These days, Web3 games are looking more and more like Web2 games. The graphics are way cooler than we knew back in 2021; the gameplay loops aren’t just about grinding; and, as every founder has reiterated ad nauseam, the games are more fun. Onboarding processes have also been streamlined; dumbing them down to the point that most games don’t even require players to connect a wallet, let alone buy or borrow an NFT to get started, and an increasing number of Web3 games are accessible via Web2 distribution platforms such as Google Play, AppStore and the Epic Games Store. Many are making the blockchain stuff opt-in, so players needn’t worry if they just want to play and have fun without all the responsibility that goes along with being a digital asset owner. Even the words — Web3, NFTs, crypto and blockchain — have been deleted from their websites, their pitch decks and press releases.
Leah Callon-Butler, a CoinDesk columnist, is the director of Emfarsis, a consulting firm focused on the role of technology in advancing economic development in Asia.
This has been widely applauded as a step in the right direction toward mainstream adoption, particularly for Web3 investors eyeing a slice of the $334 billion market for traditional video games. Especially, amid the bear market, when the number of active wallets only continues to shrink, if founders of Web3 games want to grow their player base they must tailor their products to appeal to people outside the blockchain bubble. That’s why we’ve seen a large part of the Web3 gaming industry stop promoting the benefits of blockchain and NFTs to adopt a new mantra instead: just make a great game. But in doing so, Web3 games are merely positioning themselves to compete amongst the much bigger, much more competitive web2 market — while neglecting what makes Web3 games special in the first place.
Fully on-chain vs partly
One obscure corner of the gaming ecosystem that has shown the courage to put the Web3 back in Web3 games is: fully on-chain games. As the name suggests, these games use the blockchain as an alternative to a centralized game server and put every aspect of the game on-chain, including assets, logic, state and storage. When the game logic is on-chain — that is, the set of rules and instructions that control how a video game behaves…
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