Disrupting Gaming (Web3)

Fun fact: Half of the world is active in gaming (~3bn), driving annual revenues of ~$200bn yearly. 🤯

Some estimates suggest revenues might jump to $600bn by 2028. For non-gamers, these numbers are slightly hard to grasp. There is incredible activity in the sector, with all big tech companies prioritising active game development, developer hiring, community building, and M&A.

Facebook even rebranded itself to Meta, suggesting an active move into gaming (and building the core foundations of it in metaverse) in a big way. 👥

The current state of gaming?
I have played enough video games over the years (Mario, Roadrash), single/multiplayer online games (FarmVille, Candycrush, Call of duty), mostly for fun. I haven’t stuck with a game for long, partly because I get bored easily and partly because there was another more viral game in town. Additionally, progressing in a game after a point is challenging, unless you put in the hours or make expensive in-game purchases. Ultimately, gamers end up investing capital (time and money), without any meaningfully long-term economic or political capital in return.

The beauty of online games is their 0 marginal cost to serve additional users and a cult-like user base. While investors love these attributes, avid gamers get absolutely nothing in return. 😞

To give a sense, Apple is projected to earn $13.5bn in operating profits from gaming in 2021 alone, almost 1/5th of its overall profits.

However, the gaming industry is rapidly changing, thanks to NFTs and the advent of GameFi.

Potential Future state of gaming?
Web3 games are changing the status quo of gamers from being the product to being partners. Take Continuum World for instance. The game allows players to
- Own: own a part of the Continuum World (which closely resembles Earth) as an NFT
- Grow: install virtual world assets like windfarm, vegetation etc to sustain their avatars
- Engage: amplify their digital presence by installing other NFTs, interacting with other players, and exploring the continuum world for exciting challenges and rewards
- Earn: monetize their time through staking, trading in-game assets and tokens (the platform has a native token called $UM)
- Govern: participate in the ecosystem governance through DaOs

Continuum World has the potential to literally change the gaming world for good. These changes are not only attracting more gamers into the ecosystem but also giving more power to the game creators and the players, instead of middlemen like Apple, Microsoft and Sony. Brilliant, isn’t it? 🚀

What’s next?
Research predicts that by 2026, 25% of the world would be spending an hour/day in the metaverse. Games would potentially take up most of that time, at least initially. If you are long on metaverse (like I am), now might be a good time to capitalistically look at some relevant tokens from the likes of Decentraland, The Sandbox, Theta Network, and Stacks. 💰

#blockchain #crypto #defi #gaming #NFT #web3