Blockchain gaming is causing mixed opinions among different people – it’s either the next big thing in Web3 or a detrimental trend that companies should avoid. What changes blockchain gaming will bring to the industry in the long term is not yet known, but there are a few educated guesses.

The space is divided, and taking an objective temperature on the matter can be challenging. Minecraft banned NFTs from their iconic title, GameStop opened an NFT marketplace, the WAX blockchain has become a hub for Web3 gaming, and Axie Infinity is doing its best to bounce back from a comically painful $615-million hack that took place earlier this year. Even two of the most popular NFT-based games, Decentraland and The Sandbox, struggle to break 1,000 active monthly users.

Regardless of how any person or organization feels about blockchain-based games, they’ll likely impact the industry’s future significantly.

The future of blockchain gaming

Infinite Arcade, Web3,игры

Şekip Gökalp, the Core Strategist of the Web3 gaming startup Infinite Arcade, shared his vision for a better understanding of the state of the blockchain gaming space. The startup produces a meta layer that introduces metaverse dynamics like NFT ownership into existing game titles, and they work with gaming studios to make their existing titles more profitable. Gökalp is also the CEO and co-founder of the mobile games publishing platform Coda, which launched Infinite Arcade

We started a soul search. We tried to understand: what is our role in a very late-stage mobile gaming market where there is little room for disruption and innovation left?

Gökalp said of the company’s recent pivot to blockchain gaming.

Gökalp dabbled in Bitcoin in 2014 after being introduced to crypto by friends and later began investing in early-stage Web3 tech startups in 2016 after selling an ad tech company he had successfully built. In 2021, when Axie Infinity and The Sandbox made waves in the gaming space, he felt eager to get as close as possible.

At some point, I realized I was spending as much time exploring these games for fun as I was running a company. That’s what led to Infinite Arcade.

A highly successful free-to-play gaming platform essentially gutted its legacy business to dive into blockchain gaming. When asked if IA is betting on the future of that industry, Gökalp was blunt:  “100 percent.” Gökalp isn’t bothered by even the more vocally anti-blockchain naysayers out there since he believes the disagreement is healthy and not unlike the crypto world.

There’s so much out there in both camps. Within crypto, there is no unity either. So, I find it healthy that people speak up and criticize things. But saying a specific technology is not good for A, B, or C use cases is a pretty blanket statement and very often just wrong.

Ownership, not P2E, will drive mainstream adoption

Coda platform, Web3, игры

Gökalp agrees with sceptics that developers of play-to-earn games need to focus more on “play” and less on “earn” if they want to attract users.

The fun core is really what makes the game a game. But new possibilities with crypto — actual ownership of assets and tokens and all of this happening in real-time on-chain without anyone needing permission for that — that opened up a very obvious financialization use case for a lot of things. Maybe a few years from now, when we look at this early exploration phase where the money is emphasized, that will feel very normal.

Gökalp emphasized that the studios making the best games are the ones who win in gaming markets because the best games are the ones that keep their players coming back.

I think ownership will be mainstream. Owning things that come out of a game you play has the biggest chance to make things mainstream in the long term.

Gökalp also mentions that, in speaking to game developers, VC funds, and investors in the last six months, it’s clear to him that the projects receiving support are not the ones that are focusing on that financial aspect, but the games with fundamental Web3 principles.

Web3 technical problem

Web3

The technical barrier that Web3 presents to the average person is one of the main things preventing its mainstream adoption, whether in gaming or any other space.

People need a seamless, invisible, completely abstracted away kind of experience, whether they’re touching a blockchain indirectly or directly. For them, it needs to be as easy as logging into Spotify using your Facebook login, and everything else is taken care of in the background.

Gaming is the most likely candidate to help onboard people to Web3. As one of the world’s most popular forms of consumed entertainment, it’s simply more likely to do so than any other industry. It’s also inherently open to the principles upon which Web3 is built, compared to other industries.

I’m not an idealist, but I think it’s games. They’re way more decentralized, way more bottom-up, creativity-driven, with the right type of minds and the right type of people. Social media is owned by companies that will only suffer from true decentralization. They know it and they don’t want it. It’s clear that they are trying to get ahead of it and try to own it. I respect the conviction. But I hope that they don’t win Web3.

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