Anticipated to persist in its robust growth from the previous year, the blockchain gaming industry is forecasted to make significant strides in 2023. This projection comes amidst an ongoing trend of traditional games implementing web3 elements that have been a result of the profound influence of blockchain technology on the gaming sector.
The blockchain gaming industry has proven its resilience in the face of the prolonged crypto bear market of 2022, as it not only survived but thrived during that period. As traditional games increasingly incorporate web3 attributes, it is likely that the momentum of the blockchain gaming industry will continue to build throughout 2023. Nonetheless, only time will tell whether these expectations will come to fruition.
Important results of 2022
The Blockchain Gaming Alliance (BGA) research shows that the blockchain gaming segment performed well last year, ignoring unfavorable general market conditions.. The study involved 347 professionals representing 252 blockchain projects or companies.
According to statistics, the daily rate of unique active addresses in gaming decentralized applications (dApps) on 48 monitored blockchains was 1.13 million in 2022, exceeding the result of 2021 by 85%.. On-chain gaming transactions soared by an impressive 3260% compared to 2020. Virtual world trading volumes (land sales) totaled $1.45 billion in 2022, up 136% year-on-year. Investments in web3 games and metaverses increased by 59% compared to 2021 to $7.6 billion.
Source: DappRadar-BGA Games Report 2022
According to the report, a significant difference between innovative blockchain games and traditional online games (web2) is the ability to earn money simply by spending some time in the game and then turning the earned points into real money.. Experts highlight benefits such as asset ownership and new reward models for players and revenue for companies. At the same time, it is important that blockchain games are only just beginning to reveal their full potential.
Earlier, the editors of BeInCrypto told in detail what play-to-earn (P2E) games are, how and how much they earn, and what pitfalls players may face.
Not everything is so rosy in the blockchain gaming segment
However, it is not without problems. For example, Robbie Ferguson, co-founder of Immutable, who was included in the Forbes 30 under 30 list, recently tweeted that “$18 billion has been poured into the web3 gaming industry over the past two years, but development in this area is significantly behind the volume investment.”
Ferguson added that many projects should be launched in 2023 as they took 2-3 years to develop.
In addition, according to Blockchain Game Alliance experts, a significant part of the difficulties are associated with insufficient usability and subjective user experience.. More than half of the respondents cited accessibility and the processes of attracting and adapting new users as the main problems of the industry.
Source: BGA
Commenting on the current situation to the BeInCrypto editors, Unix Gaming co-founder and CEO Mirko Basil Dolger noted:
“Despite all their innovative nature, blockchain games have made the process of mastering and adapting non-intuitive and intrusive.. Blockchain game developers need to understand that games need to work for the player. We must comply with all the requirements necessary to attract players, and not require them to dance to our tune and conditions dictated by us. In fact, if your blockchain game fails to give the user an acceptable or excellent user experience, you will simply fall into oblivion.”
Another factor of concern is the fear and years of uncertainty regarding the regulation of the industry, both gaming and cryptocurrency in general.
In general, as it turned out, the explosive popularity of the P2E gaming model gradually began to decline due to falling prices for player assets.. Only 22.5% of respondents now believe that this particular direction can be the growth driver of the entire industry in 2023. For comparison, in 2021, 67.9% of all respondents supported this model.
Now, according to industry players, the focus has shifted to developing and improving the quality of the gameplay, as well as adapting such games, which would lead to their mass adoption.
Source: BGA
High Expectations for 2023
According to Felik Hartman, CIO of Hartmann Metaverse Ventures, in 2022, investors have become more demanding and have stopped pouring money into cheap click-driven P2E browser games.. Now they are interested in more innovative projects with the integration of web3 and artificial intelligence.
Rowan Zwiers, co-founder of the web3 consulting company Blockminds, believes that the first generation game models studied earlier turned out to be “unsupported”, but they did their job: they attracted the necessary attention to the next, more mature generation of blockchain games, which will be less speculative and more significant added value.
In this regard, Pedro Heddera, chief analyst at DappRadar, believes that 2023 could be a decisive and watershed year for the industry.. Many developers, including heavyweights such as Epic Games, as well as Com2uS, Wildlife Studios, Square Enix, are now busy expanding the web3 gaming space.
At the same time, according to the BGA study, the vast majority of respondents (almost 90%) are confident that a year later they will still remain in the blockchain gaming segment:
Source: BGA