Blockchain game designers on how to reach mass adoption in Web3 gaming

Last weekend saw almost 10,000 people converge on the Grand Palais Ephemere in the heart of Paris for one of the biggest events on the Web3 calendar. With the Eiffel Tower as its backdrop, NFTParis showed for the third year in a row that - bull market or bear - blockchain adoption is only accelerating. 

Web3 Gaming had a huge presence at the convention. Dozens of blockchain game studios turned out to show off their latest projects to eager fans and industry insiders alike. Many of these studios are also part of the Blockchain Game Alliance, or BGA. 

Founded in 2018, the BGA has rapidly grown to include more than 500 game development and blockchain tech companies across 50 countries.
“Seeing the growth of the BGA itself is a great indicator of the health of the industry,” says Sebastien Borget, head of Sandbox Studios and president of the Alliance. 

The day before NFT Paris, the BGA hosted its own event in the spacious, golden-lit offices of Web3 startup studio PyratzLabs in the northwest of Paris. There, an array of experts from across the blockchain gaming industry convened to discuss the state of Web3 play and speculate on the future. Chief on everyone’s mind? The path to mass adoption.

Where are we now

Asked during one panel discussion where exactly he saw the industry in its development, Patrick McGrath, co-founder and CEO of mobile blockchain game developers Moonlit Games, delivered this summary: “Earlier than early.”

By way of illustrating the point, he directed audience members to a graphic produced last year, plotting the total number of users of crypto, against that of the Internet as a whole.

As can be seen, the trend measures up to about the state of the internet all the way back in 1998 - and that’s for crypto as a whole! When we zoom in on gaming, specifically, we see that, while surging, blockchain gaming still makes up only a tiny fraction of the entire gaming landscape, with its estimated $4.6 billion value paling in comparison to the $365 billion value of the gaming industry as a whole. 

Panel host Paul Lagrange-Banon, of Kinetix, agreed with McGrath, adding that, “we are witnessing the emergence of blue-chip games in Web3, but we are still waiting for mass adoption.”

Barriers To Entry

The question of what barriers need to be overcome in order to clear the way to mass adoption was a key focus on everyone’s mind, both at the BGA panels, and at NFT Paris more generally. A couple of points were universally agreed on. 

Technology

The number one concern with the current blockchain landscape was accessibility of the new technology to ordinary users. Steven Figaro, of NFT-lending platform Unbound, expressed the idea succinctly in saying, “the critical point is making the suer experience on the device as smooth as possible, as easy as possible.”

As to who was leading the charge in innovation in this area, the panel was unanimous.

“We have great companies like Venly that are moving very fast to improve user experiences,” said McGrath. “[I am] really excited about single sign-on,” he added, referring to the Venly Wallet Widget and Wallet API feature that allows users to open a wallet-backed account in the latest Web3 games using nothing more than their Gmail, Twitter, or Facebook account. 

The importance of such innovations was underscored by Borget, who revealed that, for his company’s flagship Web3 game The Sandbox, a massive increase in user registration was seen following the implementation of Venly Wallets. 

“We have more than 4.5 million signups today,” he said. “More than half comes from SSO [Single-Sign On].” That’s despite Venly being one of eight different sign-in options that users can select when beginning the game. 

Scalability

Venly was represented on the panel by Head of Marketing Stefan Colins. He agreed wholeheartedly that the focus should be on making the blockchain more accessible, but cautioned as well that the technology underpinning Web3 still needed further development.

“Scalability is still an issue,” he said. “Blockchain technology is still not ready for mass adoption.”

Security

Speaking on another panel entitled, ‘Onboarding the next billion people to Web3,’ Thomas Zaepfell, CEO of Immortal Game, a Web3 version of chess, pointing to ongoing security concerns in the space. 

“People are scared to lose their NFTS,” he said. “Even when we are careful we still have people losing their NFTs to scams.” It’s clear that, for Web3 developers, the security of their systems, and the measures they have in place to protect their users, are of paramount importance for reassuring a still sceptical wider gaming community of the benefits of onboarding to Web3. 

Good Games

The panellists all agreed that, while 2022 saw a huge boost in the number of games being developed on chain, that didn’t necessarily translate into killer apps. To illustrate the importance of flagship games for emerging technology, Sebastien Borget gave an example.

“Think about how angry bird transformed the app store,” he said. That particular killer app, which has been downloaded more than 4 billion times and recorded more than 263 million monthly active users, was in fact the result of a long and painstaking journey. Developer Rovio was on it’s last legs, having previously failed to find success with 51 other titles over six year period. 

The example only reinforces the fact that perfecting the various Web3 game formulas will be a painstaking process of experimentation.

“Creating a sustainable economy is hard,” reflected Colins. “It takes time. The more games that join the space, the better. We need a lot of different economies on a lot of different chains.”

All in service of gameplay

What it all comes down to, the panelists agreed, was re-centring gameplay instead of tech. “We don’t put Web3 at the center of the game,” said Zaepfell, referring to his company's new Chess variant. “It’s not a Web3 game; it’s a game enhanced by Web3.” 

This approach, of moving away from blockchain as a novelty and instead truly developing it’s potential for novel, exciting gameplay mechanics, was lauded by all as the best path forward.

“There’s really interesting, unique experiences we can make for players,” said McGrath. “Nobody cares about the tech.”

In the end, all agreed that there was no turning back from the blockchain gaming revolution.

“There’s no way back from true digital ownership in games,” declared Borget. “Every game will have it.”