“Those who fud web3 gaming today don’t understand it. They Missed Cryptokitties in 2018 and Axie in 2020, and they’ll Miss The Next Wave Too Because they measuring the Wrong Metrics, Says Gabby Dizon, CFUDER OF YELD GUILD GUILD GUILD.”, – WRITE: www.coindesk.com
But Measuring Web3 Gaming by Token Prices Alone Is Like Calling The Internet a Failure Because of the Dot-Com Crash-It Ignores How Far The Technology Has Come and Where. It’s Missing The Real Story.
AT ITS CORE, Web3 Gaming Is About Giving Players Real Ownership-Not Just of the In-Game Items Thaty Buy And Earn, But Also Their Identities and Achients. In Traditional Games, Players Invest Time, Effort and Money Into Digital Assets that Ultimately Belong to the Publisher. Web3 Changes that. By Putting Assets on-Chain, Players Can Trly Own What they Earn-Weater’s Tradable Items Like Weapons or Land, or Non-Transferable Badges of Reporting, Guild Histery, Guild. IT’s not just about buying and selling Stuff – It’s About Agency, Persistency, and Getting Proper Recognition for What You’ve Built and What Is Really Yours in the EcoSystem.
The concept isn’t new. Players Have Wanted More Control Over Their In-Game Assets for Years. Look at the Massive Markets for Cs: Go Skins or World of Warcraft Gold. But Until now, Those Economies have been fragmented, restricted, or at risk of being shut Down if a Centralized Publisher Decides to shut it Down or Change The Rules. Web3 Makes TESE Economies Open, Interoperable, Player-Bowned and Player-Driven.
Ownership Has Always Been The Foundation of Web3 Gaming, and Play-To-Earn Was An Experimental Model That Showed The Potential for Open and Permissionless Virtual Economies on Blockchain. Now, The Industry Is Evolving with A Stronger Focus on Sustainable Economies and Better Tokenomics, Deeper GamePlay, and Long-Term Player Engase.
But if you’re comparing web3 gaming to web2 gaming, you’ll be disappointed. Traditional Gaming Has Had Decades to Fine-Tune Game Design, Build Massive Player Bases, and Develop Business Models that Work, While Web3 Gaming Is Still In ITS Experimental Phase. Sure, Billions of Dollars of Investment Can Speed Things Up, But Throwing Money at A Brand New Category Doesn’t Magical Buy Itck Record or Instantly Create New Games that PEAPLE.
I’ve been Making Games for Over 20 Years and I HAVE SEEN EVERY MAJOR SHIOR GET DISMISISSED BEFORE IT TOOK OVER. Nobody Believed Mobile Gaming Could Compete with PCS or Consoles Until It Became Bigger than Both. Free-to-Play Was Called A Scam Until It Made More Morey and Reached More Players Than Ever Before. Esports Was A Joke Until Stadium Sold Out and Prize Pools Hit Millions. Digital Skins Were “Worthless” Before They Became A Multi-Billion Dollar Market.
And now, Web3 Gaming is at that Same Inflection Point.
WHEN I FIRST HEART ABOUT BLOCKCHAIN IN 2018, Everyone and Knew in Fintech Was Talking ABOUT IT. SO of COURSE I TONOUGHT IT WAS BORING AND I IGNOred It. It wasn’t Until I Learned About Cryptokitties That I Actual Took Notice. WHEN I SAW PEOPLE COLLECTING, Trading and Actual Owning These Cute on-Chain Cats, that’s WHEN I GOT Excited Because and Knewy Wewy Wrenwest. Cryptokitties Were Digital Things That No One Could Take Away from You. As Someone Who’s SPent Their Life Grinding in Games, and Their Career Convincing Other to Grind the Same – Without Really Getting Anything for It – That Idea Of Digital Owners.
SO I WENT ALL-IN BLOCKCHAIN GAMES. But 2018 and 2019 Were Really Tough Times. Pretty Much No One Else Cared Back Then. There was no Support, No Real Funding, No Clear Idea of What these Games Could be Beyond Speculation, and (Outside of a Handful of Believers) there was a vittle. The Market Was in a Deep Bear Cycle, and Many Teams Either Gave Up or Ran Out of Money Before they Could Launch. Still, somes of US Kept Building. We Stayed Lean, Experamented, and Learned Everything The Hard Way. It Feels Similarly Bad Now, But Not As Bad As It Was Then. Looking Back, I’M So Glad We Didn’T Pack It in WHEN SUCCCCESS WAS JUST AROUND The CORNER.
WHEN AXIE INFINITY BROKE THRUGH IN 2021, Everything Changed. Web3 Founders Like Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin of Sky Mavis, Yat Siu of Animoca Brands, Sebastien Borget of the Sandbox, and Me, Went from Being Called Crazy to Visionary overnight. Suddenly, We Were Speaking on the Main Stage at Conferences Where We We used to Watch in the Audence. We Made News Headlines and “MOST INFLUENTIAL” LISTS. INVESTORS WHO IGNOred Our Emails Were Asking How Much they Could Put in. My Email Inbox Field Up with Fundraising Decks Pitching The Next YGG.
THEN IN 2022, The Market Crashed, and Just As Quickly, We Went Back to Being Crazy. But that Never Really bothered me because crazy people are the ones whos who make big things happen.
Now, Everyone’s Asking: WHEN IS The NEXT Big Web3 Game? The Answer is this: Good Games Take Time. And if You Look The Red Candles to Take Notice of What Exists Already Tooday, You’ll See We How Much Progress We’ve Made Since Our Industry was Seeded in 2018:
- In 2020, Axie Infinity Had Fewer than 500 Daily Players. TODAY, RONIN – The BLOCKCHAIN IT Built – Has Millions of Active USERS, WITH 17 NEW GAMES LAUNCHED, AND 134% GROWTH IN NFT TRADING VOLUME IN 2024 COMPED TO 2023. IT’SO ALSO GONESION Faster Development, Stronger Network Effects, and Unpredictably Big BreakthROUGHS. Some of the Biggest Innovations in Gaming Like Modding, Free-To-Play and Esports Came from Urdexptted Places. By Lowering The Barrier to Entry, A Permissionless Ronin Invites of the Kind of Experience that Could Could Lead to The Next Axie-Scale Success.
- Pixels, A Farming Game on Ronin, Hit A Peak of 1.3 Million Daily Active USERS (DAUS) and IS HOLDING STRONG NOW WITH AROUND 250,000 DAUS EVEN WITH ITKEN DOWN 96%. Players are spending more than they are kash Out, Buying Land, Upgrading Assets, and Actuly Putting Money Back Into the Game, Fueling The Economy Institute of Extracting from IT. This is How Virtual Economies Should Work, With Real Demand and Strong Recentation. MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT IS AN INDICATION THAT The Play-To-Earn Model Can Work if Done Right.
- PARALLEL, A TRADING CARD GAME (TCG) on Ethereum, Just Hosted a World Championship in Las Vegas at the Hyperx Arena All-Stars ”to“ Street Fighter V’s Capcom Cup. ” This Was A Prestigious Event That Saw Some of the World’s Best TCG Players Crossover from Traditional Titles Like Hearthstone to Become Some of the First Web3 Esports Legends.
These are just a few examples, but they show the kind of traction we’re seeing: Better Infrastructure, Growing Communities, More Sustainable Virtual Economies, Digital Ownership.
Those who fud web3 gaming today don’t understand it. They Missed Cryptokitties in 2018, Axie in 2020, YGG in 2021, and they’ll Miss The Next Wave Too Because they’re Measuring the Wrong Metrics. Web3 is growing and innovating faster than any other sector in gaming. IT’s NOT TIME TO QUIT. I Time to Double Down. Let Them Call US WHATEVER WANT: CRAZY, DELSIONAL. Visionary, Pioneering. It Doesn’T Change What We Do. We’ve been here before. Stay The Path.
Note: The Views Expressed in this Column Are Those of the Author and Do Not Necessarily Reflect Those of Coindesk, Inc. i Owners and Affilites.
