Weekly Roundup, March 19, 2021
This was a busy week in the Metaverse: more funding announcements, more development around NFTs (and more confusion than ever), Roblox keeps booming, and free-to-play isn’t slowing down. Also, people are suddenly talking about Loop Hero more than Valheim.
Game Industry Clubhouse Talks
We’ve had a number of great sessions on Clubhouse during the last week. The highlight was the conversation about Roblox, and how kids are building the Metaverse.
A few things you might not have known about Roblox:
- It isn’t a game — it is the combination of “YouTube for Games,” a social network, a development tool for building games, and a monetization technology.
- Compared to Minecraft, which is easy to craft environments in — Roblox is great at also crafting behaviors.
- A super-power of Roblox is the easy portability of social groups from game to game.
- More than 20 people last year hit the cap of $11M of withdrawals from the Roblox economy.
- A survey showed that for kids age 4–14 in the UK, Roblox is the #1 thing they save their pocket money for.
Legends of Live Game Services
I asked my community which games best manifest Live Game Services. I covered the following ten games over ten days:
1) MTG Arena
2) World of Tanks
3) Fortnite
4) Warframe
5) Genshin Impact
6) Lost Relics on Enjin
7) Royale High on Roblox
8) Supernatural VR on Oculus
9) AFK Arena
10) Eve Online
What did we miss? Let me know in the comments!
Upcoming Clubhouse Talks
I’d love to have you join me for another of my upcoming talks on Clubhouse:
- We’re talking about AI and the Metaverse on Saturday at 10AM ET. Will the Singularity be born in the Metaverse?
- On Sunday at 11AM ET, we’re hosting a group of world-class game designers to talk about Game Designs for NFTs.
- On Thursday at 4PM ET we are holding an online job fair for the Game Industry. If you have people to hire, or you’re looking for a job, make sure to stop by.
We’ll be doing a follow-up conversation on Roblox as well — stay tuned!
Join the Game Industry Club on Clubhouse to get informed when one of the talks launches.
NFT Hype Curve
Earlier in the week I posted the Gartner hype curve regarding NFTs and where we are currently:
We’ve already moved to the “Negative press begins” within the gaming media since the time I posted the above. GameIndustry.biz posted an opinion-piece on how they won’t be accepting articles about blockchain games because they’ve determined a priori that there’s nothing to the market and don’t seem to realize that there are already games that use ecologically-friendly proof-of-stake chains. I guess they haven’t read this article detailing the NFT opportunities and technologies for games?
Another source of confusion about NFTs is what they represent, legally-speaking. Just because you own an NFT does not mean you can reproduce the work the token represents. Here’s a good article on this and other legal issues pertaining to NFTs: A Primer on NFTs and Intellectual Property.
Reflections and Observations
- Sony bought fighting-game tournament Evo.
- The Strong National Museum of Play added the following games to the World Video Game Hall of Fame: Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, FarmVille, FIFA International Soccer, Guitar Hero, Mattel Football, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Pole Position, Portal, StarCraft, Tron, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
- Hearthstone says it is a platform now. I’m not sure it is (there’s no ability for third parties to participate in the ecosystem that I know of) but it sure is impressive that there were 20M players in 2020.
- Gamescom will happen in-person.
- Overwolf raised $52M for their game modding community.
- Archer: Danger Phone, a game I was involved in, got nominated for a best mobile game award!
- Espresso Games got funding for hypercasual games.
- Leading decentralized exchange SushiSwap announced support for Avalanche, a proof-of-stake blockchain that supports NFTs.
- Google Play is going to drop fees to 15% on the first $1M of an app’s revenue.
- Star Citizen reached $350M in crowdfunded presales.
- Thought a ton about Roblox.
- Undertale is going to Xbox Game Pass.
- Loop Hero is doing well.
Fit Game Makers
On Peleton? Invest in, make or support game making? Tag yourself with #GameIndustry and hang out with me and some other folks from the Game Industry club from Clubhouse… or stop into the Game Industry Workout Hour every morning at 7AM ET.
