What value does Web3 bring to Games?
A lot of the benefits touted can be done in Web2, why bother with Web3?
A decade of Product and Growth experiences working on Axie Infinity, Pokémon GO, Figure 1, Rakuten Kobo, and Facebook. (Twitter | LinkedIn)
This is my personal blog where I write to help structure my thoughts around product, growth, web3/gaming, and tech. Subscribe if you’re interested in them!
It’s been a whirlwind of a year and half being in the Web3 gaming space at Sky Mavis. I’ve learned a ton but there’s still so much more to be explored and figured out.
There continue to be questions in the industry around the real value of Web3 technology for gaming so I’ll share some of my latest but constantly evolving thoughts around it. This is based on the current state of the technology and infrastructure, I expect there will be significant improvements and more challenges to face in the future though.
The focus will be around benefits for Players and Developers that the technology enables. The most sophisticated technology (with all its ridiculous acronyms and jargon) doesn’t matter if it doesn’t deliver added value to people in the ecosystem.
I will cover multiple topics and dive into the following for each:
Description
Player Pros and Cons
Developer Pros and Cons
Does Web3 do this better?
My grading on the overall Web3 value
Incorporates both:
a) how much incremental value Web3 specifically provides to the topic, as well as
b) how beneficial that topic itself is to broader players and developers
Summary
Grading system is from A to F, where:
A: Web3 contributes tremendous added benefits via this topic
F: Web3 doesn’t contribute any added benefits via this topic
Marketplaces and Trading
Description:
Marketplace and trading mechanics allow players to trade scarce assets and goods with each other to achieve their individual goals. This can range from open exchanges like the Steam Community Market for CS:GO skins, to trading directly with another individual you interact with in games like World of Warcraft. Trading systems doesn’t make sense for all games or genres, and should be added only when it aligns well with and enhances the game experience. For example, in Diablo 3 when auction house trading was added it actually broke the game progression and fun because players could just get all the best weapons easily without playing through the game.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Facilitates exciting gameplay such as negotiating, resource optimization, specialization, socializing, and relationship building.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Trading gameplay content drives player engagement and retention.
Pro: Provides a potential resource sink via trading fees.
Con: Takes significant effort to design, build, and manage to ensure it works properly and will not break game progression.
Does Web3 do this better?
Building trading and marketplace features
Games can instantly unlock open exchange marketplace mechanics by allowing their assets to be minted and traded on Web3 marketplaces such as OpenSea and Magic Eden. This saves developers the effort of building an entire marketplace themself.
However, this does not allow much customizability or flexibility for the developer to make a trading system that fits their particular game design. This may change in the future where marketplace systems allow white-labeled solutions, SDKs, and integrations into games directly.
With assets on the blockchain, developers need to put in extra effort to manage exploits, bugs, and their economies as they cannot easily adjust or delete assets from a players’ inventory. They also would need to invest in blockchain engineering resources such as smart contracts to allow assets to be minted on-chain.
Player experience
For Web3, the marketplace experiences currently would likely not live within the game itself and in some cases have different branding, this will make it harder for players to stay immersed in the game itself. Again, this may change in the future.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: D
Having a full suite of external marketplace offerings instantly available for developers saves them a lot of resources in having to build it themselves, but it is inflexible and creates a substantial amount of overhead. It is also less ideal for players compared to if they had a marketplace built into the game itself and could stay immersed in the game world.
Real-Money Gameplay
Description:
This category incorporates any type of gameplay that involves real-money (fiat). This could include the ability to cash out game assets to fiat, wagering real-money assets in competitive matches, in-game items/currency rewards that have real-money value, and many others. In the Web2 world Skillz is one of the most well known platforms for this. Vader Research provides some examples of how they’ve been implemented in Web3 here.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Elevated excitement in gameplay due to higher stakes and more valuable rewards.
Pro: Gain monetary value while playing and progressing in a game, or holding various game assets.
Pro: Can exit out of a game via cashing out assets to spend on a new game. Makes developers more cognizant around serving players to ensure they don’t exit too.
Con: Players may end up stressing or putting too much effort into thinking about ROI and opportunity costs which creates a negative gameplay experience.
Con: If players go too far down this path it perverts their expectations and perspectives around the game, where it becomes more of a job than entertainment. They lose touch with the fun of the game.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Excitement of having real-money involved can drive player engagement and retention.
Pro: Players may be willing to spend more because they know they can cash out on resulting assets and/or winnings if they want.
Con: Significant regulatory and infrastructure components to manage.
Con: Players potentially optimize to earn as much real-money out of the game as possible and cash it out of the ecosystem.
Con: Much more attention needs to be spent on anti-cheat and exploit management.
Does Web3 do this better?
Financial rails
Cashing out to fiat in Web2 from a player perspective is generally easier if players can just withdraw funds into their PayPal or bank account. With Web3, players need to convert their tokens to one that is supported by a centralized exchange like Coinbase and then withdraw it from there. This flow will likely improve over time for Web3.
Cashing out from a developer perspective is likely substantially easier to build in Web3 as they can just allow players to mint their assets on chain and then players will have the ability to cash out with various tools. This is in contrast to building secure cash out infrastructure in Web2 where the developer would need to hold the funds directly and integrate with financial tools.
Tokenization allows game currencies and items to achieve price discovery easily through exchanges. It would be much more challenging for Web2 developers to introduce liquidity pools and automated-market maker systems into their games to allow for this real-money price discovery.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: B
Tokenization of assets to allow for real-money price discovery and developers being easily able to implement cash out mechanisms are big advantages Web3 provides. However, real-money gameplay is not the healthiest mechanic to implement for every type of game so the breadth of impact of this may not be as broad across all game types.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Description:
There has been a rise in games and platforms that allow, encourage, and reward players to contribute content. The largest is of course Roblox where all of the content is user-generated and marketplace revenues are split between these creators and Roblox. Fortnite also recently announced their Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) with a promise to share 40% of its revenues to creators who contribute content.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Players get to contribute creatively to the ecosystem and game they love. They get to create new experiences that they and their friends can enjoy.
Pro: Creators can benefit from their creations, whether that be just via in-game benefits or actual monetary rewards.
Con: There would likely be a lot of subpar experiences created that players need to sift through or endure before they find the best content.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Content generation at scale. Creating content is a lot of work for developers. If players are able to create content for each other within the ecosystem it allows for substantially more quantity and variety of gameplay for players.
Pro: By having players more involved in the creation of game content they feel a much stronger attachment to the overall ecosystem.
Con: Building and managing an entire creator ecosystem is far from trivial and takes a lot of resources, time, effort, risk management, and thoughtfulness. Roblox was founded in 2004 and took more than a decade before it took off. They have a huge team of over 2,000 people to manage their platform.
Con: Have to create strong curation systems to discover and surface engaging content to players.
Does Web3 do this better?
UGC incentive systems
UGC incentive systems can generally be created through Web2 as already demonstrated by Roblox. Creators can be compensated for their creations and the developer can take a cut.
However, this also relates to the Real-Money Gameplay topic above, where with Web3 there are existing rails that could much more easily allow for developers to allow Real-Money assets to be cashed out by Creators without building their own complex infrastructure.
One of the risks for creators in UGC environments is that the publisher like Roblox/Epic can change their fee structures and do payouts at their discretion without much transparency. Whereas with smart contracts it can be more transparent, automated, and deterministic for Creators.
Web3 allows for more complex and unique royalty systems via Smart Contracts that are being explored as well. For example, a developer could allow Creators to create related mini-games outside of the main game platform but have set royalties and fees go back to the developer via Smart Contracts.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: B+
The incremental value for UGC with Web3 is primarily around the ability to use existing cash out rails and transparent payouts for Creators. Creators primarily care about attention, notoriety, and revenue; transparent and deterministic payouts are clear incremental value-adds but are likely not going to feel substantially important. Cash out rails are a huge value though for developers who would benefit from UGC and can avoid having to build out their own complex Creator cash out systems.
Crowdfunding
Description:
Crowdfunding for games has been around for a long time through platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. It’s a great way for developers to fund their costs to create a game while also building an audience and community around the game even before it launches. Benefits for crowdfunders usually include the game itself, as well as a mix of merchandise and in-game bonuses.
Expectations management is very important with crowdfunding as the community can quickly turn sour against the developer if the community feels that promises are being consistently broken. This has been exacerbated in Web3, where there have been more cases of players expecting financial upside from funding games as well (e.g. through asset appreciation, airdrops, advantages in earning in-game tokens). This has led to even more substantial backlash in many cases when players realize their expectations won’t be met.
There are many legal and regulatory considerations that depend on the country the game is being developed in around crowdfunding as well.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Fund and eventually play games they want that might not otherwise have existed!
Pro: Get exclusive benefits for being an early funder. E.g. physical merch, in-game assets, financial return.
Con: If the developers don’t follow through on shipping the game as promised the player will have put in their money for nothing.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Able to get funding to develop a game that otherwise they may not have been able to build.
Pro: Build an initial community and audience that will be highly motivated to play the game at launch, give feedback, and spread the word about it.
Con: Incur significant “Expectations Debt” to deliver on what players perceive you’ve promised. This reduces flexibility in changing things as well even if it might be better for the game.
Con: Not meeting player expectations who funded it will generate significant community backlash and potentially negative PR.
Does Web3 do this better?
Asset Rewards
With Web2 games crowdfunding, for the most part players will need to wait until the game comes to receive associated benefits. However, with Web3 games, contributing players may receive exclusive NFT/Token assets as a reward right when they contribute. These assets may have actual utility within the game ecosystem, or may just be collectibles. Players now get to own something tangible right away and developers can potentially drive more funds to be raised because of this, as well as have a more engaged community that is evangelizing the game.
Due to real-Money asset rewards like NFTs/Tokens and the financially focused culture that has emerged with Web3, there may be many players looking to profit from contributing in Web3 gaming projects. Thus, the Expectations Debt becomes significantly larger in many cases and can cause severe backlash in the future. This can be managed to a certain degree though with the right communication and positioning. Developers can even be very explicit around how contributors will not be rewarded any airdrops in the future and the developer will not be spending any effort on maintaining a particular price value for any assets rewarded.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: B-
Being able to reward players with tangible digital assets upfront for supporting your game seems like an overall win for everyone, and makes the crowdfunding experience more meaningful. Of course, expectations and positioning for contributing and/or owning certain assets need to be made VERY clear to avoid future backlash from contributing players.
Ownership Permanence
Description:
This concept is the one most unique to Web3. The blockchain allows for immutable and decentralized ownership of a digital asset. This is in contrast to digital assets in Web2 games where all of the assets live on the developer’s database and the developer has ultimate control over the assets. If the associated Web2 game ever sunsets, the player’s assets will disappear with it. For example, even just this year we’re seeing popular games like Apex Legends sunset where players will lose all of the assets they’ve earned or purchased. However, if players owned the assets on a decentralized blockchain, even if the game sunsets the player will still have the their assets indefinitely.
Digital assets with these properties behave much like physical assets that you can collect and own.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Players can own their digital assets from games indefinitely. Especially for assets that players build strong emotional attachments with when playing a game, it’s a great value for players to be able to own it forever even if the game goes away. This is similar to how people collect physical memorabilia and collectibles for nostalgia.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Players feel more emotional attachment to the in-game assets and are more willing to make purchases knowing they will have permanent ownership of the assets.
Con: Lose some control of the economy and assets in the game ecosystem, as assets on-chain cannot be taken away like in Web2 where they control the entire database.
Does Web3 do this better?
Permanence
Decentralized and immutable ownership would generally not be possible without Web3 so it is integral in delivering this value
However, it’s important to note that many assets currently on-chain are simply pointers to the actual media asset (e.g. image, 3D object, audio, video, animated GIF) that is living on a centralized database. It would be ideal to have all of the media associated to be decentralized with permanence as well directly on-chain or using services and protocols like Arweave and IPFS.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: B
This is overall positive and beneficial for players. However, the magnitude of its impact is likely not the largest, as many players do not care that much or put strong emphasis in being able to collect and hold all of their digital assets long-term. This is similar to physical collectibles too, where only some people hoard and collect memorabilia but many don’t at all. This may change over time if people start expecting digital assets to have permanence.
Interoperability
Description:
The idea of having assets that can be used across multiple games has always been an exciting concept for players. It creates unique utility for assets outside of its base use case.
This has been implemented in some Web2 franchises such as Pokemon where you can use Pokemon HOME to port Pokemon across their different games. However, implementing across different IPs is much more difficult due to legal limitations and licensing agreements that would be required.
Also, designing intertwined economies across distinct games is extremely difficult and the designers would need to stay extremely in-sync as to not have changes in one game break the economy in another.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Players get more utility around their assets in more than one game experience.
Pro: Players have the opportunity to witness their assets interact with distinct elements and within novel settings that they typically wouldn't encounter.
Con: Players may be forced to participate in multiple games or ecosystems to achieve goals.
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Cross-promotion across games unlocks player growth
Pro: Players are more engaged due to the unlocking of novel experiences with interoperable assets and environments.
Con: Potentially need to broker and manage complex licensing and partnership deals
Con: Need to constantly consider external development that may be relevant and interact with their game
Con: Risks of economy issues depending on what is interoperable and how much utility it has in-game
Does Web3 do this better?
Asset Attribution
In Web2, companies would primarily need to build and use APIs to communicate with each other’s databases to know what assets which players own to allow them to be interoperable across many experiences. This is non-trivial and requires all parties to actively build this infrastructure.
With Web3, all of that data is on-chain by default and can easily be pulled by anyone. This makes it significantly easier to know if a particular player owns an asset in another game, and provides benefits / gameplay accordingly in one’s own game. For example, Million on Mars is rolling out a cross-promotion system where players can use a Structured UGC system to create custom content (e.g. missions, leaderboards) in-game that are only accessible by holders of particular NFTs (e.g. an exclusive mission and its rewards are created in-game that are only accessible by Azuki holders). Another example is Serum City which is an entire game built for holders of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs by studios completely independent of the original NFT creator Yuga Labs.
Web3 IPs that allow multiple games to be produced within their franchise can instantly take advantage of this. This is exactly what we did with Axie Infinity where players can use their Axie creatures across multiple games including Origins, Defenders of Lunacian Land, Raylights, and many more to come. Maple Story is also looking to create a game ecosystem where NFT assets can be used across games and non-game applications that use the IP.
IP and Licensing
Web3 does not solve any of the challenges with IP and licensing, formal agreements would still need to be made across IP owners for assets to appear in each other’s games.
However, there are more and more projects being released in the Web3 space that are openly allowing other projects to use their assets. If this continues over time and more impactful Web3 games are released that allow open use, at least for those IPs there can be a lot more interoperability unlocked. For example, in Nifty Island there are assets from multiple open projects that will be featured in the gameplay (e.g see here) including Bored Apes, CoolCats, Creature World, Azuki, and BEANZ.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: C+
IP and licensing will likely always be a major challenge for interoperability (even for many Web3 IPs). Within a single IP franchise it instantly unlocks easy interoperability across its experiences though. It’s possible that if enough influential new Web3 games get released and allow more open use of their IP, it could give enough momentum to push other IPs to open up more as well. It’s very hard to predict if there will be a major shift in the landscape in the future though so my grading for this is lower for now.
Transparent and Provable Scarcity
Description:
The value of assets for players depend a lot on their scarcity in the game. The exact same item can mean nothing to players cause everyone gets one, or can be their most prized possession because only the best players are able to obtain it.
Scarcity is revealed in different ways within games from actually showing the specific number in circulation, to just showing loot box probabilities, to having no info at all about it. In Web2 games, the players generally must trust the developer around any data provided as they hold all of it privately and share at their discretion.
Web3 provides public and on-chain records on all tokenized items in a game, so players could prove and confirm the scarcity of any assets.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Better understand value of their in-game items and how hard to obtain they are.
Pro: Trust that the scarcity numbers are correct and the developer is not changing it against expectations. (e.g. rewarding more of an item to some players quietly, even though the item was exclusive and was no longer supposed to be distributed)
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Players have more trust in the developer and are willing to invest more time, effort, and money into the game because of that
Con: Removes some flexibility on tweaking economies and running tests (e.g. sometimes it’s helpful to test distributing some rewards to a small group of players in different game mechanics to see their impact before rolling it out to everyone)
Does Web3 do this better?
Transparent and Provable
Technically, Web2 developers could reveal all of this data openly so at least it’s transparent, but players would still have to ultimately just trust that the developer is showing the correct data.
Web3 provides an indisputable ledger for scarcity so generally from a player POV it is a far superior option. From a developer POV, it puts more pressure on them and gives them less room for any flexibility.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: D
This is net positive for players to have more transparency, and pushes developers to be more diligent with their item economies. However, there’s little indication that this is currently a substantial desire from players. Most developers don’t reveal anything and although there are usually a few hardcore players who question if things are tuned properly, the large majority of players are content trusting the developer.
Social Coordination Systems
Description:
There are many ways social coordination is additive or necessary within and around games. The two main examples I’ll reference are Guilds and Governance.
Guilds are organized groups of players who coordinate and come together to achieve common goals in games. This can include completing difficult quests, controlling territory, sharing resources, or just enjoying the game together.
Governance systems allow players to have influence in how a game is built. Some games are allowing crowdsourced art designs or voting on how a game mechanic should work.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Build relationships with others, feel a sense of community, and collaborate to achieve game goals. Social is a core human desire so systems that facilitate positive social interactions are intrinsically valuable for players.
Pro: Allow for Governance systems so that players can influence the direction and design of the game
Con: Can be overwhelming or undesirable for some players to socialize and participate in these systems, especially if the systems are not part of the core loop
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Increased social content for players that should drive engagement and retention
Pro: Players with strong social connections within an ecosystem are more likely to stay
Pro: Allowing social governance systems where players feel influence over the game gives them a strong sense of ownership and increased likelihood of retaining
Con: Building and managing complex social coordination systems, along with the necessary components for managing risks and preventing abuse, is a challenging task.
Con: A well-coordinated group of players can exert significant pressure on game developers, potentially compelling them to make decisions that go against the developers' intended direction.
Does Web3 do this better?
Trustless Coordination
One of the core benefits of Web3 is that it provides infrastructure for people to have trust-less and transparent coordination, as interactions are processed through smart contracts on a public blockchain. In games, this is primarily only valuable in situations where there isn’t a trusted intermediary.
Web2 game developers generally can provide most of the social tools needed to allow players to interact and coordinate in-game (e.g. EverQuest 2 guild management, Clash Royale Clans). This is largely sufficient as the developer is a neutral and trusted party relative to the different players trying to coordinate with each other. Web3 would not provide substantial incremental value in these situations.
For situations where Guilds are coordinating transactions or incentives for guild members outside of the game (e.g. splitting eSport tournament winnings), Web3 could be helpful to facilitate those interactions so they are clear and transparent to all involved.
Web3 is particularly useful in the realm of Governance, as it eliminates the need for a "trusted intermediary" between players and developers. By utilizing a blockchain-based decision-making and implementation system, both parties are held accountable. In contrast, in a Web2 system, even if player Governance were implemented, players would still need to trust developers regarding the system's implementation and actions.
On-chain Credentials
In Web3, the assets someone owns or the actions they’ve done on-chain have been used as methods to determine if and how they can influence a Guild or participate in Governance votes for games. Generally, all of this can be replicated via in-game credentials around what assets players own or what they’ve achieved in the game.
The only difference, similar to the previous point around trust-less coordination, is that with Web3 these “credentials” are public and transparent, whereas with Web2 the credentials are ultimately controlled by the developer.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: C
For social coordination systems between players in-game it is generally sufficient to have Web2 systems with the developer as the neutral and trusted intermediary. Trust-less Web3 systems are helpful for coordinating social transactions and interactions outside of the game between players or between the developer and players. This latter category of social coordination that happens outside of the game is less important since most players generally just want to play the game itself.
User Acquisition and Community Building
Description:
Games live or die based on the size and quality of their player base. User acquisition and building a dedicated community are thus top priority for any game to survive. There is some overlap with this topic and the Crowdfunding topic as well.
Current tactics for these include advertising, PR, social media marketing, content marketing, driving word-of-mouth, partnering with influencers, app stores optimization, referral programs, cross-promotions, and many others.
Player Pros and Cons:
Pro: Discover games that they would enjoy
Con: Can be overwhelmed and spammed with too many potential games, and not be able to discover the best games suited for their tastes
Developer Pros and Cons:
Pro: Being able to acquire players and build a strong community will drive growth, retention, and ultimately monetization
Does Web3 do this better?
This is one of the most ephemeral of all of these topics as the landscape is changing constantly as we speak.
Distribution platforms
Web3 currently only has limited access to game distribution platforms. They are allowed in the Epic Store but blocked from Steam. They are technically allowed in the Google Play and iOS App Store but have limitations. This may change over time but given a platform like Steam accounts for 50-70% of all PC game downloads globally, this is definitely significant disadvantage for Web3 games.
Mints and Airdrops
One of the primary growth drivers for Web3 games has been asset mints and airdrops. This is where players are able to acquire (paid or free) on-chain assets for a game, in many cases before the game has even been built (sometimes used as a form of Crowdfunding).
The motivations for players to obtain the assets are mixed including wanting to actually have it as a collectible, using it in the game when it comes, or have it purely as a financial investment. Unfortunately, in the Web3 space a lot of this has fallen into the latter category of financial investment.
For players to obtain the privilege to acquire these assets they many times have to actively join the community, engage with content, evangelize the game, and refer others. This all helps drive continuous player growth.
The problem with this method of growth is that due to the real-money value of these assets and the focus around obtaining them as a financial investment:
Players acquired end up being focused on making money and not the game itself, and will be more reluctant to spend more money than they earn from playing the game.
Players have expectations of future financial gain from the game (especially if it was a paid asset with a high price tag) and when it doesn’t happen there is severe backlash towards the developers (see Expectations Debt in the Crowdfunding topic).
A player-culture is formed in the community with an emphasis on monetary returns and not on emotional attachments to the game and its mechanics. (see my post here on if games should launch as Web2 first because of this)
It’s possible there is a balance that can be found of giving out free or selling low-priced assets to drive the initial player growth, while managing the community narratives and sentiments so that they are more game rather than financial focused. However, this is still to be determined. You can see an example here of a developer who has been explicit throughout many communications their assets shouldn’t have been purchased as investments but it is still causing severe backlash.
Also, there have been a few games that we’ve seen go through the entire cycle from selling pre-mint assets all the way to launching and operating their game. This includes Axie Infinity, where although they did have substantial drop-off in players relative to the peak and the player culture is much more financially focused, their active users are still in the hundreds of thousands currently.
Community Engagement
Web3 games have been able to drive significant community engagement at the get-go many times on social channels such as Twitter and Discord. Players who already own or want to own the assets feel stronger motivation and connection to actively participate in a community. Some of this can be attributed to players motivated by financial return via the assets though, and not the gameplay itself.
Phil’s Grading on overall Web3 value: C+
There are many limitations in distribution platforms for Web3 games which hurts their ability to acquire users currently. Building an initial community via mints and airdrops has shown to be powerful but with many strings attached and long-term consequences around the player culture and expectations.
Conclusion
As you can tell by my grading, I think the value of Web3 for gaming in some of these areas has been overstated by the Web3 community. However, there is very clear and substantial value that Web3 technology can provide to games for both players and developers.
Web3 does not need to have an A+ value-add in all of these topics to create new game-changing experiences. We’ve seen throughout history how the streamlining of experiences and development with technology can make a massive difference in a given space (e.g. Social: MySpace > Facebook), and Web3 can be this next evolution for games.
As a hardcore physical collector myself, I was personally originally drawn into the space by the Ownership Permanence value. I’m also excited for UGC in particular though, as it can gain much more proliferation across games through the use of Web3 rails.
I would love to hear thoughts from others to help further refine my thinking here. What did I miss? What do you agree or disagree with? Please comment!
Big thanks to Alex Wettermann, Devin Becker, and Tommy Ngo for reviewing and providing super insightful feedback that shaped the post.
I really like how thorough the article was and the honesty in scoring :)
As any TCG player knows, no strategy is bulletproof, so I think the most important way of making good use of web3 tech or making good web3 games comes from understanding what pieces of the tech make sense.
The challenge I see more often with web3 games is trying to do everything at once because they grew in love with the solution but not the problem. So we need interoperable avatars, a DAO, NFT's, earning potential, etc because it's web3, but there is not actual game worth playing.
I think it took a while for people in the industry to come to terms with these problems but I see more and more openness to the idea that many of these elements may hurt your game (like having a token that is freely traded) if improperly added to the mix.
Great article.
I would say, web3 brings values for gamers as other technologies. web3 is not a silver bullet for game developers. However, it brings added values for games. I guess, web3 will be a technology that is used as "standard" to help building relations with gamers. However, only in case when game studios will not only focus on selling nft and coins.