Blockchain games — why 2019 will be different
Now it’s all about BUIDLing
The crypto market’s down 90%, regulation is kicking in, 2017’s CryptoKitties remains the signature title, and we’re gearing up for a prolonged bout of ‘Chain Wars’, so why are blockchain game developers so happy?
The answer isn’t they’re sticking their heads in the sand, although it could be argued the difficulties of the task ahead are being underestimated. Instead it’s all about a new enthusiasm for making things trumping the current obstacles.
As those who have been operating in this sector for a while know full well, it’s always been highly volatile; sentiment quickly yoyos from peak to nadir. Frankly, if 2019 proves to be a period of dull stability that’s exactly what’s needed.
And — counter-intuitively — it’s this that accounts for the bullish attitude.
Relative newcomers (like me, the class of 2018) have now been blooded in the harsh reality of an industry always testing a new equilibrium of speculation versus fundamentals. Which means when the market corrects down to some semblance of fundamentals, only the tough remain.
And they’re rolling up their sleeves, showing off their battle scars, and starting to work hard. BUIDLing not HODLing, as the meme goes.
Don’t mention the blockchain
But perhaps more significant is the way companies are shaping up to the challenges ahead, both technical and experiential.
The likes of EOS and TRON (not to forget XAYA, NEO, Waves. Nebulas, MagnaChain, Cocos-BCX etc) may be stepping up their challenge to Ethereum as the go-to blockchain for games, but in terms of onboarding users, it seems no-one much cares. Games will increasingly offer multi-chain functionality (potentially this could be handled automatically) and/or obscuring the fact they’re blockchain games in the first place.
Maybe like Fight Club, the first rule of blockchain games will be no-one mentions blockchain games.
The logic is peerless. Just as the F2P mobile game sector grew from zero to $50 billion of annual revenue within seven years by giving away games for free so blockchain game developers have grasped that forcing users to access through MetaMask or setting up and funding a TRON account, let alone paying to set up for an EOS wallet, is to pour their hopes of success down the most leaky onboarding funnel ever.
Anecdotally, it’s believed more than 90% of web traffic churns from a blockchain game’s landing page when a MetaMask log-in is requested.
Healthy products need a lot of users so better just to get players into the experience, keep them playing, and worry about anything approaching true item ownership (let alone private keys) at some point further down the line when players have something of value that’s worth truly owning.
This is something F2P mobile game developers know well. Any success in that space is due to a deep analytical understanding of User Experience (UX). It’s no coindence F2P mobile game developers are launching some of the most anticipated blockchain games in 2019.
Sure, this is the point at which decentralized libertarians or Bitcoin Maximalists despair and storm out of the party. But everyone else now seems to agree that for blockchain adoption to move from an addressable market of millions of often passive wallets to +100 million active users, blockchain purity has to take second place to UX. Unsurprisingly that doesn’t include writing down a 12 word recovery phrase.
What you putting on the chain anyhow?
Indeed, many blockchain game developers have been rolling back how much of their games’ logic they’re putting onto a blockchain. Partly this is to get around issues such as transaction speed and gas fees on Ethereum and partly thanks to the availability of sidechain solutions such as Loom Network.
But fundamentally focusing on UX also means thinking more deeply about why you’re using a blockchain in the first place and only using a blockchain for crucial elements, notably the ownership and trading of key game assets.
Perhaps this could be seen as failure of ambition but in an era of building and releasing games, not selling a vision to raise money, getting actual players into actual product its ambitious enough..
In turn, this poses the sector with another existential question: should the future be blockchain games or games (and game services) that somehow use a blockchain?
It seems a subtle point, almost pedantic, but in terms of the implications for user experience, especially onboarding, it’s crucial.
At heart, the difference is between playing a game which has some blockchain features players may or may not use depending on their level of engagement and knowledge, and a game requiring the full gamut of blockchain features (wallet, cryptocurrency, private keys, recovery phrase etc).
Both approaches have their strengths and their weakness, of course. And it would be foolish (and incorrect) to suggest the sector is betraying the original vision of a fully decentralized gaming world. But, for now, the smart money has been bet. Blockchain game developers are bullish because the hard knocks of 2018 have taught them that UX trump the blockchain.
It’s a classic case of technology meets mass market. and in 2019 we’re all in for users.
