What is the purpose of games? According to Cambridge Dictionary, game is “an entertaining activity or sport, especially one played by children”. From traditional games like hide and seek to modern ones like Call of Duty, League of Legends, … they focus on entertaining aspects first, yet this is not something we see with most of the new GameFi, as the focal point now shifts to “Earn” rather than “Play”.
In this article, we will explore this problem and discuss the future going forward.
Same Old Same Old
As with most sectors, blockchain technology is making a seismic shift in the gaming industry, with the introduction of the mechanism of Play-to-Earn, NFT, and DAO. Players also have the opportunity to both enjoy the game and make a living, with many early players of Axie Infinity in Indonesia can afford a new house and quit their regular jobs.
This is in stark contrast to traditional online games, characterized by excessive monetization, and lack of control. A clear example is the game Cyberpunk 2077, despite its gorgeous and complex city design, its game story lacks depth and the main character is without depth, not to mention the huge number of bugs and glitches that took the team a long time to fix. Do players and buyers have any say in the matter? Hardly.
Or Electronic Art took things a step too far with Star Wars: Battlefront 2’s aggressive loot boxes and microtransactions, and players actually started to push back.
However, if you think deep enough, the same problems still exist in the GameFi industry, they are just hidden more carefully.
First, let’s talk about the financial incentives of GameFi. If we have to pay an upfront cost to purchase games on Steam, with GameFi we have to buy characters and equipment in order to play and make money from the game. However, the revenue stream can be unpredictable given the volatility of the token and the competitiveness (if you lose, you do not earn).
Sometimes, this investment can be even higher than the fee paid to traditional games, for example, to assemble a team of Axie in Axie Infinity you have to pay between 1000 - 1500$ (for a good team to compete with others), whereas you just have to pay 50 - 100$ for an AAA game on Steam.
This is why players always consider aspects like Return on Investment (ROI) and the Payback Period before thinking if the game is fun and long-term oriented. This mentality also plagues most teams and developers, as many new GameFi are not fun and enjoyable.
Thanks to the emergence of gaming DAO and scholarships like Yield Guild Games and Merit Circle, the problem can be mitigated to a certain extent, but this is a major barrier to onboarding the next millions and billions of gamers from the traditional world.
Going forward
The best solution is to raise the awareness of players. If they can see underneath the mask and boycott games with no entertaining value, game developers will have no choices to take note and change.
As blockchain technology is relatively new (it is amazing to think that Ethereum is just 6 years old), we are likely to see new innovations in the industry. Just this year alone, we have seen the emergence of the metaverse, the shift from single-token model to dual-token model, gasless transactions, … and the next 4-5 years will be the most critical for the entire industry as we onboard more and more users.
You can also notice that most GameFi are startups and big players are only beginning to dip their toes into the market, such as Ubisoft building an NFT platform called Ubisoft Quatz (despite some pushback from gamers) and Adidas cooperating with Coinbase to enter the metaverse.
These players will bring much-needed expertise and experience and play a vital role in the development of the industry in the coming years and bring much-needed expertise and experience.
Final thought
At WidiLand, we take this problem seriously and we have spent hours designing and improving the gameplay. With the upcoming closed beta open you will be able to see for yourself.
What are you waiting for?
nice project
nice project