Exploring the Future Development of Blockchain Gaming from the Perspectives of VCs and Builders

Original Author: CaptainZ(X:
@hiCaptainZ
)
I’ve been researching the track of chain games for almost two years, and I’ve almost seen all the game projects on the market. From the initial excitement to the later confusion, and then to the surprise of seeing the full-chain game, it’s been full of ups and downs. Here, I try to make a summary of the future development of chain games, hoping to help VC investment and game builders.
Once upon a time, as the application end of the web3 industry, chain games bore the heavy responsibility of industry mass adoption. However, as everyone can see, almost all projects were short-lived. Previously, Lao Bai from ABCED (@Wuhuoqiu) mentioned that there are 3 directions for the future of chain games, which are:
GameFi with 3A level (games with strong playability, blockchain is only used for coin issuance)
GameFi for casual games (games with weaker playability, blockchain is only used for coin issuance)
Full-chain games (game logic is written into smart contracts)
I deeply agree with this proposal, but I have a different view on the development results.
First, let’s talk about the first one. The initial popularity of chain games started with projects like Farmer World and Spaceships, which, to put it bluntly, had no playability and were just a virtual mining Ponzi scheme. But people think that the games lack playability, so during the period from 2020 to 2022, various VCs invested heavily in traditional studios that could produce excellent games. So, does reaching the level of playability of a 3A game ensure the success of a chain game? Not necessarily.
Here, we first need to introduce the concepts of “investment-type users” and “product-type users”. Tracy (@CTracy 0803) first mentioned these two concepts in the article “Web3 Marketing Mindset Transformation: Building a New Framework Centered on Investment-Type Users”.
Product-type users: refers to consumer users, who focus on the usage experience and functionality of the product, expecting satisfaction or convenience through the product.
Investment-type users: refers to a group of users who expect investment returns through the product. Their focus on the product lies not only in the usage experience but also in the economic value and future development potential of the product.
Obviously, the typical users of Web3 are investment-type users, or in other words, they have 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 for that. If you set the play to earn yield too high, it will collapse quickly. The production cost of 3A games is quite high. If it collapses too quickly, the cost will not be recovered.
Putting 3A chain games into the Web3 circle is obviously inappropriate, the logic doesn’t hold, this is called PMF mismatch. So what to do? You can actually 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 excellent, the target should be the tens of billions of potential users in Web2, why focus on the hundreds of thousands of potential users in Web3? And even if you set a very low yield, players will be happy and grateful.
Now let’s talk about the second one, GameFi for casual games. Currently, there are two forms: those based on social platforms and those not based on social platforms. The typical example of the former is Hamster Kombat, and the example of the latter is The Beacon. Hamster Kombat is a click game based on the Telegram mini-program, where users only need to open the game link on their Telegram app (actually just an H5 page) and keep clicking on the Hamster avatar to earn points, which can be exchanged for tokens (but tokens have not been issued yet). The game is extremely simple, but the number of participants is also extremely high. The official announcement last week stated that the number of players has exceeded 150 million (although we know there are many bots, the remaining volume is still huge). On the other hand, The Beacon is a dungeon exploration game incubated by TreasureDAO, with slightly higher playability, where players use the keyboard to control characters to avoid and kill various monsters in the dungeon (actually a full-stack single-player game studio can make it in 3 months). Currently, the game only supports PC browser operation and does not support mobile devices. It is estimated that the cumulative number of players for Beacon should be only a few hundred thousand.
Currently, both games have not issued tokens, and it is obvious that people participate for some kind of “airdrop” expectation. We can even say that the day the tokens are issued for these games will be the day they die. Although the playability of Beacon is higher than that of Hamster, Web3 users are basically investment-type users, and they even believe that the mass adoption reached by Hamster is far higher than Beacon, so shouldn’t its market value be higher (referring to NOTCOIN)? Therefore, I believe that GameFi chain games based on social platforms have better development prospects, because:
Social platforms are all mobile apps, making it easier for users to participate using their mobile phones
Participating in mobile apps makes it easier to use fragmented free time
It is easier to conduct viral marketing and dissemination based on social media
Users are more likely to be retained in their own hands (Telegram channel, Twitter account, YouTube channel, etc.)
Finally, let’s talk about full-chain games. Chain games are games in which the game logic is written into smart contracts to achieve decentralization and trustlessness, similar to DeFi (decentralized finance). It is still in the stage of technical exploration, but the basic infrastructure such as game engines has begun to be improved, and there are also a dozen or so test small games. It was popular for a while last year, but now it has quieted down again. I think the reason why full-chain games have not taken off is simple: it lacks something to hype. Especially in the context of a bull market, market hotspots change very quickly, and if a track does not have something to hype, without the ability to make money, retail investors’ attention will immediately be attracted to the most aggressive track in the market. Of course, there is another reason: I tried several chain games and found that the gameplay is too complicated, making it difficult for ordinary users to get started. Always remember that “the typical users of Web3 are investment-type users such as degen”, without a coin to hype, and with complicated gameplay, users will keep their distance. Currently, full-chain games urgently need a new token distribution (mining) model similar to “liquidity mining” and “inscribing”.
In summary, from the perspective of VC or chain game projects, my views are as follows:
1. If the technology is strong, consider first developing decentralized casual games based on a certain social platform. Why? Full-chain games decentralize the game, which conforms to the industry’s “worldview correctness” and is the most core narrative. Overlaying casual games, relying on social platforms, makes it easier to obtain traffic. For example, make a chain version of “Hamster Kombat”, and when promoting it, you can say that we are a decentralized game, all game actions are recorded on the chain, isn’t that very sexy and impressive? This immediately distances it from other projects in the TON ecosystem.
2. If the operation capability is relatively strong, consider first developing centralized GameFi casual games based on a certain social platform. The first choice is of course TON, which is relatively supported by the market hotspot and the Telegram official. Although there are already dozens of small games, there is still room for optimization/innovation. Telegram’s traffic is relatively garbage, but it’s a large amount, the data on the books will look good, and it will be convenient for future traffic transformation (telling stories to retail investors or VCs). Also, consider other social platforms, such as Twitter. Didn’t Solana just announce the ability to embed Blinks technology in tweets? Can this be used for games? Can a game plugin based on Twitter be made? The important thing is not which specific platform, but to leverage the existing social network to conduct viral marketing.
3. I do not recommend investing/making large 3A chain games for Web3 users, this is a pit. However, I am optimistic about large 3A chain games targeting Web2 users (this is a downplay). I hope the above thoughts will be helpful for VC and Builder.


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