How the Excessive Focus on Monetization Corrupts Blockchain Gaming
We love blockchain gaming with all our hearts, but it doesn’t mean that this niche is free of problems. Let’s analyze some of the most pressing ones.
Table of contents:
- Good gaming ideas can get spoiled by crappy tokens.
- Quality has to overcome greed.
Good gaming ideas can get spoiled by crappy tokens
The history of gaming saw many examples of how a founder of a seemingly prospective video game joins forces with a reputable studio in an effort to create a “revolutionary” title. Oftentimes, everything runs smoothly until someone comes up with a “brilliant” idea to bring on board a sketchy blockchain project with some (shit)coin that is supposed to become a cornerstone of the entire ecosystem. Usually, it ends up with the coin pumping and crashing well before the beta version of the game sees the world.
Despite the ongoing crypto crisis, non-fungible tokens remain the talk of the town with their floor prices flying high in the clouds. However, the surrounding hype seems to have created an illusion among many digital artists and other NFT buffs that play-to-earn games offer some new monetization model. And that an insane amount of money is needed to realize this model and establish a new and progressive blockchain gaming economics. But pumping a Web3 gaming project with money and catching the hype wave isn’t enough to make a real breakthrough in blockchain adoption.
Quality has to overcome greed
Let’s face it, blockchain gaming in its current state is more about enriching smart contract developers and exploiting popular concepts introduced by the likes of CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity. Most projects put more effort into creating vibrant trailers that eloquently describe the captivating gameplay and lucrative token economics than the actual gameplay. Some even offer such silly things as utility-less utility tokens, but their ultimate goal stays the same - striking the deal with some big crypto exchange and hype up the title until the token sale. After that, the development might well be brought almost to naught while the gamers are left with bags of almost meaningless tokens.
Some projects are honestly trying to squeeze something out of their overhyped title but they often lack the vision and the capability to take it further. That absence of a clear strategic vision of the future of blockchain gaming is the reason why this industry has been struggling with wider adoption. The studios are simply dead-focused on the “earning” aspect, often neglecting such things as the depth of gameplay, well-elaborate token economics, and lasting user engagement. Right now, monetization is everything in blockchain gaming but it doesn’t ensure player retention, meaning that gamers quickly lose interest in monotonous grinding games that don’t offer something extra. That’s the reason why the number of active users in such games as Alien Worlds, Axie Infinity, and Splinterlands has fallen significantly since the beginning of the year.
All in all, we are yet to see a blockchain game that is great all-around, capable of competing with triple-A titles for players’ hearts. Most of what we have now only nurtures their greed. And with the prospects of the bear market being very high, the degradation of this niche could be imminent unless a change in approaches takes place.