Hello Web3 builders, enablers, and leaders,
In this Issue…
5 Elements to consider for builders of web3 games!
📌 Be transparent and true; Run your DAOs with inclusivity.
📌 Design Tokenomics for the common good & align rewards with value creation.
📌 A rich and efficient marketplace.
📌 The right choice of Technology.
📌 Have a Clear Roadmap.
What’s happening?
Immutable Co-Founder Robbie announced that the firm had bought 5 major games as he saw more triple-A games develop in web3.
Polygon released Q2 stats.
Prom- Gaming NFT marketplace & rental, acquire HWC Studio.
Where is the money?
Framework Ventures raises $10M for Mighty Bear Games through in-game token sales.
A lot is happening in the web3 gaming space. Unlike traditional games, building web3 games need more things to take care of. In traditional games, or let’s name it web2 games, the process usually goes from Pre-production>The Game Design Document (GDD)>Prototyping>Production>First playable>Vertical slice>Alpha>Beta> And finally, the gold master where the game is released to the public.
That’s a long process, and building games is much more vast and time-consuming than building most SaaS products. MMO and AAA-like games usually take 5-8 years to build.
Of course, building great, fun, and enjoyable web3 games is no different. It needs a lot of commitment and iterations before its being released.
Hey, before we go further, I promise this one will be short to read, unlike the previous newsletters.
Please check out our previous newsletters here, where we discussed GameFi evolution, Sustainability, and Guilds. Do consider subscribing, share with fellow web3 creators and let’s build together.
In our Gaming Guilds- The new way to communicate in gaming newsletter last week, we look into how building a community is the first and the most important thing to do in web3 gaming.
In this issue, we want to look at 5 important elements to consider before building web3 games.
1. Be transparent and true to your community; Run your DAOs with inclusivity.
If you are building a web3 project, protocol, or gaming, you know your community’s importance; it is the center of everything you are building. In fact, before even building your full-scale product, you first need to build your community.
Once you have built a sizeable community, be transparent and true to them. Communicate every update to them, including team and activities; Your community loves them.
From earlier on, Axie Infinity makes sure to build the community first. From game design and content to giving ownership to players, “community” is always the center of Axie Infinity.
On June 24, 2018, they did their first ever live stream while releasing their whitepaper and announcing the first community art contest! Aleksander L and Jiho opened the session and made sure to introduce everyone on the team.
If your game and project have DAO, you probably won’t want them to take every product development decision; make sure decisions are taken by the right people; don’t let engineering take marketing decisions and marketing taking engineering decisions; probably have Sub-DAOs for each area of operations and verticals. Run your DAO like a business; make sure to give and create value at the same time, have a clear layout constitution, and follow it. And let it be inclusive, invite capable people to contribute to the project.
And lastly, have empaths; we are all human at the end of the day.
2. Design your tokenomics for common good and align rewards with value creation
Tokenomics can either make or break your project, pay attention to it. When you design your tokenomics, make sure it is designed for the common good of all the community members. In terms of distributing tokens, while investors’ and teams’ shares are vitally important, the open market should have the highest shares of it.
Great tokenomics design should align rewards with value creation. While rewarding every participant in “play-to-earn”, ensure there is “x-to-earn” where players with better skills and contribute more get higher rewards.
3. Have a rich and efficient marketplace.
Games always have marketplaces, and as play-to-earn games assets are tradable and convertible, having a rich and efficient marketplace is necessary.
Most players would prefer an in-house marketplace rather than an external marketplace for the trade. Having an internal marketplace allows rich customization of NFT assets and better choice options. In-game marketplaces can also have multiple currencies to trade the assets.
Games with their own in-house marketplace have higher liquidity trade volume than other external marketplaces.
In the case of Axie Infinity, over 80% of all Axie sold happen on the Axie marketplace.
4. Make the right choice of Technology
When it comes to any blockchain technology, there are three things the technology needs to address; Security, Scalability, and Decentralization. In one sense, Security and Scalability is an egg-chicken problem; if you want better Security, Scalability is compromised and vice versa.
Bitcoin has the highest level of Security and decentralization level, but it suffers greatly from Scalability, and so does Ethereum (We never know what Ethereum merge will bring).
L2 chains like Polygon offer high Security with Ethereum mainnet and Scalability with its sidechain technology, while native blockchain like Solana also offers great scalability with low gas fees.
There are also multiple blockchains out there that address specific needs and problems. Choose the one that fits your problem statement and aligns with your goals.
5. Have a clear Roadmap
Road maps are what define the visions and missions of your web3 projects or games. Building web3 is not like building in web2; you don’t have a product yet, but you are setting a path to get there, and your community and investors need to know this.
Your roadmap needs to define goals to achieve in terms of Technology, Marketing, Partnerships, Sales, etc, with a specific timeline.
Lastly, for web3 game builders out there, don't worry about generating profits for your users too much; worry about delivering ownership and a great game experience to them. After all, no great traditional games are worried about profits, but they deliver “fun”, which is the main ingredient of games. Let ownership and “fun” be your funda.
What happening?
Immutable Co-Founder, Robbie announced that the firm had bought 5 major games as he saw more triple-A games develop in web3.
“Our whole mission is to power games which deliver 10X value to players - fun is a must. Not money games with a thin veneer of "gaming". The goal is reinventing asset ownership in a $100b-a-year rental scam on players; not just creating more defi toys (as cool as they can be).” Tweeted Robbie.
Polygon released Q2 stats.
Aavegotchi gained the biggest in terms of user traction, with 102k users to the Gotchiverse, up 805% from last quarter.
PLANET IX, an NFT-based strategy game, grew its user base by 8%, while The SandBox Game grew at 78% to 36k users.
Arc8 by GAMEE, a Blockchain-powered gaming platform that recognizes and rewards skill, effort, and loyalty, grew 89% to 244k users.
Prom- Gaming NFT marketplace & rental, acquire HWC Studio.
HWC Studio, a brand-new blockchain gaming studio, has been acquired by Prom, a multi-tool gaming nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace and rental solution.
HWS is a turnkey studio with extensive experience in smart contracts and integration as well as cross-platform, full-stack development. HWC takes on a variety of game development issues and develops the best solutions depending on predetermined objectives.
Where is the money?
Framework Ventures raises $10M for Mighty Bear Games through in-game token sales.
The Singapore-based startup Mighty Bear Games hopes to create a number of immersive triple-A Web3 games that are "novel, fair and thoughtful.”
Also, according to Davis, CEO, Mighty Action Heroes, the company's first Web3 game, will be released later this year. A multiplayer third-person battle royale game, it emphasizes enjoyment, skill, and mayhem.
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I will write to you again next week; until then, happy building, gaming, and investing.
Kuzote Lohe
Researching on Web3, Blockchain at Librty