I've been struggling to wrap my head around why certain aspects of Web3 are non-starters for good game design. You've called out the low-hanging fruit: expecting immediate ROI biases both players & devs towards extrinsic motivations. Monetization-first strategies may hit certain emotional triggers like addiction, fiero, or even kvell (when your players become stakeholders they take great pleasure in their adopted project's success), but those aren't "fun."
They can be positive emotions! But they're temporary. Illusory. And they're not the same as "fun."
What I like about your pitch is that you're applying the "fun first" strategy of free-to-play and other Web 2.0 patterns, and we know that works with more than a decade of evidence and best practices.
Not that I haven't seen Web3 projects try to emulate the best of Web2 already, mind you.
I've thought long and hard about why I keep seeing NFT projects & Web3 games with otherwise excellent aesthetics (and large marketing budgets!) fail. Some of them are stunningly gorgeous. Some have amazing utility. Some are trying novel, new things that deserve to be explored.
But the vast majority are fixed upon closed supplies - printing 10,000 unique NFTs for instance - and for the longest time my mind has been fixated in the idea that THIS is a core cause of Web3 problems, because I believe that early virtual economies in MMORPGs proved that these closed economic loops don't act as markets and thus quickly fail via speculative spikes followed by inevitable crashes.
I think I've been ignoring some other causes that lend evidence to support your "Web2 first' pitch.
1. Rigid Rules == Boring. Many of these games have extremely rigidly designed rulesets that reflect the constraints of writing smart contract code. That also means they're more easily subject to mathematical analysis. It follows that "solved games" are less interesting and fun than "unsolved games." We're seeing the blockchain equivalent of tic-tac-toe being presented as state of the art, when in fact... they're meh.
2. Over-reliance on Game Theory. I know people in Web3 absolutely adore Game Theory, but we have to admit that in practice that GT's perfectly rational, abstract models fall on their faces when confronted with human psychology. It really doesn't work any better in blockchain than it works for American politics. Yet again and again I see core game loops and tokenomics based on GT instead of trying to find the fun first and delivering a great product.
I think there's this strange, unspoken addiction to algorithmic perfection and mathematical precision that is choking the life out of what's really possible in Web3 games.
That's why I find your article so compelling.
After all, if you're designing for immediate ROI in Web3 you have to "get everything right" out of the gate. Is it any wonder that Web3 gaming projects spend $50k-$100k to have tokenomic reports written about their "utility token" by leading analysts so they can hopefully demonstrate just that much more legitimacy to their communities?
I agree that employing the Web2 pattern first allows you and your community to find the fun the fastest. This is the method we're adopting for our first Web3-compatible game: Niftiez. Web3 believers should be able to demonstrate that you can deliver an amazing and fun game without asking players to install a wallet on Day One!
Philip, I love both your post and its timing.
I've been struggling to wrap my head around why certain aspects of Web3 are non-starters for good game design. You've called out the low-hanging fruit: expecting immediate ROI biases both players & devs towards extrinsic motivations. Monetization-first strategies may hit certain emotional triggers like addiction, fiero, or even kvell (when your players become stakeholders they take great pleasure in their adopted project's success), but those aren't "fun."
They can be positive emotions! But they're temporary. Illusory. And they're not the same as "fun."
What I like about your pitch is that you're applying the "fun first" strategy of free-to-play and other Web 2.0 patterns, and we know that works with more than a decade of evidence and best practices.
Not that I haven't seen Web3 projects try to emulate the best of Web2 already, mind you.
I've thought long and hard about why I keep seeing NFT projects & Web3 games with otherwise excellent aesthetics (and large marketing budgets!) fail. Some of them are stunningly gorgeous. Some have amazing utility. Some are trying novel, new things that deserve to be explored.
But the vast majority are fixed upon closed supplies - printing 10,000 unique NFTs for instance - and for the longest time my mind has been fixated in the idea that THIS is a core cause of Web3 problems, because I believe that early virtual economies in MMORPGs proved that these closed economic loops don't act as markets and thus quickly fail via speculative spikes followed by inevitable crashes.
I think I've been ignoring some other causes that lend evidence to support your "Web2 first' pitch.
1. Rigid Rules == Boring. Many of these games have extremely rigidly designed rulesets that reflect the constraints of writing smart contract code. That also means they're more easily subject to mathematical analysis. It follows that "solved games" are less interesting and fun than "unsolved games." We're seeing the blockchain equivalent of tic-tac-toe being presented as state of the art, when in fact... they're meh.
2. Over-reliance on Game Theory. I know people in Web3 absolutely adore Game Theory, but we have to admit that in practice that GT's perfectly rational, abstract models fall on their faces when confronted with human psychology. It really doesn't work any better in blockchain than it works for American politics. Yet again and again I see core game loops and tokenomics based on GT instead of trying to find the fun first and delivering a great product.
I think there's this strange, unspoken addiction to algorithmic perfection and mathematical precision that is choking the life out of what's really possible in Web3 games.
That's why I find your article so compelling.
After all, if you're designing for immediate ROI in Web3 you have to "get everything right" out of the gate. Is it any wonder that Web3 gaming projects spend $50k-$100k to have tokenomic reports written about their "utility token" by leading analysts so they can hopefully demonstrate just that much more legitimacy to their communities?
I agree that employing the Web2 pattern first allows you and your community to find the fun the fastest. This is the method we're adopting for our first Web3-compatible game: Niftiez. Web3 believers should be able to demonstrate that you can deliver an amazing and fun game without asking players to install a wallet on Day One!