Sometimes — increasingly — I think that the process of transcribing blockchain games into a set of neat formulae is akin to nailing jello to the wall.
All you get for your efforts is smashed up flakes of plasterboard and a sticky mess on the floor. Perhaps even a throbbing thumb.
By which I mean it’s an impossible task.
For, every project has — or should have — its own specific approach and understanding this means you have to have deep knowledge of the project, its community, the development team etc.
In the context of a series of 20 minute talks at a conference such as Pocket Gamer Connects — the London 2023 edition of which has just completed: I MC’ed the blockchain and NFT tracks — that’s really frustrating.
The transaction of relevent information seems impossible to accomplish — even with intervention from a competent MC! — leaving the audience with, at best, an impressionistic smudge of what’s really happening.
By which I mean more than that “we’re early”, “no-one knows anything”, and “everyone’s still learning the playbook”. What I mean is maybe there is no playbook and maybe there never was.
Maybe blockchain is such a fundamental and open technology it will never compress down into simple-to-use templates. Instead it’s a toolbox of retention, engagement, monetization and community-building techniques and you have make your best picks.
Or, without over-egging the analogy, it’s a set of herbs and spices: no receipe of worth is going to use exactly the same ingredients or amounts. The skill is the right mix for the target palate.
This Substack is sponsored by Hiro Capital: investing in the future of games
Certainly my key takeway from the talks over the past two days was something that we already knew: you can’t just add tokens and NFTs into a game and expect anyone to care.
AppLovin’s mobile gaming NFT platform Vessel provided a prime example. As its GM of new initiatives Rafael Vivas explained of the experiment to add NFTs to various midcore, casual and hypercasual games, “it needs to be the right game and the NFTs need to provide obvious in-game value”.
However, what was also interesting was that within Vessel — an NFT platform under Apple’s T&C in which NFTs are acquired via IAPs — the revenue generated directly from the NFT sales was often irrelevent.
Instead, adding NFTs to one of its casual game Match Ball 3D boosted other monetization options: IAPs by 250% and rewarded ads engagement by 150%.
Similarly Paul West from Fumb Games said adding Bitcoin rewards via Zebedee’s platform into its mobile idler Bitcoin Miner boosted the game to 300,000 MAUs, resulting in 2 million BTC Lightning transactions.
Adding Bitcoin rewards to Fumb’s other idle games didn’t have any impact, though, even when it tried to tap into market memes with its Cryptopunks-inspired Crypto Hunks. Adding Bitcoin rewards only seemed to work in a game nominally about mining Bitcoin.
Then, on another level entirely, I pointed out Yuga Labs’ current Sewer Pass NFT and Dookey Dash game is a really interesting game, at least in terms of game theory. It’s a crypto-first experience that greatly appeals to its crypto-first whale audience.
All of these are blockchain games, but it’s not clear what — if anything — makes them comparable.
Still, I think the closest thing to an overall conclusion across the 17 talks and panels was that most blockchain games don’t need a token, at the very least you shouldn’t have a live token before your game is live. Selling the token to people probably isn’t a great idea either.
In that context, it’s interesting to note it’s a very non-traditional game like Alien Worlds — which not coincidentally has been giving away its Trilium token for years — that’s the furthest along in terms of building out hardcore crypto features such as in-game DAOs.
These directly plug communities into day-to-day activities, as well as the long term vision of where the game will go. There was a great talk from Dacoco’s Dallas Johnson on the subject.
Another personal highlight was the empassionated framing of Tiny Rebel Games’ Petaverse project from CEO Susan Cummings, who stated its core pillars were “ownership, interoperability and composability”; not necessarily what I would have expected from a game citing Nintendogs and Tamagotchi as inspirations.
In terms of looking for foundational tenets for blockchain games, maybe that’s as close as we get; although given that we now know there is no playbook, plenty of good projects will totally ignore these and still be successful.
You pays your money and you make your choices, in other words.