participate using their mobile phones
Mobile app participation makes it easier to use fragmented idle time
It is easier to rely on social media for viral marketing and dissemination
Users are more likely to keep them in their own hands (tg channels, twitter accounts, youtube channels, etc.)
Finally, let’s talk about full-chain games. Chain games are games that write game logic into smart contracts to achieve decentralization and trustlessness of games, similar to DeFi (decentralized finance). It is still in the technical exploration stage, but the infrastructure such as game engines has begun to improve, and there are more than a dozen small games in testing. It was popular for a while last year, but now it has become quiet again. I think the reason why all-chain games have not become popular is very simple: there is a lack of hype targets. Especially in the context of a bull market, the market hot spots change very quickly. If a track does not have a hype target and no money-making effect, retail investors will immediately be attracted by the track with the most aggressive market growth. Of course, there is another reason: I tried several on-chain games and found that the gameplay was too complicated and it was difficult for ordinary users to get started. Always remember that "the typical user of Web3 is a degen like investment users". There is no coin to hype, and the gameplay is complicated, so users will only stay away. At present, all-chain games urgently need a new token distribution (mining) model similar to "liquidity mining" and "inscription".
To sum up, from the perspective of VC or chain game project parties, my views are as follows:
1. If the technology is strong, first consider decentralized all-chain casual games based on a certain social platform. Why? The full-chain game is to decentralize the game, which is in line with the industry's "correct worldview" and is the most core narrative. Add casual games and rely on social platforms to easily obtain traffic. Let's take a simple example: make a chain version of "Hamster Kombat". When promoting it, you can say that we are a decentralized game, and all game behaviors are recorded on the chain. Isn't it sexy, buffs are stacked? It will distance itself from other TON ecological projects at once.
2. If you have strong operational capabilities, first consider centralized GameFi games based on a certain social platform. The first choice is of course TON, which is supported by market hotspots and Telegram officials. Although there are already dozens of small games, there is still room for optimization/innovation. Telegram's traffic is relatively garbage, but the volume is large, the book data will look good, and it will also be convenient for future traffic transformation (telling stories to retail investors or VCs). Another thing is that you can also consider other social platforms, such as Twitter. Didn't Solana just announce the blinks technology that can be embedded in Twitter? Can it be used in games? Can we make a game plug-in based on Twitter? What is important is not the specific platform, but the use of existing social networks to carry out viral marketing.
3. It is not recommended to invest in/produce large-scale 3A chain games targeting Web3 users. This is a pitfall. However, we are optimistic about large-scale 3A chain games targeting Web2 users (which is a dimensionality reduction attack). I hope the above thoughts will be helpful to VC and Builder.
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