Why community is ‘brutal’ in world of blockchain gaming
Has game development become even harder in the age of web3? The answer is a resounding yes. Making games is already hard in the first place, but now traditional game developers who wish to make the leap to blockchain gaming need to wrestle with new technology and skill sets. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have web3 companies that are blockchain-savvy and want to create their own games, but lack the game development background and skills.
For both camps, however, one X factor makes web3 gaming truly complicated and disruptive: the community.
“In web3, the community is brutal,” said Enjinstarter CEO and Co-Founder Prakash Somosundram.
“If you make a mistake, they’ll come after you. But if you’re honest, and you come there, and show them it’s an honest mistake and forgive us, they will actually listen and rally around you. But the key thing with web3 is that there’s still no loyalty. People jump from project to project very, very quickly, and it’s up to us now to kind of build that [loyalty], both online and offline, since we’re now living in a post-pandemic world, and that’s one key thing that we see,” he said.
Somosundram of Singapore-based launchpad Enjinstarter was one of the speakers in the “Getting from Zero to One in Gaming” panel that I moderated at the Philippine Web3 Festival on Nov. 17. Joining him on the panel were Playgroundzero CEO and Co-Founder Janze de Guzman and Afante Studios CEO and Founder James Afante.
Playgroundzero is a GameFi networking platform that connects gamers, guilds, and GameFi studios. Meanwhile, Afante Studios is the game studio behind the upcoming web3 game ASTRO XP, an open world RPG set in space. ASTRO XP was one of a number of web games demonstrated at the Philippine Web3 Festival. What sets it apart, however, is that Afante Studios showcased the game to the public for the first time and allowed attendees to experience it even if it was a not-quite finished MVP.
For his part, De Guzman pointed out that in the age of web3, the community is no longer just made up of the people who play the games.
“It’s something that we’ve also seen in our own guild. We started out with just player accounts. But over the course of weeks and months, we actually found people becoming more interested in taking on different roles.
“In fact, at some point, they don’t want to play. They just want to manage the community, be more involved. So we saw the emergence of other roles like community managers, coaches, play testers, or even researchers. And that’s kind of how we’ve repositioned ourselves and our platform. This vision that the next generation of games will be very focused on the community. And it’s not just a community of people playing together. It’s a community that builds together as well, that figures out the economy by themselves, who kind of have a say in how things will be driven forward. So I think that’s a very interesting narrative because the metaverse, which is very web3, will require a lot of builders. And you need people to be more involved in order to build this wonderful place,” De Guzman said.
Meanwhile, Afante noted that because of the bear market, the web3 space now needs more builders than ever.
“For me, realistically speaking, there are fewer builders right now, compared to last year. And for us, there’s also a lot of people asking us, ‘Why are you still building? It’s already a bear market? Why are you still building? Can you still profit from this thing?’
“Well, what we have done, even in the past, is that we let other projects perform first, so that we can really understand and give us our prototype. In that way, we can make sure that we’re very conservative on what we implement on our own project, and we have more time to really polish our white paper. And I also believe that consistency is key. And it will develop trust always with your community. So we will be here. I think the way to manage your community is, just be here. Don’t go out. Don’t quit. Be relevant always. Bear or bull, build,” Afante said.
Playfix itself was born because of the need to address the pain points that game developers face in trying to create blockchain games. Building web3 games adds twice as much complexity to the game development process compared to traditional games. Which is why the Playfix platform provides a robust set of developer APIs, along with a powerful and intuitive console for easily creating and managing tokens, NFTs, and wallets.
More than just the technology, however, Playfix also provides a content and community platform for customers, partners, and other stakeholders, and a team of passionate people determined to help them succeed in web3.
This is all in line with the Playfix vision for blockchain gaming, of creating a future where blockchain features in games are no longer a novel concept.
Let’s build the future together with our communities in web3.
