How the Concept of Community Will Help Web3 Games Succeed
Authored by Rochelle Kelly, Assistant Account Executive at Ditto and gaming enthusiast.
One of the biggest differentiators between today’s video games and those built on blockchain, aka Web3 games, are the communities built around the latter. Sure, there are opportunities for fans of large gaming franchises such as Call of Duty and Fortnite to interact with each other as well as those games’ developers, but these relationships can theoretically be much deeper with a Web3 model. How?
- By issuing tokens, players can vote on the direction of a game, while non-fungible tokens (NFTs) allow in-game assets to actually be owned by players and transferred into other games.
How does this play out in the real world? Let’s look at one of Web3 gaming’s biggest successes.
Why Alien Worlds is thriving
Alien Worlds is the most popular blockchain game with around 11 million daily transactions from more than 700,000 monthly active users. Launched in beta in late 2020, the Alien Worlds community has grown to almost 3.6 million registered game players and NFT enthusiasts.
Unlike other blockchain games, Alien Worlds does not require cryptocurrency or the installation of a Metamask wallet to begin. In the game, users collect and trade unique digital items minted primarily on the WAX blockchain. Players compete to earn Alien Worlds’ in-game token, Trilium (TLM), which is used to control one of six rival DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). TLM is also available on Ethereum and some NFTs are on BNB Chain.
- Alien Worlds on Oct. 20 announced the launch of in-game DAOs, making it the first game to embrace these crypto-powered groups for players to both collaborate and compete against each other.
- Alien Worlds grows and maintains its active community through using multiple leading blockchains, integrating DAOs as a collaborative gameplay mechanic, creating a low barrier to entry and engaging extensively on social media.
The growing Web3 gaming landscape
There are more than 1,550 blockchain games, as of June 2022, with an average of 800,000 people connecting with Web3 games daily. Investments into NFT and blockchain gaming companies have reached more than $3.4 billion.
To stand out among this wave, Web3 gaming projects must take a page out of the Alien Worlds’ playbook on using Web3’s unique mechanics to focus on community. Failure to focus on community can often lead a Web3 project to doom.
The shelf-life of Web3 games can be short
EOS Knights was very popular in 2019, and while not considered a dead game, it has declined greatly in popularity. Why?
- EOS Knights took a big hit when the price of its tokens declined by more than 90% from its peak. This means that any players who invested money in EOS games experienced huge losses.
- EOS Knights has remained on one blockchain. While nothing stops development teams from migrating games to other blockchains, at this point it is likely easier to launch a new game on a more current blockchain, such as WAX, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana, IoTeX, Polygon and many others.
- Web3 games have to keep in mind that crypto markets move extremely fast, and if a particular chain falls behind, it will be hard for any applications built on a single chain to thrive. This is why Web3 and blockchain games must support interoperability between different chains. Making a decentralized app compatible with numerous chains is the best way to stay on top of the latest crypto trends and avoid potential pitfalls.
- In an EOS Knight Reddit post celebrating it being named one of the best crypto games in 2020, user cmaotaku commented, “I wanted to play but its network problems made me uninstall this. How come it won something? I thought this game was dead. Poorly rated on Google Playstore and inaccessible. No updates from its authors.”
A look ahead
Given the potential of Web3 gaming, both crypto stalwarts as well as newcomers are looking to enter the Web3 gaming space.
Yuga Lab, creators of the immensely valuable Bored Ape NFT collection, perhaps has the greatest potential to succeed. The company is building a team to develop its Otherside metaverse game that will focus first on the Bored Ape community.
- “Otherside” will prioritize Bored Ape NFT buyers, especially those who first minted or purchased Bored Ape NFTs in April 2021.
- The game is described as a semi-decentralized Roblox with better-looking graphics and geared toward an older audience. According to early access footage, it’s reminiscent of Blizzard’s groundbreaking World of Warcraft.
But whether Otherside succeeds as a game or just as an online space for Bored Ape holders to hang out digitally remains to be seen. Web3 gaming has been plagued by games that more closely resemble financial products than something people would play to relax and unwind. The winds seem to be shifting, however, as many Web3 gaming projects start rejecting the “play-to-earn” model, opting instead for a “fun first” focus.
In tandem with rejecting the play-to-earn model, Web3 games are building sustainable tokenomics models to avoid a situation similar to Axie Infinity where disadvantaged players are exploited and profitability becomes rare later in the project’s life cycle. As investment into the Web3 gaming industry increases and more games are being developed, merging communities via partnerships or investments in other games or infrastructure will help Web3 gaming thrive.
