I’ll let you in on a little secret. The real reason the blockchain gaming sector isn’t booming right now is because not everyone is listening to me.
You think I’m joking, but I’m not!
If everyone was listening to me and bought exactly the same tokens and NFTs, we would all be cha-ching. Granted all those *other* tokens and gaming projects would be insolvent but no-one else would care.
We’d all be playing and buying into the same set of 10 games and watching the numbers rise to the right.
Of course, it wouldn’t technically be a Ponzi scheme [surely a Jonzi scheme? - Ed] but there would be some similarities.
However, because everyone knows you can trust me and because I’m never wrong, it would all work out fine.
I’d become the Schelling Point [surely Shilling Point? - Ed] for the entire blockchain gaming industry.
And that’s the obvious fault. Even assuming this scenario could be successfully launched, over time there would be increasingly large gains available at the margins to be exploited by someone attracting enough support — even from my beloved community — to ape into another game, quickly driving up the price of those assets … and so on.
In fact, the reason the blockchain gaming sector doesn’t look like it’s booming right now is precisely because there are thousands of Jonzi schemes — games, ecosystems, chains and KOLs — in operation, all performing their own hard shillings. And even as some projects fall by the wayside, more launch, spouting claims of future success to anyone who will listen.
Anyhow, aside from my delusions of grandeur, the industry already has a Schelling Point — that is the default solution to which everyone independently looks in order to work out which projects to pay attention to — and it is not Jon Jordan. It is token price.
Unlike me, token price is not a good Schelling Point.
For one thing, it’s easy to manipulate in the short term. And beyond that, the gaming projects at the top of the token pile tend to those that have been around for the longest — Immutable’s IMX (launched 2021), Gala’s GALA (2020), Axie Infinity’s AXS (2020), The Sandbox’s SAND (2020) and Decentraland’s MANA (2018).
Brutally speaking, these tokens have all seen better days. I do not hold out much for their collective futures. (Not investment advice.)
Still, I could be wrong, so we’ll all have to suffer through continuing market sentiment cycles, which painfully shuffle the pack in both relative and absolute terms.
Eventually, eventually, winners will emerge from chaff: projects in which value is based more on utility than sentiment and speculation. They will be obvious Schelling Points, solving our collective action problem. But inertia being what it is, I fear it will be a long time coming.
In the meantime, join my Jonzi scheme. It couldn’t turn out much worse. 🥴
Sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing 📈 in the future 🔮 of gaming 🎮
Calendar
Dookey Dash: Unclogged launches with $1 million prize pool — 12th September
MetalCore goes into open beta — 12th September
Immortal Rising 2 goes live via app stores — 12th September
Immutable RPG RavenQuest launches its land sale — 14th September
US FOMC meets; ≥25bp rate cut expected — 18th September
Hamster Kombat’s token will (air)drop — 26th September
Champions Tactics’ open beta launches — TBA September
Mythical’s Forest token airdrop event ends — 13th October
BCGW #179 news
It’s Wednesday so another episode of Blockchain Gaming World is out. In #179, I talk to Cartridge CEO Tarrence van As about fully onchain games, notably the thinking behind Cartridge’s fully onchain game dev suite of tools, which run on the Starkware L2.
We also discuss my assertion that while fully onchain games are conceptually interesting, they’re virtually unplayable, which is why the sector’s TAM is currency the capped 1,000-strong community of fully onchain game devs!
For the record, next week will be a chat with Foonie Magus CEO Frank Cheng about its Ronin-based god battler Aperion.
Funding news #1
Somewhat mysterious Hong Kong developer Nytro Labs — aka You Long Infinite Interactive Entertainment Co. LTD. — has announced it’s raised $8 million for its Aptos-based mobile 4X RPG Castile, which has entered open beta until 10th October (via Testflight or APK). Nytro Labs also says this takes its total funding to $25 million. The company is said to have been founded in 2017 and is backed by Tencent and ByteDance.
In terms of investors, the round was led by crypto exchange OKX’s venture arm and SevenX, a Singapore-based Chinese degen, which has been pretty active over the years. Indeed, one of Nytro Labs’ co-founders — in fact the only doxxed member — is Arthur Kao, who previously had a short stint at SevenX. In addition, SevenX led an investment round into web3 gaming outfit Matr1x, which is helping Nytro Labs in terms of publishing Castile.
Other investors included Aptos Labs, Amber Group, HashKey and Leland Ventures.
In terms of Castile, as is often the case with Chinese content, it looks very high end, both in terms of the signature art for its playable characters and massive bosses. It also promises a deep player economy, something it labels “play and trade”. This will be underpinned by the game’s CAST token, which it seems likely this funding round is connected to.
You can find out more via its Gitbook.
Funding news #2
To-date, the Indian esports market has proved to be a difficult one to both scale and monetize. But that’s not stopping GetStan, which has solid 16% of its equity to Nazara Dubai FZ, a wholly-owned subsidiary of publicly-listed Indian gaming outfit Nazara Technologies (NSE: NAZARA) in a secondary transaction for $2.2 million in cash.
GetStan operates mobile esports and casual gaming app STAN, which runs on the Aptos blockchain. It claims the app has over 12 million users, of which 500,000 are payers. Retention over 30 days is said to be over 60%. As well as allowing creators to make and sell NFTs, users of STAN can also transform their in-app points for the usual array of digital store cards and real world coupons.
“This acquisition allows us to expand our reach while empowering content creators and fostering a stronger gaming community,” commented Nazara’s CEO Nitish Mittersain.
Gamedia 1-0 Gala news
One of the more bizarre outcomes of Dutch developer Gamedia highlighting what an untrustworthy organization Gala Games is was that Gala Games then sued Gamedia. But, thankfully, that case has now been dismissed for the seemingly obvious reason that the Central District Court of California doesn’t have jurisdiction.
Quite where that leaves Gamedia’s Spider Tanks game, which was the one of the first — and better — titles live on the Gala gaming ecosystem is uncertain. Some think the game may turn up on another blockchain, which certainly would be interesting to see. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gamedia walks away from the whole sector, given how badly it was treated by Gala.
Additional Links
CCP’s Project Awakening — its ‘EVE Online+blockchain’ — releases “more details” in 18 hours i.e. 3pm BST on Thursday 12th September.
Dr Disrespect-co-founded (but since divorced) studio Midnight Studio has laid off 50% of its staff as it moves to the launch of web3 vertical shooter Deadrop.
You can now buy wrapped BTC on the Ronin blockchain.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.