Blockchain gaming: David vs Goliath?
Blockchain gaming has been a buzzword for the past couple of years thanks to play-to-earn, but now it feels like major gaming industry players have started an arms race. Call it The Empire Strikes Back. Or maybe David vs Goliath.
In fact, right on the heels of The Merge, Immutable Games Studio made a huge announcement that it was partnering with eight of the world’s biggest esports organizations for its Guild of Guardians web3 game.
“Together, the partners will build the future of Web3 gaming and digital entertainment and open Guild of Guardians pre-registration to the largest esports communities around the world.
“Under the partnership, esports household names, including Cloud9, Fnatic, Navi, Ninjas in Pyjamas, NRG, SK Gaming, T1, and Team Liquid will join the fantasy world of Guild of Guardians. Their esports brands will be full-fledged playable characters.”
Meanwhile, the creator of the hugely popular Fortnite, Epic Games, has announced that the first NFT-powered game has been launched on the Epic Games Store. The web3 game, Mythical Games’ Blankos Block Party, reportedly already has amassed more than a million players prior to this launch.
“Blankos Block Party lets users play and collaborate in a colorful online world, and is inspired by designer/vinyl toy culture. NFTs are used in the game to represent unique items like avatar designs and accessories, which can be bought and sold through the game’s marketplace.
“Since launching, the game has brought in a number of brand and artist partners for limited-edition drops, including Burberry, Atari, and musician Deadmau5. However, owning NFTs is not required to play the game. An NFT is a blockchain token that represents ownership in an item, including video game goods like characters, weapons, and virtual land.”
In another development, Decentraland and Zynga alum Thor Alexander claims that now is the time for “second-generation crypto games”.
“‘We would like to see ‘Big Time’ serving as the gold standard for what NFTs and crypto can offer gamers and the game industry itself. Right now there is generally cynicism around first-generation crypto games.’
“The seasoned exec isn’t afraid of the army of NFT haters that seem to proliferate the traditional gaming space, calling all the backlash to crypto in gaming ‘a pretty normal reaction.’
“‘We saw a similar trend with early free-to-play (F2P) games where their thin nature allowed many to misjudge how things would play out. Fast forward a few years past ‘FarmVille’ and the same core F2P mechanics powered huge mainstream gaming hits like ‘League of Legends’ and ‘Fortnite.’”
With traditional gaming companies known for creating triple-A games now setting their sights on the blockchain gaming space, how can smaller and independent game studios compete?
“At Playfix, we believe there’s room enough for everyone in blockchain gaming, whether it’s a small web3 developer trying to level up the quality of its graphics and gameplay, or a traditional game studio embracing web3,” said Playfix Founder and CEO Tobias Abdon.
Whether big or small, however, game studios must realize that blockchain gaming is hard.
Building web3 games adds twice as much complexity to the game development process compared to traditional games. Game studios have to hire blockchain engineers, design token economies, write smart contracts, integrate tokens and NFTs into their games, and much more. This increases game development cost, time to market, and overall risk.
Smart contract development and selecting the blockchain network are the top pain points we have recorded in the community. We help game developers overcome these and other web3 challenges by offering a vertically integrated game development platform.
This allows the average game developer to add web3 features in a matter of days, not months.
So we truly believe that smaller game studios can compete with the big boys, and we’re here to help them do so.
Sure, they might feel they’re David against Goliath, but let’s not forget who won. After all, David had a sling, and that’s the secret weapon Playfix can provide.
Maybe not even just a sling, but a bazooka.
Here’s to the future of blockchain gaming.
