Please don't take this as being wholly comprehensive. It comes with some artistic license. But I've been sitting in the Radisson Blu bar all day talking to people about blockchain games.
And – once again – it's very satisfying to be in the presence of people at least as passionate as me about the sector.
However you want to look at it — funding, types of games, number of games, big vision, operational focus, smart people, innovation, ambition — there's more going on in blockchain games than any other part of the industry, although I would say that wouldn't I?
But even as a brief snapshot of what's happening, what I've seen today is everything from deep payment solutions to massmarket gaming, platform plays, solving onboarding, fixing UA, redefining NFT standards, and new ways to build community. Plus some cool games too!
I can see the potential value in most of this, and while sector momentum is currently clearly with the web2-to-web3 playbook, contrarian that I am, I’m increasingly drawn to the projects which are restricting themselves to onchain transactions, everything tokenized and maybe, eventually, spat out and rolled into DAOs, whatever one of those functionally turns out to be.
Indeed, as one long discussion ended up, "You should think of Ethereum itself as a DAO, and everything running on top of it as a subDAO, or sub-subDAO."
As a thoughtful man once said, it’s turtles all the way down.
Not that these more onchain projects are ones I'm necessarily playing the most or investing in. But I'm attracted to them conceptually because these are games breaking themselves down to fundamentals, then trying to build up again with the community in the hopes that together something of value will arise.
In most cases it won't but I'd rather start off with 300 diehards and a plan, than a million ad-bought play-and-earn players, which is not to say that a million ad-bought play-and-earn players aren't also valuable — just in their own very different way.
And in a similar vein, I’m not a fan of the view that so much VC money has entered the space, and so many blockchain games are in development that something eventually has to stick.
Maybe this a priori view will turn out to be correct, but it doesn’t seem to be the correct way to think about what we’re doing, even from a high level.
The human element
But enough of such pontificating: spending a limited amount of time adjacent to a big game conference has in-and-of itself been enjoyable too.
If nothing else, there are all the industry chums you bump into – hello Kyu (Com2uS); oh it's Sebastien (The Sandbox); Stephen (Decimated, also an advisor at Soccerverse); of course how can you forget the (I think) encouraging words of Shirley Lin — “You need to do something big!”
And isn’t that Christian from Zebedee?
Embarrassingly, it wasn't Christian, but that didn't stop me talking to Simon (Space Ape) as if he was the CTO of Bitcoin payment network Zebedee for several minutes. Confusion all-around, especially for Simon.
Which was weird because normally I'm pretty good at recognising people. Spotted Alexis Bonte (Stillfront) kicking back with his morning coffee, looking very relaxed as he no doubt acquired another studio.
Asi Burak (Tilting Point) so deep in conversation I dare not interrupt. Carsten van Husen whooshed by, astride an escooter. Randy Pitchfork (Gearbox) was out in search of dinner on the town.
And then there's the stuff you just happen to overhear. Bizarrely, games industry streaker – in the daily running sense – Joel Benton was planning a 4am run to keep his 3-miles-a-day 11 year streak intact prior to his red-eye flight back west.
So, all-in-all, a thoroughly enjoyable experience, at least for a day. I wouldn't want to do it every month, but probably won't leave it another two and a half years.