2022 Wrap-Up: The Cost of Leveling Up
A year wrap-up was needed for my own mental peace; for those interested in The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of working in the (blockchain) gaming industry, here are some real insights. In short, I’m grateful for the opportunities and growth, but ever more cautious.
Let’s dive straight into it:
The Good —
I received my first financial investment ever from Animoca Brands, and furthermore was given the unique opportunity to work closely with Niantic, Inc. I spent the year learning what it truly means to build a team, manage a budget, and roll out a product on a timely matter to engage with the intended audience. Outside of direct business, I spent a lot of time on the West Coast being exposed to Augmented Reality from all angles. I met some great creatives at the ARHouse which just made me happy to be creating again 🙂.
- It was cool to be featured on a Netflix documentary talking about AR.
See Episode 4, The Future of Games: https://www.netflix.com/title/81123425. But I think it’s cooler to now be on IMDB 🤣 - I made an AR Scavenger Hunt that showcased the cute pigs from my game tontachiAR
- And furthermore worked with my awesome team to get Multiplayer AR Racing to work
The Bad —
Bad business. I met a fair share of untrustworthy or generally non-business savvy people who work at large corporations. My mistake for thinking I was in the right crowds. I assumed that big companies operated professionally, but they can be very.. grimey. Incompetence & Nepotism can not only be unprofessional and annoying, but detrimental. Profit loss can be easily linked back to this.
Separately, the tech industry has fallen on hard times for being a lil too far into the future, and thus the “big” budget I thought I had, got a whole lot smaller 💸(>_<) 💸
The Ugly —
I now fully believe that “Indie Gaming” is a pipe dream. Or rather, it’s not lucrative. The gaming industry has evolved so much and with a plethora of games that exist, discoverability and virality is harder than ever. Albeit this is the entertainment business after all.
What compounds matters more is the need for a large budget rather it be for development or marketing. To make a game with commercial viability you very well may need a budget of at least $1 Million. I..don’t want to believe this, and while that seems like A LOT of money to you or me it’s incredible the amount of VCs and Funds I’ve seen give (game) studios $1 Million+ checks to make something or anything. We’ve finished 2022 with well over $7 BILLION of investments made into the blockchain gaming space. It’s been largely concerning to see companies receive so much money while being required to produce so little, or produce something that an indie (game) developer could make in just 1 month with no budget, on sure will, determination, and some Pizza 🍕
(the same can be seen in the Augmented Reality space btw..)
I used to believe that Blockchain tech leveled the playing field for game developers, and honestly I still do: new or hybrid monetization strategies via tokens or digital assets are great tools for independent game developers to use to attempt to enliven their game while also securing compensation that they are justly owed.
However what upsets me is that traditional actors and institutional money have now come to saturate the space that once again, those with the biggest budgets get the most viewability.
Marketing & Business Development dictate viability rather than the beauty of a game itself, this is true regardless if you’re a blockchain game developer or “regular” game developer.
Silver-lining: none of this matters if you’re in it, “for the love of the game”.
What’s to come in 2023?
Personally for me it’s be an evermore Shrewd businessman & founder, managing the realties of the industries I'm in while pushing creatively to produce a game that people can resonate with that causes them to explore.
As for Industry Insights, Canvas8 has released their Annual Expert Outlook and once again asked me to comment on what is to be “The Age of Instinct”.
Preview here and below:
With a total of $6.7 billion of announced funding for blockchain-based games thus far in 2022, 2023 demands, if not begs for, innovation. ‘ICOs’ (initial coin offering), ‘IDOs’ (initial dex offerings), ‘IEOs’ (initial exchange offerings), ‘rug pulls’, and the general hype of hot air are optimistically behind us — there is breathable room for genuine growth. The aforementioned fat-thin protocol will now begin to level out where there’s either a 50:50, 40:60, or 60:40 ratio between the blockchain layer and the application layer. For me, this is the true birth of Web3.
