The web3 world has opened up a lot of new opportunities for people all over the world. A new decentralized infrastructure of commerce has opened up. Over the past few years, a new normal has risen where no one is unable to access financial and investment tools just because of where they live or their social class. Still, some parts of the web3 world had vast differences between what was promised and what we got.
The Disappointment of Web3 Gaming
Web3 gaming was an exciting proposition. Any gamer has felt the pain of spending their hard-earned money on things they don’t own. You’ve played a game for years, accumulated in-game wealth and rare items… but you don’t own it. It’s all the property of the developers, and you’re just permitted to use it at their pleasure. So, why wouldn’t web3 gaming be awesome!? You mean I can freely sell that +5 Sword of Awesomeness that I looted? Sign me up!
That’s what we were told at any rate.
The reality is far less useful. Web3 games have typically given us one type of token that we’re able to exchange… if we’re able to at all. Gaming startups desperate for more and more money for their executives have overprinted NFTs, locked assets behind circuitous and expensive bridge fees, mint fees, or downright left no avenue to sell off-platform at all.
It feels a little like we got scammed. That NFT hero that you grinded up to max level is just as useful as the above-mentioned sword when the game minted more of them than players that are in the game.
The Greed Pit
So why hasn’t web3 gaming worked? Greed. Simple. Web3 gaming outfits are selling NFTs worth thousands of dollars before a game even launches. They make piles of money off of these, but it’s hard to stop squeezing money out of your customers once you start. By the time the game launches, that money has been squandered… they need to get more to develop a liveops game that can actually hold players. But these people aren’t exactly in the gaming business… they’re in the making money business. So, they sell more and more stuff that will never amount to anything valuable in players’ hands. They flood the market and lie about their player population – don’t get me wrong, gaming companies lie about their DAU all the time, but these companies take it to a whole new level. What we’re left with is a ‘house always wins’ scenario. Ironically the same situation that set the stage for web3 gaming originally. If a player is making a little money back off of a game, that’s less the company is making… that will not do.
The Way Forward
There have been some decent examples of play to earn games out there, but they all suffer the same basic dilemma – I call it ‘something for nothingism’. Most of these games feel the only way they can attract players from the much more fun web2 games out there is to promise passive income while playing.
But not everyone can get rich from just playing a game a few hours a day. As you scale up to larger player populations, this sus UA promise turns into entitlement. They’ve been playing your game… why aren’t they rich yet!?
It’s the ‘for nothing’ part that causes the issue. How can an ecosystem give more out to every player than they put in? That’s not how business works. Sure, they can fudge “value” a bit with volatile token prices, but somebody has to come out on the short end whenever money is exchanged.
So now you’ve got games where earning is gated behind NFT ownership, but the earning will never equal the cost of the NFT. Then you’ve got games where everyone earns fractions of a penny each day… honestly just enough to be insulting to most.
There’s one option though that seems to be working, if only the existing p2e ecosystems out there would commit – competitive gaming. Rather than giving pennies per month to every player, why not give major rewards to the best players. Gaming is about competition, right? Let’s bring back the excitement of winning, enhanced by real rewards.
Honestly the only web3 platform that I think is hitting the right stance on this is Funtico. The Funtico platform does have daily rewards for NFT holders, but they also have HUGE tournaments monthly. Players can buy tickets to the tournaments, but they can also just gain them through engaging with Funtico games.
Join Funtico Tournaments
Their first tournament featured $100k+ worth of prizes, and they have committed to doing a competition of this size every single month. Now that’s rewarding. To be honest, I would feel better at losing a competition and getting no rewards versus getting $.03 worth of crypto for a full month of gameplay. At least there was excitement and a chance of winning real prizes.
Fun for All, Rewards for the Best
Getting rewarded definitely feels better when you really earn it, but that doesn’t mean going out to sweat and work. Competitive gaming enhances the gaming loop overall. Practice, improve, get rewards. Let’s say I finish 10th in a tournament that pays out to the top 8. That’s not demotivational as a gamer… that makes me want to play harder! Compare that to getting $.00007 of tokens from playing for a day. One of those feels good, and one of them makes me want to quit the game. Games should’ve never promised profit. Games are about fun. Games, however, are also about winning. Tying these mechanics together is just good game design. Want to reward players, reward the winners. Create aspirational goals for players. Maybe they aren’t good enough to win just yet, but that can change with some persistence and practice.
THIS is why I’m excited to see where Funtico takes this. We’ve seen too many web3 gaming ecosystems turn into a ghost town that funnels money into the founders’ pockets. They’ve planned this out so that players know what they’re getting into from the beginning – fun games, with highly incentivized competition.
Don’t take my word for it though. Give them a look and see if you have what it takes to dominate in their next tournament. $100k+ of prizes are up for grabs every single month… if that’s not worth a look, I don’t know what is.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is not a solicitation for investment, or intended as investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice.
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