One of the foundational pillars of the Web3 movement - GameFi - is that you can play your favorite games while earning in-game assets that you truly own. Buy, sell, or flaunt these assets freely throughout the community. Only, it's had more than a decade of promises, and mainstream adoption of the concept still feels just as elusive and out of reach as when it first started.
It is certainly an undeniable fact that blockchain technology and Web3 as a whole are here to stay and will continue to grow, however equally so, that growth has overwhelmingly missed the mark from what advocates of the technology expected.
Long-term Sustainability vs. Short-term Profits
The central issue that plagues Web3 gaming projects today is the lack of long-term support and sustainable development. All too often we see exaggerated gameplay promises and overly ambitious play-to-earn mechanics that simply fall far too short of the mark.
So, what's stopping projects from building sustainable games that leverage blockchain technology? The answer: greed and short-sighted vision.
Building a profitable game is already a challenging task itself. Building a profitable game that also meaningfully returns profits to it's player base is nigh impractical. Combine this complexity with the viral nature of social media-fueled hype, and it isn't hard to see why many projects end up as quick cash grabs or outright rug pulls.
Instead of focusing on creating engaging and high-quality games, which appeal to an audience, developers often start with "How can we make a play-to-earn game?", the result of which is like a carnival that pays you in tickets just for walking in, only none of the rides work… You end up leaving with a pocketful of tokens but zero memories of fun.
Learning From Web2 RMT (Real Money Trading)
Okay, enough dooming, what are some real and tangible ways that game developers can produce a blockchain-based game that appeals to the masses? It's simple (at least the concept is), we already have a plethora of examples of popular Web2 games that integrate robust in-game economies that, either officially or unofficially, support real money trading.
Consider Path of Exile for example, a seasonal ARPG hack and slash game with a thriving in-game economy that resets every four months. Each new "league" involves a full game-wide economic and player character reset, everyone playing that league starts from zero, a complete even playing field. Players build new characters, find unique and interesting loot, and actively trade with other players to continue getting stronger.
Yet, even though the entire game effectively resets every four months, the third-party item trade sites, where you actually have to pay real money to purchase items from other players, are absolutely teeming with activity.
More examples?
Last Epoch has a thriving RMT market just like Path of Exile
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the gold standard for weapon skins, has an enormous RMT market
Old School RuneScape, one of the largest and most popular RMT games
What do each of these games have going for them? They prioritize fun and engaging gameplay first, economy second. Another? They also each have RMT listed as illegal activities.
Here lies the advantage of blockchain gaming: instead of outlawing these practice, why not take the same fun aspects of these games, and simply allow players to do with the in-game assets what they wish?
Picture the first week of a new Path of Exile league reset, you are grinding the pinnacle bosses and BAM! A Mirror-tier rare drops (like getting a knife from a CS:GO case). Now you can trade your rare for a Mirror of Kalandra, or you can sell it for 0.5 ETH. That choice is yours as the player, to do with your assets what you want, providing tangible real-world value.
Sounds Great, But… How?
Thankfully, the how of this is not as difficult or as dire as what you've read so far. We have seen a handful of standout games that have implemented standout in-game economies with real world value, such as Gods Unchained on Immutable. The key ingredient remains straightforward: build a genuinely fun and engaging game first. Without enjoyable gameplay that keeps players hooked, a thriving economy simply won't materialize.
Okay, Players Earn, But What About Developers?
Once an engaging game is established that keeps players wanting to play and rewards those players with meaningful asset ownership, developers can utilize one or a combination of these revenue models:
Secondary market fees.
A staple of any SaaS or GaaS - take a small fee of many transactions and it adds up significantly. Platforms such as Steam take a 5% "Steam Transaction Fee" on all of it's item market sales, with some games also having an extra fee on top of that.
The benefits of this option is that it is the least obstructive to a player, and is generally viewed as a fair trade between seller and market operator.
Cosmetic microtransactions.
Okay, before you comment in a "gaming was peak before horse armor"-fueled rage below, I'll preface that fairly priced and purely cosmetic microtransactions do have their place, and can often times be seen as fair value by the player base if they are not egregious in their pricing model.
The benefits here of course go without saying, that cosmetic MTX in the form of NFTs can subsequently be sold by the purchaser if they so wish. Of course in practice this does require a "limit" to how the cosmetic is made available, either as a limit to supply or time to acquire.
This is not an uncommon practice in the existing Web2 gaming space such as in games like Overwatch, Dota 2, League of Legends, and many more.
Seasonal passes.
Similar in vein to cosmetic microtransactions, but less appealing to players, are seasonal passes such as battle passes. These are great as they also provide players with another in-game progression system from which they receive rewards.
The negative of seasonal passes, is that like cosmetic microtransactions, they lock exciting and rewarding cosmetics behind a paywall, therefore it is important to sprinkle these cosmetics throughout the game, and in seasonal passes that players can acquire by progressing through it.
Final Thoughts
To sum, GameFi and blockchain-based gaming are a mainstream inevitability, though the rate at which that is achieved is far from what the hype and overexcitement would have you believe.
For Web3 games to truly hit a broader and more engaged audience, they need to prioritize fun and engaging gameplay first, and introduce player-driven economies and play-to-earn mechanics second.
Because while you're repairing the rides at your carnival, someone else might be building the theme park next door - and if they get the fun right first, the crowds will follow.
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