Competitive gaming is one of the fastest-growing entertainment sectors in the world. The global esports market has been at the forefront of this boom and is predicted to reach $4.3bn in revenue this year. As such, gaming has long been seen as the way to scale Web3 and make it accessible to a mass audience.
The problem is – and let’s be honest – to date, most Web3 games have been poor quality, too complex, not great to play, and an eco-system favoring speculators or pay-to-win gamers over genuine players. The recent crypto winter further exacerbated this divide and created an environment of mistrust across Web3 and crypto. They have also been expensive and challenging to create, limiting them to only the bigger, well-financed studios.
Game-Changing Game Changers
Web3 adoption is now at a genuine tipping point with the entry of big distribution players like Telegram making aggressive moves into crypto and skill gaming. Telegram is the world’s fastest-growing social messaging platform with over 900m unique monthly users. This means scale and distribution like we’ve ever seen before – all via a familiar interface. It’s uniquely placed to bring the best of Web3, such as community, connection, competition and engagement, to the mass market.
TON Blockchain, which was originally spun out of Telegram, provides a versatile platform that can cover a huge variety of blockchain use cases and e-commerce, making it a one-stop shop for Web3 skill-based real money competitions – the fastest-growing sector in Web3 gaming. In fact, TON itself is the fastest-growing Layer 1 solution in 2024.
The Opportunity for Devs
If you have an appetite for building great competitive games, the democratization of Web3 gaming is a watershed moment. The new paradigm sees all participants sharing in the reward as well as the risk, rather than being biased towards crypto whales and speculators.
The Web3 gaming market will be propelled by Compete-to-Earn games that are easy to learn, hard to master, quick to create and accessible from any device. Using simple toolkits and templates, developers can easily build such games with on-chain security and monetization mechanisms. By making it easier, cheaper and more rewarding to build Web3 games, we could well see the re-emergence of the “bedroom coders” fueling a new generation of games.
Lack of Complexity is Key
It stands to reason that if you want Web3 to go truly mainstream you need to make it as easy as your mum playing Candy Crush on her phone. So, the new landscape sees built-in onboarding and retention. For example, with Elympics, all games on the protocol are discoverable with a single, interoperable player ID that is a shared identity that verifies you in every competition and social gaming experience in the Player Cockpit.
As games evolve we will soon see more features like walletless gameplay, gasless transactions and other solutions that remove complexity and create a frictionless gameplay experience, enabling developers (and gamers) to focus on building and enjoying great games.
Five Top Tips for Developers
- To create great Web3 games, you first need to be able to create great games. Pick the engine that you’d like to work with. Since you’re aiming to create content for the web; Unity, Godot and Phaser are all great choices. But there are plenty more to pick from. You can find great online courses on sites such as Udemy. Once you have the fundamentals in place, you can build on these to create competitive games with free resources such as the Elympics University.
- Make “frens” by going to crypto conferences and taking part in hackathons such as ETH-Denver with a dedicated Builders track, where you can meet, hack, invent and have a great time learning from others. These events have evolved and matured in the last couple of years with less schilling and token hyping and more focus on building, learning and collaborating with other builders. It’s a great place to get started, find advice and build a good network within Web3. You can also join a local game development guild where you can learn and exchange knowledge on your engine of choice.
- Be gamer-first in your approach. Gaming is an attention economy so focus on great gameplay and metrics by testing early with real players and creating a feedback loop. Continuously measure retention and engagement and build that back in with each interaction. Make those iterations as short as possible, as a shorter feedback loop makes your final time-to-market shorter as well. Remember that players can be surprisingly loyal and understanding to projects with clear and transparent communication and a player-first approach. And don’t forget to stress-test! Your game won’t always be played in optimal conditions, so identifying and reacting to issues quickly can help retain player loyalty.
- Don’t reinvent the wheel. Monetizing your game might well be the ultimate objective, but that doesn’t mean you need to be an expert straight away, You can use established smart contracts that can be easily integrated as a template so that you can focus on the gameplay design itself.
- Compete to win! You’ll only know if your game can beat the competition if you put yourself up against others. Look for online or in-person hackathons and contests where you can put your skills to the test against other developers. Our first GameCamp Arena, supported by the TON Foundation, attracted over 1000 applications (for 200 spots) in less than a week.
With the entry of market-making infrastructure players into the world of Web3, game developers have a great opportunity to be at the forefront of the next wave of mass adoption, through a familiar medium, creating, playing and monetizing skill-based games for everyone.
