Casual gamers a ‘critical’ audience for blockchain games: GameFi execs

The casual gaming market will remain a crucial audience for blockchain games and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in gaming, according to three blockchain gaming company co-founders. 

Casual gamers, people who play games somewhat regularly but rarely invest significant time, make up the largest segment of players in the gaming industry.

Kieran Warwick, co-founder of blockchain role-playing game Illuvium called casual gamers “critical” because of the sheer number of them in the population.

There are more than 3 billion gamers worldwide as of 2023, and it’s estimated that at least 1.95 billion are casual gamers, according to Exploding Topics.

Warwick said gamers interested in earning in-game yield, primarily from developing countries and attracted to mobile gaming, are becoming increasingly important as well.

However, Warwick admits there is a “major challenge” to coaxing casual gamers into the market because of the perception that blockchain games are of inferior quality.

Despite this, he was optimistic that NFTs, blockchain and Web3 will have a bright future in mainstream gaming.

“NFTs, blockchain, and Web3 have a place in mainstream games in the long term, as mainstream game developers are already working on incorporating these technologies into their games, despite some backlash from their communities,” Warwick said.

“As more fun and engaging NFT-based games are developed, it is likely that players will experience the benefits of ownership and not want to go back to traditional games,” he added.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands shares a similar view calling the mainstream casual audience “absolutely critical” for blockchain and NFT games, arguing: 

“Games are still games regardless of whether they’re casual or mid-core. One of the things that actually made mainstream gaming larger was casual games.”

According to Siu, the mainstream gaming industry hit a rough patch around 2010 to 2011 and “stopped growing.” The introduction of mobile games helped revitalize and attract a whole new generation of gamers, a feat blockchain games need to replicate.

Siu believes all it will take is one good game to kick off a blockchain gaming boom and he predicts it could start in the next 18 to 24 months with hundreds of millions of gamers entering the space.

“I think we’re charting a pretty good chart, but you know, you’re…