The founder of the game studio Illuvium, Kieran Warwick, remarked that it’s a pretty simple method to gain market share.
But according to Warwick, games that fall short in terms of enjoyment or gameplay are still destined to fail:
“The problem with that is if you’re using it as a marketing tool and you don’t have a good product to back it up, then your retention is abysmal.”
The creator of LongHash Ventures, Shi Khai Wei, emphasized the significance of keeping the games entertaining as well.
“Crypto is very good at attracting new users thanks to incentives like airdrops, play-to-earn mechanics, and speculative elements, but you need engaging gameplay to keep players coming back.”
One of the greatest blockchain game success stories to date is Axie Infinity. But among other things, a $650 million bridge hack made it difficult for the company that created it, Sky Mavis, to hold onto users following the previous weak market.
Wei predicted that the games that understand sustainable economics, appropriate emission schedules, draw in the right kind of players, and provide incentives for the correct kind of gameplay will be the ones that endure.
Not everyone aspires to be rich
Warwick accepted that airdrop farmers, as opposed to actual players, will unavoidably be drawn to token incentives, but this is an unavoidable cost of expanding the player base.
He continued, “It also gets us the attention that we need from other gamers in the area.”
His remarks coincide with Illuvium’s last-week distribution of 200,000 ILV tokens, or around $25 million, for its six-month Play-to-Airdrop program.
When IMX, an Ethereum NFT-focused layer 2 network, launches at the end of May, the airdrops will be obtainable in Illuvium Arena, Overworld, Zero, and Beyond.
The CEO of Yield Guild Games, Gabby Dizon, counters that although airdrops can help accelerate the adoption of GameFi, “not everyone is necessarily looking for a financial return.”
“Just as you might buy an expensive car, watch, or outfit, you might also be purchasing an asset that elevates your social status.”
GameFi specifications are not yet complete
Although Dizon and Warwick anticipate that GameFi will soon catch up to traditional gaming, they still think that GameFi is still 14–15 years behind.
Since many employees at blockchain studios came from mainstream companies that produced games with “millions and millions of players,” Warwick observed, “the rate of innovation in blockchain is much faster than what you see in the traditional gaming space.”
“Therefore, we’re not beginning from scratch, but we are also developing intellectual property at the same time, which is the most time-consuming part — like making people fall in love with the plot, the universe you’re creating, and the interactions between the characters.”
According to Warwick, creating original intellectual property can take up to six or seven years, and the top game companies are currently only halfway through the process.
To advance the industry like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush did with traditional gaming in the early 2010s, Dixon adds, we’re still waiting for that big GameFi initiative.
With the goal of uniting gamers and blockchain games under a single community, Yield Guild Games has established a decentralized network of gaming guilds in the hopes of seeing a game of this level in the future.
April 2024, Cryptoniteuae
