The case for Snapture
Less would be more
In recent days, several paid subscribers have questioned the tone of some of my recent emails.
And I think it is true a certain amount of frustration is creeping in.
But first, it’s good to contextualize across the past six years; something I was writing about this week as Google Photos reminded me that it was six years since the first (and only) Blockchain Game Summit.
Back then, Bitcoin was priced around $6,500 (since up 850%), while ETH is up over 1,100% so on that level at least the crypto narrative clearly *is* going great.
The story for blockchain gaming hasn’t been so solid, though. Sure, some tokens have also risen in price, albeit via a boom-bust cycle through the years 2021-22.
But much more than token prices, I think it’s pretty hard to point to projects that have fulfilled the dreams we had back in 2018.
Sure, there’s always plenty of activity. There are dozens of gaming blockchains, hundreds of games, even perhaps millions of active wallets, but there really aren’t many actual games I’m confident to highlight.
We saw some of that reflected this week with the news of eight games coming to Ronin. But these aren’t new games. Just existing games shuffling their blockchain. Indeed, many of them were either pixel RPGs or Pokemon-style games; genres in which Ronin is already over-populated imho.
A related date point: two years on from the launch of Blankos Block Party — the first blockchain-enabled game on the store — the Epic Games Store now lists 175 blockchain games.
In my somewhat grumpy mood, however, my imminent reaction has been that these — and all other — platforms would be doing a lot better if 90% of their titles were removed.
In the case of Ronin, Sky Mavis actually has this power because Ronin is a permissioned blockchain, so theoretically it could ‘Thanos Snap’ half of them out of existence, at least on Ronin.
That would concentrate players and liquidity into the remainder. You wouldn’t even have to be very picky in terms of quality of the games you removed. Even a random coin flip would suffice.
The best option, however, would be to magically Snapture every blockchain game except one. Again, it wouldn’t really matter what that game was. A singular blockchain game would be very successful because anyone interested in the sector would have to play it, which is sort of what happened with Axie Infinity in 2021.
Of course, the same is true of cryptocurrencies more generally, which is why the oldest token remains the most valuable. Bitcoin will always have that Schelling Point, as does CryptoPunks in the NFT sector.
Games just don’t operate in this way, however. Bad news for the creators of 2014’s Huntercoin!
So, instead, I guess we’ll have to suffer through continuing competitive market cycles which will eventually create far superior games than Thanos in the long run.
It’s just I wish the blockchain game sector would show a bit of understanding of the situation we’re in: a situation its bad practises have done little to ameliorate and much to accentuate.
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Weekly News Roundup
Flappy Bird is back, relaunched on Telegram.
RPG life sim Tatsumeeko is launching on Ronin in Q4 2024.
Parallel Studios announces new FPS ‘Project Tau Ceti.
Price of Solana’s Seeker phone rises from $450 to $500 tomorrow.
Immutable and SunSpear partner to enhance Immortal: Gates of Pyre.
Magic Eden and Mocaverse collaborate on NFT launchpad MagicMoca.
NFL Rivals’ in-app marketplace boosted NFT trading volume by 45%.
Solana onchain game engine MagicBlock gets $3 million from a16z crypto.
Co-op shooter Riftstorm goes web3 with support from Xai.
Double Jump unveils new Oasys L2 and SGC token.
DeLorean hits web3 with Sui NFT drop and Animoca Motorverse partnership.
Puma is featuring in web3 soccer game UNKJD.
Everdawn Champions out on 25th September via Epic Games Store.
As discussed below.
Check out the Big Blockchain Game Report Q2 2024 👀 here.