State of GameFi with Froyo Games

GM! ☀️ This is your captain speaking. We’re about to take a trip around the world of GameFi today.

6 min readDec 31, 2021

For those who need to be brought up to speed, Gamified Finance or GameFi is the marriage of decentralised finance with gaming. It is the new application of blockchain technology that enables new ways to play video games with true ownership of assets, peer-to-peer trading and play-to-earn schemes.

It’s also how modern games let you be in control of what you worked hard for. Your in-game goodies and items, your gadgets, outfits, accessories and so much more.

We are going to travel to the three key realms of video games we know to day to see what exciting advances GameFi has made there.

AIR — THE BROWSER DOMAIN

Welcome aboard Froyo Airlines as we make our first visit to the realm of the air.

This is where games are playable in a jiffy, running in just our browser. This is where it all began!

Cryptokitties were one of the most notable blockchain games that were part of the beginning of a new kind of gaming, yet something familiar. Digital cats that could be bought, traded and bred to form completely new, unique combinations. Every cat was unique was exclusive to their owner and anyone could hop in and play so long as they had some Ether and were ready to get their feet wet with this funky new thing called Metamask.

It was like a new renaissance for the games we remember playing when we were kids. The trading cards we bought to give our decks an edge were now sitting in our computer digitally where they could be traded over the internet across oceans in just a matter of minutes. The best part? There was no discipline teacher patrolling the corridors of the internet looking to confiscate your prized trading cards. What you owned was truly yours.

It was a concept that showed promise for so much more. What does this mean for digital collectibles? Could there be space for more?

There definitely was space to grow. Fast forward to today and blockchain browser game Axie Infinity has become a collectible game that’s reminiscent of a certain pocket monster game we played as kids (and some as adults). The competitive spirit of putting our monster against someone else’s reignited these memories in a new realm.

Even card games in their own respect started making their move in the digital realm to take advantage of this mechanic and break down walls that once separated us. Splinterlands made a splash in taking card games to the blockchain with a low cost to enter.

These games broke the ice between just being played by crypto enthusiasts and helped to onboard many more people into blockchain games.

How did they do this? It was thanks to another exciting mechanism called Play-To-Earn.

LAND — THE DESKTOP KINGDOM

Play-To-Earn was the ingenious answer to the question of how new players can be onboarded without the need to ask them to invest in the game first.

If this were a game on Steam or Epic Games, gamers would buy it in a heartbeat — but a blockchain game? It’s natural for them to ask if they are being scammed instead. The solution was to give players the ability to not just start playing the game with an empty wallet but to have sufficient progression to the point that they can thrive and play along with others on the game regardless whether they started with a whale’s share of crypto or not.

Play-to-earn was also a dream come true for gamers who loved spending their free time on games but were also worried about being unproductive. With Play-To-Earn, assets in games started to hold value. While such value can be questionable, one does not need to look very far to see how much people are willing to shell out for rare in-game items. Just look at the games we already know like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and how much a rare gun skin can fetch on a secondary market.

Breaking out of the browser and into the PC realm took courage and some sleepless nights of coding in these game dev studios in order to integrate these two distinct technological worlds. It is a difficult bridge to build and is still a massive work in progress.

However the rendering power and resources made available by gaming PCs and even in midrange multimedia computers constitute a big playground for game developers to make games with stunning visuals, immersive worlds and more intensive gameplay.

Phantom Galaxies, an MMORPG being built by Blowfish Studios is a promising game in the works with game assets already airdropped via the Polygon blockchain for eager players to jump straight into the action.

Even outside of games, social experiences like Somnium Space and Decentraland are immersive virtual experiences with private property owned by huge names like Snoop Dogg and Steve Aoki right inside a bustling 3D world, with their own economies and society living it up in the metaverse.

WATER — THE TOILET TERRITORY

We have to admit that we spend a great deal of time on the toilet playing with our phones and even when we’re done with our actual business, we won’t get up and flush until we’re finished with the level we’re on.

Mobile games have become the new king of time killers both inside and outside the bathroom. With more genres coming to the mobile platform, gaming has become one of the use cases that people consider when buying a new smartphone.

Smartphones also happen to be one of the most convenient crypto wallets since they are always with us and we take great care of them on an almost subconscious level. It’s only logical that these are one of the best devices for blockchain gaming.

Thetan Arena is one of the great success stories of the mobile blockchain gaming scene with over 5 million players[1] on both mobile and PC platforms. They took a familiar concept of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) and artfully wove blockchain mechanics into the gameplay from the in-game currency to the digital assets.

Some browser games like Splinterlands have also made their way into the mobile platform, becoming a first-class citizen on smartphones and tablets.

The ability for some games to detach from the limits of a desktop PC or laptop to become a game that can be played anywhere be it on public transport or in the bathroom accelerates the adoption of the game and in the case of blockchain games, onboards so many more players who want the power to choose what they want to do with their digital assets.

A PLACE TO CALL HOME

As more and more games emerge in the blockchain space, either from adopting the technology into existing games or premiering brand new titles in the space, there is an increasing fragmentation of blockchains, assets and their utility outside of the games they come from.

That’s why at Froyo Games, we are building a platform for blockchain games to congregate under. With Froyo Games, a unified marketplace and platform becomes a one-stop application for downloading our gamefiles, socialising with other players and competing in tournaments.

We want to turn this divided world of GameFi into a thriving metaverse with a bustling economy and player-base who want to be able to enjoy gaming the way they want to play. We call it the Froyoverse — and you are invited to be a part of it.

If you are a game developer, that also includes you! Froyo’s tools are also available at your disposal to integrate the Froyo platform into you game, with the ability to mint digital assets from a simple dashboard and to integrate them into your game through our intuitive SDK which won’t require you to go back to school.

There’s going to be a whole lot more to discover as the Froyoverse takes shape — so stay tuned to our social media outlets to be the first to know about the amazing things coming to our platform.