Why Web3 Games
Odds are if you’ve been on the internet over the last year-and-a-half you’ve heard the term “NFT”. NFT stands for Non-Fungible-Token. The Ex Populus team are not fans of the term NFT. It’s an acronym which is even more confusing once you find out what it stands for. So, what is an NFT? It’s nothing more than a digital item with provable ownership on a blockchain. That may sound sophisticated but that perceived sophistication is easy to demystify.
If you’re a gamer, you’ve already used digital items in games that are the same thing as NFTs, but lacking a few of the benefits. As a gamer the easiest example to think of is probably Counter Strike or League of Legends skins. These skins are very similar but are distinctively different in the sense that players lack true ownership over these items and they’re not built on a credibly neutral public layer. Truth be told most things we use the blockchain for can be done with databases. The reason why blockchains like Ethereum are superior is because they’re a credible neutral layer that anyone can build atop of. Traditional databases are privately maintained, siloed, and over time become depreciated. Imagine if you could query a persistent database that included digital items in video games across an open library. This feature set enables exciting new user experiences. In the case of Ethereum, you can think of your wallet address as really your inventory and your digital items exist in this inventory as objects that can be used interoperably across other games or apps on the same “open database”.
In the case of Web3 gaming users would have true ownership over their digital items. The current state of secondary markets for traditional games are very sketchy with few protections for consumers. A gamer can’t sell their League skins without selling their entire account. Prospective buyers will purchase an account from someone and the selling party can often retrieve the account they just sold with ease. The markets are significantly less efficient, harder to make, and buyers are often victims of fraud because traditional digital goods aren’t verifiable or able to be transacted in a trustless environment. These problems are the result of players not truly owning their digital items. Just recently, Activision announced that Call of Duty Warzone 2 would reset the inventories of players returning from Warzone 1. In other words all the cosmetic items players purchased with their hard earned money were arbitrarily removed. All of these players were rugged by Activision. Web 3 gaming takes a player first approach and in this new paradigm true ownership for players is a core value.
Web 3 gaming enhances players’ experiences by providing them true verifiable ownership, interoperability, rigid digital goods, and efficient secondary markets, however Web3 gaming is not without faults. The main gripes with Web 3 gaming are a lack of good games, difficult onboarding, and messaging. The first complaint can be applied to gaming as an entire industry. Greedy corporations have ruined the fun out of a lot of games, but Web3 presents a new opportunity for game developers to receive the support they need without submitting to the status quo. The onboarding for traditional users into crypto still has a lot of friction. Adoption has increased significantly over the last few years but the industry still has an uphill battle. The messaging problem in Web3 also exacerbates the onboarding issue. For folks that aren’t crypto-savvy the lingo is confusing and discourages them from learning. As an industry, we need to be better about educating and evangelizing. It’s hard to deny that Web3 gaming is a significantly better design paradigm that creates support for the rights of gamers globally. Over time players will eventually experience games that have a Web 3 user experience that they value. It’s still very early for Web3 games, but the future’s looking brighter than ever.
