Why blockchains overclaim their supported game totals

Bigger sounds better

It’s been another day of crunching numbers as we prepare the Big Blockchain Game Report for Q2 2024.

One interesting aside arising from this work — something that I've previously commented on but never researched on a systematic basis — is the difference between the total number of games the Big Blockchain Game List tracks per blockchain and the public numbers many blockchains themselves highlight.

There are two obvious reasons for the sometimes large discrepancies.

The first is that blockchains can have signed deals that haven’t yet been made public. For example, we assume this is partially why the List only has 108 games listed for Immutable but Immutable claims +330.

The other is that many games choose to have various assets and even gameplay logic on more than one blockchain and hence fall into our Multichain category, which is now the biggest single category by far, accounting for 23% of the 994 live and in-development games tracked.

However, there’s also the possibility that blockchains exaggerate their numbers to make themselves sound more impressive.

One way of doing this is not updating their totals regularly, notably by not removing titles that have migrated to other blockchains or which have become discontinued.

Another is by having a very generous definition of the term ‘game’, which is easy to do in blockchainland because many experiences are gamified. Most blockchains would likely define a web3 version of Duolingo using the tags ‘education’ and ‘game’.

As an example, when we looked at Immutable’s breakdown of titles in May, we reckoned that 22 of its listed titles had been discontinued, and 11 projects weren’t what we considered to be games.

Fundamentally, blockchains want to post the largest number they can. Hence, the differences between the two totals can be substantial, as the graph below demonstrates.

Of course, this isn’t to say that the Big Blockchain Game List is perfect. Far from it. We’ve never attempted to be definitive in terms of covering 100% of games.

Indeed, depending on what onchain data sources you look at, the absolute total number of blockchain games ever deployed could be as high as 4,000, although many of these have since been discontinued and/or now have zero onchain activity.

The time we spend looking at each game to check whether we think it is a proper game and not just a gamified experience or wagering app also limits our ability to quickly cross-check projects.

This has become most obvious with the growth of the TON blockchain, which claims to be hosting 146 games, up from 120 games listed last week. The particular issue with TON is the speed at which these often simple bot-based experiences can be released and reskinned.

Nevertheless, the process continues. One day, we’ll even get around to pulling all the data out of the Multichain category!

And despite these issues, we think the List continues to serve a purpose in highlighting wider trends in the blockchain gaming sector: a statement we hope you’ll also agree with when the Q2 report is out in early July.

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Calendar

• MetalCore launches closed beta 3 — 27th June

• Shardbound launches first open beta — 27th June

• Space-based MMOG Influence launches — 27th June

• MetalCore’s MCG token goes live — 28th June

• Crypto Unicorns launches play-to-airdrop event — 1st July

• Moki genesis collection launches on Ronin — 9th July

• Mojo Melee launches its summer surge campaign — 11th July

• Champions Tactics mints in-game NFTs — 15th July

• Illuvium goes live — 25th July

Retention, Retention, Retention news

• Last Wednesday I wrote that despite its total lifetime wallet rising to 2.7 million, Immutable zkEVM’s daily activity still hadn’t broken 230,000. So happy news for Immutable as its DAUWs total rose 15% day-on-day to hit an all-time high of 284,959 active wallets on 25th June. That’s 10% of the total lifetime wallet count.

Likely reasons include the ongoing The Main Quest campaign, which is encouraging daily activity to collect Gems, plus Boomland’s play-to-airdrop campaign for Hunters On-Chain, which is six days into a monthly period.

You can still join in the fun there, perhaps even using my referral link!

Busman’s Holiday news

• As someone with more than a little skin in this particular game, it was with interest that I read skimmed through the State of the Web3 Gaming Nation ‘23-’24 report from Helika and Pantera Capital.

The takeaway headline is that it’s incredibly expensively designed and produced. Yet at 94 pages long, I’m not sure many people will do more than skim it. Another oddity is the timeframe, which runs from February 2023 to February 2024. To some extent, all timeframes are abstract so this wouldn’t be an issue … apart from the fact that it is late June. Hence my conclusion is to focus less on production values and more on timeliness.

Nevertheless, there are some nuggets of interest including the claim that $500 million-worth of assets have been given away by blockchain games in the form of airdrops, although I couldn’t see how that data had been generated. Still, as I say, worth a skim!

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them news

• One of the top Blur NFT farming groups — reportedly 40% of activity — gives their long term view on the ecosystem, following details of the BLAST TGE, which was today.

Suffice to say, people are not happy, with many wallets down over the process. Although there is plenty of sage advice too.

Also…

GOG Circularity news

• Guild of Guardians has performed its first token buyback, acquiring 800,000 tokens ($60,000) of GOG from the open market. This will be added to the game’s active staking reward program — active because token stakers will also be required to play the game — whenever it goes live at a future date.

As set out in the game’s whitepaper, this is just the first of what is expected to be a regular process, with a portion of revenue generated from the game via IAPs used to fund such buybacks.

As for the GOG token itself, the price is down 77% from its peak prior to the game going live on app stores on 15th May. Immutable still hasn’t provided any official details about total downloads but the figure of 250,000 MAUs has been tweeted.