The previous article introduced a series of operations of Yuga Labs, the parent company of BAYC. It is certain that it is developing in the direction of the Metaverse, but before the Metaverse, blockchain games are a more certain direction. Just yesterday, Yuga Labs’ official website released a promotional video, and the accompanying text clearly stated that “see you in April”. If you are interested, you can look for this promotional video. The picture quality and story are good. Cryptopunk’s NFT will definitely appear in the next game.
Last year, Axie opened the P2E chain game mode, with a few simple cartoon monsters fighting each other, which was similar to the hack-and-slash mode of those clumsy web games. There was no playability, and players gathered just for the earning part. Therefore, those who entered this field were not ordinary users who loved games, but cryptocurrency speculation teams or gold-making teams who were interested in profits. Judging from last year’s history, we saw Meta Beast, BNX, Spaceship, etc., they took off with the bubble and then fell as the bubble burst, and only a few months passed in between.
I prefer to call the blockchain games represented by Axie, Yuanshou, BNX, Spaceship, and Farmer's World the blockchain game 1.0 era. So how should 2.0 be defined? I think the essence of the game is play. From the moment the game was born, play is the soul of the game. No matter whether it is the previous web games or the popular mobile games today, each iteration is an upgrade on play.
The mission of blockchain games is to maintain the soul of play and then bring economic models into games. In the past, games were difficult for players to survive. Only a few professional players signed contracts with clubs or played on behalf of players and asked them to pay salaries. Only in this way could players survive. This restricted the development of games and forced many people who love games to withdraw from the game field in the face of reality. However, blockchain games can allow players to obtain economic sources of life through games by introducing economic models. This is an iteration of traditional games. Iteration is an upgrade of the past. The barbaric development of the 1.0 era made the game lose the gene of play, so we saw that the bubble of 1.0 expanded rapidly under the impetus of funds, and then quickly burst.
The Dilemma of Transforming Traditional Games into Blockchain Games
The gaming industry is a huge pie, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue each year, and with the development of games, this figure is steadily increasing, especially as infrastructure such as VR, AR and other hardware and software are becoming more mature, allowing the gaming experience to rise to a higher level, so in the future games will become a battlefield that more and more large companies need to compete for.
However, we also see that many large companies are extremely cautious about embedding cryptoeconomic models in tokens.
1. Compliance issues
Yuga Labs also performed a series of tricks when issuing tokens to distance itself from the issuance of tokens. After all, major countries do not have clear legal provisions on digital currencies, so large companies are mostly experimental with blockchain games, and the same is true for NFTs. Alipay's Whale Tank and Tencent's Huanhe are, to some extent, just centralized testing grounds. Recently, it was revealed that Whale Tank has blocked users' accounts and frozen the NFTs inside. Therefore, due to the tight constraints of policies and laws, large companies are destined to be cautious in their experiments on blockchain.
2. Lack of self-motivation
Games are extremely profitable; Tencent Games can earn 500 million yuan a day. Faced with such huge economic benefits, game companies lack the motivation to stand up and revolutionize themselves.
3. The Confrontation of Traditional Players
There are many big money sponsors among traditional players. They are not short of money and are willing to spend money on games. I have a friend who spends millions on games a year, and there are many people in their guild who spend tens of millions a year, so these people don’t care about the earning part of the game.
Game players should all know Ubisoft. On December 7 last year, Ubisoft announced its entry into the "digital" game field and minted NFTs in its game "Ghost Recon: Breakpoint", which aroused criticism from players and the sales of NFTs in the game were also very bleak.
Nicolas Pouard, vice president of Ubisoft's Strategic Innovation Lab, then said: "For now, due to the current situation and background of NFT, players believe that it is first of all destroying the environment and secondly just a speculative tool."
The first-mover advantage of the crypto industry in blockchain game transformation
I have always felt that blockchain games are a very important stop on the road to the metaverse. I would even say that if blockchain games are not successful, the metaverse will be a castle in the air. The crypto industry is inherently revolutionary, and blockchain is the main testing ground for blockchain games. The defects of traditional game centralization have not been taken seriously by traditional players, but we must see that ignoring them is nothing but covering one's ears and stealing the bell. Centralized games always face the risk of being shut down and all props and assets becoming nothing. It's just that in the era before the game revolution, the public did not realize the risks and crises.
Decentralized Gene
The crypto industry relies on blockchain, and the soul of blockchain is decentralization. For example, game props based on Ethereum will not be lost due to server problems of game developers. Besides, the developers do not have servers. Ethereum's servers are spread all over the world, so this is a server that will never go down.
A keen sense of smell
The crypto industry has developed for more than ten years and has a magnificent history. Most of the people engaged in this industry are adventurers who are well aware of the risks and opportunities. Many times when the crypto industry seems to be destroyed, it will usher in a greater climax. If we extend the time dimension of Bitcoin, every bear market is just accumulating strength for a larger bull market. Moreover, in the past two years, the crypto industry's breakthrough actions have been particularly successful. Not only have more traditional companies begun to lay out, but some sovereign countries have also begun to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.
No one can deny that the crypto industry is developing rapidly, and as practitioners in the industry, they are more sensitive to the macro-prospects of the future world. Compared with the traditional gaming industry, the crypto world is more determined to innovate.
The natural blessing of NFT
The most important thing in the game is props. We often see in traditional games on the Internet that a prop is worth tens or millions, but these are stored in centralized servers. Once the server has problems, the props will no longer exist. On the other hand, we also see that many game companies are also issuing NFTs, but they are just fake NFTs in the guise of NFTs, because they are stored on private chains, and only those stored on truly decentralized chains like Ethereum are valuable NFTs.
The cooperation between the two may usher in spring sooner
A good game needs a good IP. No matter whether it is the Fantasy Three Kingdoms in the web game era or the Honor of Kings in the mobile game, we can see that they all have a grand story background. One is the Three Kingdoms and the other is a famous figure in history. With an IP, there is a foundation for the story, and future promotion will be twice the result with half the effort.
Bored Ape and CryptoPunk are the two most powerful IPs in the crypto world. Together they tell a story about the digital world, which makes people full of expectations. So when our generation of the natives of the crypto world talks about Bored Ape and CryptoPunk in the future, will it be like we talk about Journey to the West or Optimus Prime today?
Traditional game development companies have mature development systems and are superior to blockchain companies in story construction and game design. In addition, traditional game companies have a natural fan base and traffic entrance. This time, Yuga Labs chose to cooperate with the best IPs in San Francisco game studio nWay. We hope that this cross-border cooperation will enable blockchain games to completely enter the era of blockchain games 2.0, so that while earning, play can also be comparable to traditional games.
I believe this day is not far away. When everyone thinks that the bear market has already enveloped the crypto world, blockchain games have actually begun to stir recently. Let us wait and see.
