Apparently “you can never have too much data” but equally the more data you have, the less relevant it all appears to be. This is the crucial balancing act.
Either way I am pleased to see a couple of companies trying something new when it comes to blockchain games, even if neither has yet hit the sweetspot.
It’s raining data
First up, Rainmaker Games has launched the public beta of its discovery platform; an attempt to provide some basic filters for players looking through the hundreds of blockchain games now available.
Of course, this is really just a pretty-looking website backed by a big list of games (I’ve got one of those too!).
One interesting point is that for each game Rainmaker attempts to provide a measure of ROI by listing the potential earning per day and the upfront cost of playing. It doesn’t actually then provide an ROI or ‘days to breakeven’ result but that’s surely only a matter of time.
The big issue, however, is that I’m not sure how it’s generating its data. For example, it lists $2,300 as the upfront cost of The Sandbox with the claim of $120 earnings per day. But The Sandbox isn’t live so there aren’t any earnings and the floor price of NFT land is currently $5,500. Go figure.
Over time, Rainmaker says such numbers will be generated by a team of 50 players and 2,000 guild members.
Personally, I think they need to automate it as fast as possible. Presumably that’s why investors have funded the company to the tune of $8.5 million.
Double trouble
Also launched this week in an early form is BreederDAO’s Playcore.
Much lighter (and idiosyncratic) in terms of the number of games currently covered, Playcore goes much heavier in terms of token price and usage analysis, providing what’s effectively a Dune Analytics page breakdown for 10 games it tracks.
But — again — I’m not precisely sure how all these pretty numbers are supposed to help me make the “data-driven decisions” as the platform promises.
This seems to be an issue for all such companies and something I thought about in some depth during my time at DappRadar.
There — as now — my conclusion was you need the best data possible behind the curtain, but >99% of users just want one big call-to-action.
They don’t want to — and won’t — scroll down a big list of hundreds of games. They won’t — and don’t — understand numbers. They do, however, care about status and making money, which in the context of blockchain games means they care about:
the most popular games,
the best games for making money, and (maybe)
what the next big popular money-making game is.
The game discovery fallacy
And, more generally, this is why all game discovery platforms fail: they believe game developers when they say “game discovery is a major problem”.
But it’s not — at least it’s not a major problem for gamers, only for game developers.
There have never been more great games. Gamers have never had it so good. But discovery platforms generally monetize developers not gamers and hence end up believing the myth about the ‘game discovery problem’.
The result is platforms full of pretty pictures of games and lots of data no-one understands or cares about. Over time, they pack in more pretty pictures and add more stupid data, and become increasingly irrelevant — just look at the trajectory of the Apple App Store over the past decade.
And this is where I fear these new products from Rainmaker and BreederDAO will end up if they are not careful.
On the positive side, blockchain game platforms do have the opportunity to monetize their users in a direct way: through referral links if nothing else; through their own tokens if they can scale the business properly.
And that gives me hope someone will crack game discovery for blockchain games. Really it’s very simple — a website with three boxes.
Most popular blockchain game
Most profitable blockchain game
Next most profitable, popular game.
Everything else is spam.
Funding news
San Francisco-based blockchain investor Framework Ventures has announced it’s raised $400 million for a new fund - FVIII. Around half of the capital will be deployed into what Framework calls the “burgeoning blockchain gaming space”.
Previously Framework had been somewhat active in the sector via investments in Illuvium and Civitas (games), Perion and Polemos (guilds), and Stardust (tools) but was mainly focused on DeFi.
US-based outfit Sandstorm has announced a $2.5 million seed round, which was led by Sanctor Capital, Fenbushi Capital and The Sandbox. Sebastian Borget also invested as an angel.
Starting out as a weekly stream about The Sandbox, Sandstorm is now a 15-strong media company running five weekly streams from three professional streamers. It claims a viewership of over 3 million people per month.
The new funding round will also enable Sandstorm to build out its own NFT creation tools and marketplace, which are tightly linked to The Sandbox, with support for Decentraland assets in process.
File under it’s a rumor but the only thing that’s likely to be incorrect are the exact numbers, The Sandbox is said to be raising $400 million on a $4 billion valuation.
It previously announced $93 million in a Series B round in November 2021, with participation from SoftBank, Galaxy Interactive, Kingsway and True Global Ventures.
Great article and I don't disagree with you but you're over simplifying the problem.
The Most Popular - how is this defined?
- Largest market cap?
- Largest player base?
- Fastest growing? If so, over what time period?
- Widest variety of players (by wealth)?
- Which countries?
- What type of game play? (passive, active, how much time is required to get a yield?)
- By what cost of entry?
Most profitable blockchain game - how is this defined?
- by yield? This is dependent upon your entry price, and likely your time investment.
- by what timescale? (1h, 1d, 1w, 1y?)
- How do you account for floor price? High yield is great but what if the underlying asset is depreciating?
Next most profitable, popular game - this is the ultimate question and one that requires a lot of data to predict
- if anyone knew this then they simply wouldn't share it
- this is variable dependent upon your budget, risk profile, timescale and budget
- also varies based on how much time you are willing to invest while playing
There is no single answer to each of your 3 key questions, each is complex in it's own right and varies on a large number of factors, not least, the amount of time someone is willing to invest in 'playing' the game - and possibly how 'good' they are at the game.
Those that make the smartest decisions in this space will be those that take the time to understand and make their own interpretation of the data.
Those that lose the most will be the ones that rely on other people top make this decision for them.
Spot on Jon. I think players only care about -
a. What is the yield
b. Any estimation to how long will the yield persist
c. How do I get in - individual investment, guild or asset trade marketplace
These data points should be the primary drivers of discovery. And I am expressing this after spending nearly three months in guilds and associated channels
Secondly -
a. This information should be accessible / interpret-able to gamers.
b. There should be a follow-up loop - can I buy/borrow the asset on a marketplace
c. Can I invest in the game passively through primary tokens instead of active participation
I am starting this journey to build these loops. And would like catch-up with you for 30, when you are free. Thx