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Onchain Assets games, where the entire game logic is implemented off-chain and only the assets are handled on-chain, seem to have a difficult time establishing their own genre.
From the perspective of the blockchain industry, the development of FOC games is expected to accelerate in the coming year.
Currently, the position of a platform or publisher that specializes in servicing R2E games is vacant.
I've seen and played a lot of different onchain games this year. It's hard to be 100% honest about the onchain games because for everyone in the industry, onchain games are something that should be done well. At some point, onchain games have to bring in users in a flood so that Scalability Solution A and Modular Infrastructure B have a reason to exist.
In this article, we'll break down the onchain gaming trends for the year into three themes. First, Onchain Asset Games (OCA Games), where on-chain and off-chain mechanisms are used together, then Fully Onchain Games (FOC Games), where everything from assets to game mechanics are implemented on-chain, and finally Risk to Earn (R2E), where the emphasis is on speculation and betting.
2023 is a big year for updates to some of the most anticipated games.
Source: Illuvium
First up, Illuvium had a bit of a bummer in February when they announced the postponement of Illuvium: Zero Season One. Illuvium: Zero is a strategic game of resource acquisition and trade management. In March of this year, the company launched Illuvium: Beyond, an expansion to the Illuvium universe that is a card game played on top of the Illuvium NFT collection. In May 2023, we launched the second private beta of Illuvium: Overworld, and in September, we made major technical updates to Illuvium: Zero, including changing the game data format from XML to JSON to improve the UI.
Source: Steam
For our sci-fi TCG game Parallel, the most notable update was to Parallel Colony. Parallel Colony is a multiplayer game that uses AI simulation, an approach that hasn't been tried before in web3 games, and it garnered a lot of attention. Avatars in Parallel Colony each have their own ERC-6551 wallet, allowing for more dynamic interaction in the in-game economy. We're also excited about the prospect of $PRIME holders being able to directly influence the direction of the game. In October, the first Premium Battle Pass launched with Parallel Season 3, Crimson Confidant. The season introduced Legendary cards along with exclusive cosmetics to enrich the experience for players. Also in October, Parallel was brought to Steam, giving us the opportunity to reach even more gamers.
Source: Big Time
Big Time has been compared to MMORPGs like WoW and Guild Wars for its AAA-quality graphics and gameplay. Big Time features multiple classes, and the gameplay is based on running through dungeons, killing monsters, and looting items from them. In October of this year, Big Time made headlines when it announced its preseason, along with a rental system, new crafting mechanics, and the $BIGTIME token. In addition, the preseason was successful in generating active community engagement through leaderboard airdrops and reward mechanisms.
Source: eGamers.io
The expansion of the Ronin ecosystem by Sky Mavis, the developer of Axie Infinity, which is still considered the most successful Web3 game of all time, is also noteworthy this year. In March of this year, Ronin announced further expansion beyond the original Axie Infinity IP, revealing partnerships with five game studios, including Directive Games. In August, the company revealed a prototype for a new game called Project T, and in September, Polygon's favorite game, Pixels, announced its migration to Ronin.
Compared to 2021 and 2022, there was a lot less funding for Web3 games, but there were still some notable funding news.
Source: OniGames
First up is CCP Games' $40M funding round in March of this year. CCP Games is a game developer known for EVE Online and plans to use the funds to further expand the EVE Universe through blockchain technology. EVE Online is a sandbox game that launched in 2003 and is still very popular today with over 170,000 active users. EVE Online is the closest thing we've seen to an in-game economy and perhaps even a metaverse, so we're excited to see what blockchain can bring to the table.
Source: Nestree.news
Next up is ZTX, a joint venture between Jump Crypto and ZEPETO. ZTX is a project that aims to create the most accessible and immersive metaverse through blockchain technology, and in August of this year, it raised $13M in seed funding. ZTX has already acquired over 400M users through its existing ZEPETO project, and its experience in collaborating with well-known brands has laid the foundation for ZTX's growth and development. Although the metaverse narrative has become a cliché, I think it is rare for a project to find a PMF like ZEPETO, so I am looking forward to the future of ZTX.
Source: Animoca Brands
If I had to pick just one of the big players in the Web3 gaming industry right now, it would be Animoca Brands. Mocaverse is the flagship project of Animoca Brands, which raised $20 million in funding in September of this year, and it seeks to provide a unified identity through services like Moca ID and Moca XP. Moca ID is a non-transferable NFT that users can use as their identity across 380 projects in the Animoa Brands ecosystem. Moca XP is a points system that rewards users for their active participation within the ecosystem. With the current proliferation of Web3 games, if Mocaverse can leverage the existing network of Animoca Brands to bring users' information and identities together in one place, there could be many benefits.
Source: Decrypt
Shrapnel, which raised nearly $20M in Series A funding in October, is one of the most anticipated AAA web3 games of late 2023. Developed by Neon Machine, Shrapnel is a first-person shooter developed in Unreal Engine 5 and is expected to be similar to Tarkov and Call of Duty. Neon Machine is looking to add web3 elements to the game, allowing users to buy and sell items they've earned in a marketplace, stake tokens to participate in in-game map development, and more. In the case of Shrapnel, I think the key thing to look at is how fun the game is compared to traditional FPS games.
Source: VentureBeat
With the end of the fire sale, it would seem that interest in Web3 from established Web2 companies has cooled, but that's not the case. First up is Immutable's partnership with Warner Bros. Dsiscovery, a spot brand of Warner Bros. They're working on a mobile game called "Blocklete Golf" that will allow players to collect, train, and trade avatars in the form of unique NFTs.
Next up is a collaboration between SEGA and GAME DOSI, LINE NEXT's Web3 gaming platform. By bringing SEGA's outstanding IP to the Web3 platform, the two companies aim to integrate great games with innovative aspects of blockchain, such as NFTs and payments. SEGA is also collaborating with Oasys to develop Battle of Three Kingdoms, which will utilize the IP of the Three Kingdoms. These efforts are noteworthy in terms of expanding Web3 gaming to a wider audience.
For Zynga, which has had a major impact on the mobile gaming industry, Sugartown is designed to provide a more immersive and financially rewarding experience. For example, Sugartown has an ERC-721 resource called Ora, and players can stake their Ora and participate in in-game activities to earn Sugar, Sugartown's currency.
As for Square Enix, despite the backlash from gamers against blockchain adoption, the company still has faith in web3 with its game Symbiogenesis. Symbiogenesis is a polygon-based story collectible game that revolves around 10,000 character NFTs.
In addition to game developers, esports organizations are also experiencing a need for new revenue streams, and naturally, interest in web3 is growing. Fnatic, Gen.G, and others have signed partnership deals with crypto companies, and TSM has announced plans to collaborate with Avalanche to run tournaments for its gaming application Blitz on the Blitz Subnet.
Source: METAPIXEL
If there's one thing I disappointed most in the web3 gaming industry this year, it's the dissolution of Metapixel, the web3 division of Npixel, and the end of development on Gran Saga: Unlimited. Gran Saga: Unlimited was a relatively well-received web3 game that went through two playtests this year. Gran Saga: Unlimited has been well-received for a number of reasons, such as enhancing the game experience without affecting the core game loop with features like Proof of Play, recruiting creators through the Gran Saga: Unlimited Idol event, and quickly incorporating user feedback in playtests. Outside of the game, the company also continued to contribute to the infrastructure group by proposing AIP-11 and a proxy gas payment system.
However, the news of MetaPixel's dissolution came out of the blue in a September and as of September 1, MetaPixel's Twitter has not been updated. Of course, it could be due to the financial condition of the parent company or the overall bad situation of the game industry, but the lack of success and profitability of web3 games must have played a part in the dissolution. Personally, I think it's a stark reminder of the reality of web3 games.
Onchain Assets games, where the entire game logic is implemented off-chain and only the assets are handled on-chain, are unlikely to establish their own genre. Since there is no significant differentiation that comes from introducing a blockchain element, we expect these types of games to still be judged in the same genre as traditional games. In that sense, many OCA games will not survive the next year, but I think that the games that are just fun to play will survive. Some of the games I am personally looking forward to are 'Oh Baby Kart' and 'Wildcard Alliance'. These games are fun to play as games, even without any on-chain elements, so I'm optimistic.
Another game to keep an eye on in the coming year is MapleStory Universe. MapleStory Universe, which is heavily focused on the creator economy, uses Nexon's very successful MapleStory IP, so I think that depending on what kind of score card the game receives, the way other game companies look at web3 will change significantly. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Fully Onchain Games, where not only the game assets but also the logic is implemented on-chain, has a long history, starting with Dark Forest in 2019. However, the concept of 'Autonomous World' started to attract more people's attention when the Autonomous World Residency was held at 0xPARC at the end of 2022. I think the reason why Autonomous World resonated more is the difference in TAM. By calling it an Autonomous World, rather than just a Fully Onchain Game, the size of the market that the concept can address is much larger. If you look at Ethereum as the closest current example of an autonomous world, it's definitely different.
In a nutshell, an autonomous world is a worldview that is self-governed by its members. This is where the argument that Autonomous World is the best use case for blockchain comes from: its participatory, verifiable, and persistent nature means that it is a world with characteristics that were not previously possible.
Due to the nature of this report, we are dealing with Autonomous Worlds as games, so I will use the term FOC games. If I had to summarize the benefits of FOC games in one word, it would be immersion. Features such as permissionless modding, persistence, open economy, and verifiability have their own practical limitations and possibilities, but in the end, they are all meaningful because they allow users to care more about the game and become more immersed in it.
The most noticeable development in the FOC gaming industry this year is game engines. The evolution of server-side frameworks rather than client frameworks like Unity and Unreal Engine 5 was necessary simply because the development of FOC games was too cumbersome and difficult. The blockchain wasn't built for games in the first place, so there's a lot to consider - managing state synchronization, adding content efficiently, interacting with other contracts - and engines like MUD, Dojo, and World Engine have emerged to provide code libraries and tools to make the development process less painful.
Source: VanishK
MUD, which first appeared at DEFCON in April 2022, is probably the FOC game engine with the highest market share today. MUD is developed by Lattice, part of 0xPARC, and has deep ties to the Ethereum and Optimism ecosystems. The Lattice team was developing their own FOC game in 2021 and realized the lack of current FOC frameworks and decided to create their own. MUD V1 is built on the ECS framework, which makes it easy to synchronize contract and client state, update content, and interact with other contracts. The ECS framework is a popular framework used in the gaming industry and facilitates state management and updates, especially in games with a large number of elements, such as MMORPGs. In April of this year, the alpha version of MUD V2 was released, and its main feature is that it does not force the ECS framework and gives developers freedom. The main advantage of MUDs is that they share values with the Ethereum ecosystem and are therefore accessible.
Source: Lattice
In November of this year, Lattice followed up the framework with the release of Redstone, a plasma-like layer 2 targeted at on-chain games. With the release of Redstone, Lattice is officially part of the Optimism ecosystem, and many FOC games using the MUD framework are expected to use Redstone.
Source: Dojo
Almost as popular as MUDs is the Starknet faction's Dojo. Even before Dojo, there were attempts to create independent FOC games on Starknet. It wasn't until the advent of MUDs and the release of Cairo 1.0 that the Loot Realms, Catridge, and Briq teams came together to create Starknet's FOC game engine, and Dojo was officially released in February 2023. Similar to MUD V1, Dojo is also oriented towards the ECS framework, with the biggest difference being Cairo 1.0.
Cairo 1.0 is a Rust-like language used to create verifiable programs. Cairo 1.0 is characterized by the following features
Recursive proofs allow you to efficiently compress large amounts of computation.
Computations can be broken into parts and proved independently, allowing for privacy.
Cairo only needs to store a fraction of the result, called the "state difference," in the DA layer, making it highly efficient in verification and storage.
It can be used in other areas besides smart contracts.
Source: Dojo
In the past, Dojo was criticized for not having as many resources to learn and refer to as MUDs, but it seems that this weakness has been compensated for by the recent Game Jam event and the well-written Dojo Book.
Source: Argus Labs
The next notable FOC game engine is Argus Labs' World Engine. Argus Labs is an on-chain game development and publishing company that raised $10M in seed funding from Haun Ventures and others in June of this year. Argus Labs was developing FOC games and realized that the current blockchain was not suitable for making games, so they built and released their own game engine, World Engine.
Source: Argus
World Engine is a sharding-based layer 2 SDK targeted at game developers and players. Its main features include a loop-driven runtime, sharding inspired by the structure of traditional MMO game servers, and compatibility with other contracts. World Engine has two main structures: the EVM Base Shard, which is primarily responsible for smart contract logic, and the Game Shard, which handles logic for game execution. The goal of the World Engine is to provide gamers and developers with a similar experience to traditional games without compromising the compatibility that blockchain has to offer, and we expect to see a number of games using the World Engine in the coming year.
Other notable infrastructure players include Curio, which released Keystone, an FOC game engine; Paima Studio , which is developing the Paima Engine and Altlayer, which released Turbo, a rollup framework for autonomous worlds.
Along with the development of the infrastructure, this year saw the emergence of numerous FOC games.
Source: Lattice
Let's start with the MUD faction. Lattice, a trendsetter by making their own MUDs, demonstrated the potential of autonomous worlds with a Minecraft-style FOC game called OPCraft. In about two weeks, the game attracted over 1500 players, 3.5M+ on-chain transactions, and over 5,000 community-created plugins. In addition to OPCraft, we created an RTS game called Sky Strife which has been playtested several times and has been well received by many players. Sky Strife is a turn-based real-time strategy game with a total of four players, and the goal of the game is to defend your base and destroy your opponent's base.
Source: Minters
Next up is a game studio called Minters. Minters World has released a board game-style strategy racing game called Rhascau and is currently preparing Battle for Blockchain, an MMO auto-battler. Rhascau was so popular that it generated 53K+ on-chain transactions and over 250 matches within a week of launch. For the Battle for Blockchain, the first playtest was held at DevConnect, and Minters is serious about contributing to the ecosystem, even releasing a MUD x Godot template.
Source: Words3
Small Brain Games is a game studio with an interesting goal of releasing a new FOC game every six weeks, and to date they've released a variety of games including Ape's Gambit, Underseas, Dark Seas, Words3, Gaul, Network State, and Drawtech. One of my personal favorites, Words3 is a scrambled word game that, unlike traditional word games, costs money for each additional letter and rewards you for building words. The full code is available on GitHub, so anyone can build bots, plugins, and more to improve the game. The most recent release, Drawtech is the first FOC game available on mobile, where players draw on a shared canvas to earn rewards.
Other notable games in the MUD camp include Kamigotchi an on-chain Tamagotchi-style game from Asphodel Studio, and Primodium,a Factorio-style game.
Source: Shoshin
The Starknet faction centered around Dojo is no slouch either. First up is Topology. Topology has been working on various projects to implement the laws of physics on-chain since before the Autonomous World concept became popular, and in the summer of 2022, they released Isaac, Starknet's first FOC game. After an on-chain puzzle game called MuMu, Shoshin is an asynchronous 2D strategy fighting game. Players can dictate what they want their characters to do, and each character will fight accordingly. The game is currently single player, but it promises to be even more fun when multiplayer is introduced.
Source: Dope Wars
Next up is Cartridge. Cartridge is a full-fledged FOCG company, with FOC games, a contribution to Dojo, and a module for Burner Wallet called Catrdige Controller. Cartridge's first game, Roll Your Own, is an on-chain reprint of the 1984 video game Drug Wars, where you travel to different locations and arbitrage your way through the game.
Source: BibliothecaDAO
When talking about Starknet's FOC gaming ecosystem, we can't forget about Loot. Along with Dark Forest, Loot has had a major impact on the current FOC gaming industry, and BibliothecaDAO, a Loot offshoot, is currently working on two FOC games, Realms: Eternum and Loot Survivor. Realms: Eternum is a sandbox strategy simulation game with the feel of a Civilization game. We released a testnet version in January 2023 and are currently preparing for the mainnet launch. As for Loot Survivor, it's a text-based roguelike game with more strategic elements than I expected, and I found it addictive. We are also preparing to deploy the mainnet and are trying out a new BM called Play2Die.
Other notable projects in the Starknet ecosystem include Briq, an on-chain Lego system, and Influence, a 4x MMO game.
From the perspective of the blockchain industry, the development of FOC games is expected to accelerate in earnest next year. By the end of this year and the beginning of next year, on-chain games currently in beta playtesting will begin to appear in the market and receive reports, and the development of the infrastructure will progress accordingly. However, from a gaming perspective, it's unlikely that we'll see any significant changes in the immediate future. Personally, I think the best case scenario for FOC games is for them to become a minor but enthusiastic genre in the overall gaming industry, but I think that will take at least five years. Perhaps the biggest question that FOCG studios need to answer right now is whether they can create enough BMs to be self-sustaining. With Proof of Play's recent funding, we're likely to see more FOCG studios get funded early next year, but at the end of the day, if the time horizon for FOC games is 5-10 years, that's a long time to rely on VC funding alone. Therefore, studios will have to think harder about BM and token issuance.
Regarding the Autonomous World, it seems to be a matter of whether the concept can be realized. Whether it is possible to artificially create such a worldview, and if so, how much of a living and breathing world it can be, we don't know until we try it, so I think we still need to look for at least 5-10 years to verify it. Therefore, in summary, I expect the development of the FOC game industry to accelerate next year, but I think it will be difficult for these games to go beyond the intellectual well of the blockchain and affect the actual game industry.
GambleFi, one of the most prominent PMFs in crypto at the time of Bitcoin's birth, was once again thrust into the spotlight when Rollbit and Hamster Racing went viral in July of this year. The human habit of wanting more money quickly and easily has been there before and will be there again. It's the means that are changing, and while physical spaces like casinos have fulfilled this need in the past, it's increasingly moving online. In this trend, GambleFi, which 'claims' to compensate for the shortcomings of existing online gambling services, is perhaps the natural future.
P2E gaming is a fundamentally unsustainable Ponzi scheme. Over time, the amount of EARN they provide will only get smaller and smaller, and users who are only playing to win money in the first place will have no reason to keep playing.
R2E is a sustainable, zero-sum form of P2E. It's sustainable because it's a zero-sum game where someone gains and someone loses. Basically, anyone who has ever invested in crypto is a potential R2E game player. Therefore, R2E games have the potential to actually satisfy the users originally targeted by P2E games.
The online gambling industry is huge globally. Valued at around $63B in 2022, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.7% to reach around $153B by 2030. It's still a work in progress, as mobile and internet accessibility is bringing more people who traditionally gambled offline online. Another positive factor is the ongoing debate on the legalization of online sports gambling in North American states such as Texas, Georgia, and Missouri.
GambleFi is an attempt to address the shortcomings of traditional online gambling, such as transparency, security, and fairness, through blockchain technology. However, as with the DeFi and NFT industries, the jury is still out on how each project will use blockchain technology to solve the problems of the traditional online gambling industry.
Source: Trident
If GambleFi is a departure from the existing online gambling industry, then Risk to Earn is one way to address the problems with GameFi. As we all know by now, GameFi has learned over the past year that Play to Earn is not sustainable. Whereas Play to Earn was designed as if it was a win-win situation, Risk to Earn starts with the realistic adage that there is no free lunch. Risk to Earn is a zero-sum game, where players wager a set amount of bankroll, and if they win, they take their opponent's bankroll, and if they lose, they lose. As the name suggests, players are risking their bankroll for the chance to win, and the gaming platform that provides the venue for this behavior takes a cut.
There are three main ways that R2E can be implemented in games
roguelikes: single-player games where you lose all your items if you lose. e.g. Tarkov.
betting: where you can wager funds on the outcome of your opponent's game.
PvP: where you can bet on the outcome of your own game.
GambleFi and Risk to Earn (R2E) have different origins, but the end result is very similar. Both concepts have in common that they fill a need for people to take risks and earn more money in an equitable zero-sum environment, so GambleFi and R2E are on the same spectrum, with GambleFi being a little more gambling and R2E being more gaming.
First, Rollbit is a leader in the GambleFi space, integrating cryptocurrency functionality into existing online gambling services. Its main services include casino games, sports betting, futures trading, and NFT services. Rollbit's native token, $RLB, has utilities such as reducing fees for futures trading and providing access to the RLB Lottery. The RLB Lottery allocates a percentage of Rollbit's casino service revenue as prizes, and users can participate by staking $RLB. Rollbit's main revenue streams are casino, NFT marketplace, sports betting, and futures trading fees. In addition, Rollbit has its own collection of NFTs, including Rollbots and Sportsbots, which provide various in-game benefits and features.
SX Bet is a service that brokers peer-to-peer bets, and unlike traditional online gambling services/crypto online gambling services that are custodial and require you to trust the service provider, SX Bets is non-custodial, with users placing bets directly from their own wallets. If you place a bet on an SX Bet and win, you'll earn $SX tokens in addition to the promised payout. In addition to these rewards, the SX token also serves as a fee discount and a form of governance. On average, for every $100 wagered, SX Bet generates about $1 in revenue. In addition, since SX Bet uses its own appchain, gas costs incurred are also paid to stakers. The utility of $SX is as follows
Cocobet is a new project created in June of this year and can be thought of as a low-quality Rollbit with a more Web3 djent sensibility. First of all, the number of games and the quality of the games themselves are significantly lower than Rollbit, but unlike Rollbit, which has a traditional online betting site UX, CocoBets has a UX that is very familiar and popular with Web3 djenns. For now, it appears to be on hiatus.
Next, Sanko Game Corp takes the form of an arcade game, with the main games being Ohama and Texas Hold'em. The concept of Sanko Game Corp is a game publisher that services a game arcade console called the Sanko Dream Machine. In order to play a game on the Sanko Dream Machine, you must first pay 0.1 $DMT, then die in the game, and pay tokens again to play again, in the manner of arcades of the past. Recently, the company launched a streaming service, Sanko TV.
The project is centered around hamster racing betting, which was a huge hit this summer, and will feature live streams of about four different species of hamsters racing on Twitch, and will allow people to bet on which hamster will win. Actual bets are placed in $BUSD and the platform takes a 5% commission on every single bet. Eighty percent of the revenue generated by the platform is allocated to a reward pool, which is allocated to $HAMS holders based on their stake. On July 21, over $100,000 was deposited in one day alone, but as of August 27, the Twitter account was no longer being updated.
Wolf Game, which began as a minigame in November 2021, officially launched in December last year. Wolf Game is an asynchronous PvP strategy game where players try to earn as much $WOOL as possible with different strategies depending on whether they are a sheep or a wolf. This $WOOL is currently tradable on the external market. Wolf Game has its own collection of NFTs, of which the ratio of sheep to wolves is 9:1. Sheep can earn $WOOL by breeding in the barn to create the next generation of sheep. Alternatively, they can acquire resources outside the barn. Wolves can steal the next generation of sheep when sheep breed in the barn, depending on various factors such as the level of the barn, the wolf, and the wolf's energy. They can also loot resources from sheep outside the barn if they come across them.
Halls of Olympia, a service that offers Gladiator-style games, emphasizes R2E through betting. There are two main games available on Halls of Olympia: Gladiatorial Combat and Gladiatorial Warfare. Gladiatorial Combat is an arena battle-style game where players can 1) participate in the game and win prizes, 2) bet on other matches, or 3) lend their weapons or armor to others and share in the profits. Next, Chariot Racing is a competitive game where players choose two skills and one weapon, equip them on their character, and race in PvP. Again, you can place bets on other people's matches.
Trident DAO is the first team to propose the concept of R2E in earnest, and they are preparing two major services. First, the Trident MMO is an open-world game where players can explore, gather resources, collect, and defeat bosses. It's a roguelike, so when you die, you drop everything. Next, there's Spirit Duels: a turn-based PvP game like Pokémon Battle.
There is currently a void in the market for a platform or publisher that specializes in serving R2E games. In fact, the entire gaming industry already has a number of R2E platforms, such as Skillz and Player's Lounge, that offer competitive gaming platforms or tournaments and betting called Micro esports. As the advantage of crypto is that it is easy to collect and distribute money, I think it can be a good match for on-chain games, so I look forward to the release of a web3 version of Skillz, like Tiltyard, which is currently in preparation.
However, R2E games are not a panacea. As with any game outside of the blockchain, sustainability aside, as enthusiasm for the game cools and popularity wanes, the number of users and NFT prices will naturally drop. Wolf Game is one of the most successful examples of this, but we're not yet seeing the next Exo Infinity of R2E games.
The use cases of Rollbit's NFTs, Rollbot and Sportsbot, are worth noting. In the case of Rollbot, the amount of rakeback is determined by the trait when using the casino, and in the case of Sportsbot, the amount of sports betting revenue allocated depends on the type of NFT. As you can see, there are a number of additional utility and fun elements that make owning NFTs more than just revenue sharing, and these points are worthy of benchmarking in other games.
In each part of this article, we left a look ahead, but here we summarize it once again.
Onchain Asset Games (OCA Games)
At the end of the day, it's a game. At the risk of stating the obvious, if the game isn't fun, it doesn't matter what the tokenomics are. If the game isn't fun, it doesn't matter who funded it or what the current token price is. So I think a good on-chain game is a game that is already fun without on-chain elements, but uses on-chain as a tool to increase user engagement and immersion. I wish the industry would stop trying to resurrect games and IPs that don't work through on-chain. I understand the sentiment, but in the end it won't work and will only hurt the people. Two games I'm looking forward to next year are Oh Baby Kart and Wildcard Aliiance. Both are fun to play even without the Web3 elements.
Fully Onchain Games (FOC Games)
The same goes for the FOC games. Now, next year we'll have to see some games that are really fun to play,to continue spinning the flywheel of infrastructure and application evolution. Right now, FOCGs are interesting in that they're trying new things, but as games, they're hard to watch.
Risk to Earn (R2E)
If someone wants to make a game with Web3 elements, I would advise them to focus on R2E. The problem with R2E games is that your competition is no longer Web2 games, but trading futures in Binance or trading memecoin. If you can 1) beat those competitors through gameplay experience, and 2) accept the reality that what you making is not a game then go for it. At least R2E projects have a sustainable BM.
Thanks to Kate for designing the graphics for this article.
