Axie Infinity might be the most popular and well-known web3 NFT game, but for each Axie Infinity player, there are as many as 2,155 Roblox players. This puts into perspective the difference in reach and sustainability of web3 games that become popular, compared to web2 games.

Even at its peak in late 2021, Axie Infinity only reached up to 485,943 daily average UAW, despite being the pioneer that brought mainstream attention to NFT games.

The decline in the number of Axie Infinity players reflects that the play-to-earn (P2E) model, which first generation web3 games were heavily focused on, is not a healthy or effective incentive to drive crypto adoption among gamers. 

What is the Growth Potential of Web3 Games?

Web3 games have the potential to grow hundreds of times their current player count. To give an illustration, the number of people playing top web3 game Alien Worlds can grow by 103X, if it is able to become as widely-appealing as Roblox.

Notably, the current top 20 web3 games in 2023 does not include any games that are primarily considered battle royale, first-person shooter (FPS) or multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Battle royale, FPS and MOBA are all highly popular genres among web2 online video games, with strong player engagement in games like PUBG and Fortnite, which recorded 19.31 million and 15.53 million daily active players in April 2023.

Most Successful Web3 Game Genre

On the other hand, collectible card games have shown signs of being the most successful genre brought into crypto so far: Top web3 collectible trading card game Splinterlands has 25.7% of the number of Hearthstone players, and 37.2% of Yu-Gi-Oh! players. Both Hearthstone and Yu-Gi-Oh! are classics in the trading card game genre.

This shows the strong synergy between blockchain technology and collectible trading card games, and suggests that this might be the leading genre for driving gamers’ adoption of crypto.