Talking about the status quo of Web3 game guilds, how should we go in the future?
Original compilation: TechFlow intern
Original compilation: TechFlow intern
A game guild is a place where many game players gather together.
In World of Warcraft (WoW), guilds are formed so that people can cooperate in an organized way to conduct 10, 25, or even 40-man raids on bosses. Often after the release of new content, the top guilds usually compete with each other for the "world first kill". The guild in World of Warcraft often operates like a large corporation, with various management roles assigned to the guild's senior members. In World of Warcraft, selected guild members are tasked with managing different tasks based on their individual skills and preferences.
In Eve Online, guilds work like real-life corporations, where you can recruit, rent offices, and participate in research, production, or collection of materials. Guilds work to amass resources to grow their fleets, work together to formulate fleet actions/combat strategies, and battle other guilds' assets. Each guild focuses on something different, for example, some guilds focus on:
Social or fun, where guild members gather just to play online or chat with friends
For commercial purposes or for profit, people carry out commercial activities together in the game
e-sports
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Current Views on Gaming Guilds
In most discussions among people in the field of Web3 games, the current perception of game guilds is: a group of academics who focus on P2E games and mainly perform value extraction on games. This is due to the token mechanism brought by the game itself, which eventually contributed to an unhealthy virtual economic cycle in the game.
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The future of gaming guilds
The ultimate goal of game guilds should be to become a value-added system of the game ecology, and guilds should also enable players to benefit from the collective, just like traditional game guilds.
One of the main reasons players want to join a guild is to be part of a community, especially a game that allows for social interaction. This also incentivizes people to be a part of a guild in order to get more rewards (in the game) and actually win the game. Guilds should also consider working to increase player experience within the game ecosystem, which in turn helps add value to the game by retaining players, channeling different players, and in turn increasing player satisfaction.
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How do guilds add value to players?
Build different tools within each game's ecosystem to enhance the player experience:
1. Knowledge Center
Guilds will have skilled players who can quickly learn the game and then share with others how to pick it up, and community-generated tutorials or video guides can supplement game tutorials to improve the first-time user experience (FTUE). Additionally, guilds could provide an internal content creator hub to help certify, train, and support game content creators.
2. Game media
Guilds can support streamers, create streaming platforms, and even organize streaming tournaments in partnership with co-op games. This adds entertainment value to players and may lead to growth in game users. When you watch a streamer play a game that looks fun, you might try the game or work harder to get better results in games you've already played. Recreational gamers can also make a living from streaming, among other potential benefits.
3. Web3 infrastructure and tools
In A16z's crypto outlook, it was mentioned that they believe Gamefi will help in the development and expansion of DeFi. The process for Web3 gamers usually involves creating wallets like Little Fox or Phantom. When these players sell certain items, or even sell NFTs they get in different games, they are easily directed to various DeFi platforms, making Players experience a wide variety of facilities in the crypto ecosystem.
4. Player data management
Guilds can create products that help players accumulate achievements for the various games they play. These achievements are akin to a player's "resume" and are beneficial in the long run. Guilds can also help group players and leverage their individual talents for different uses, while also adding value to individuals by allowing them to participate in early beta testing and participate in creating game content, among other things.
5. Game Exploration
Ultimately, as Web3 gaming grows, there will be hundreds of games for players to choose from. Larger guilds can create algorithms that match players with genres of games they might like (eg FPS, MMORPG), similar to how Netflix recommends you movies to watch.
6. Strong community
Referring to Maslows' hierarchy of needs, love and belonging are among the key needs of any human being. A strong community helps give players a sense of belonging and even fulfillment. In traditional games, some players have been known to just log in to chat with guild members because they feel "at home" with their online friends. Community is one of the most important pillars of human society, not to mention game guilds.
7. Business
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How do guilds add value to co-op play?
1. Help gamers go from Web2 -> Web3
Web3 gaming is still in its infancy, and guilds can help Web2 gamers join Web3. For example, guilds of games such as Sipher can consider how to attract FPS/Top Down FPS players from Web2 to try Sipher, and finally retain them. This can start by sharing the ethos of Web3, from ownership to composability of NFTs and more.
2. Game Design
Professional gamers are often highly skilled because they can "break the game". This skill can help design games, gain insight into what professional gamers think, what players do, and ultimately reverse engineer the game.
3. In-game testing
Beta testing is an important process in game development to help find bugs, provide feedback on game mechanics, and suggest improvements to game balance. Often, professional gamers are the best candidates for beta testing because they have the skills and instincts to play the game. Guilds with good player databases can choose their best FPS players to test Web3 FPS games, and players themselves can get rewards through guild or partner games.
4. Help build the game's initial community
Guilds can help build a community of players for new games, potentially reducing co-op game go-to-market (GTM) costs. Since games need to spend money on user acquisition, why not incentivize the right community from the start.
5. Increase player retention in the game
Guilds can help games retain players in the following ways:
Organize events for players
Organize tournaments for skilled players
Provide players with a tight-knit community that creates a sense of social immersion.
At the end of the day, the more activity a player has, the greater the player's sense of accomplishment and the higher the chances of player retention.
6. E-sports team management
As the Web3 gaming space matures, games will feature team competition game modes. Axie Infinity hosted a 3v3 tournament and Crypto Raiders will host a $1M tournament. While only the top 0.01% of players in a game are sufficiently esports capable, guilds with large player bases are naturally in the best position to pick players and form esports teams for these games.
7. Follower Management
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From Equity Withdrawal to Equity Growth
In the future, instead of looking at academics' profit and loss statements, guilds may consider entirely different metrics (KPIs). Some of these KPIs might include looking at new recruits for the game, monitoring player retention on day 1/7/30, hours played by players, and player performance.
Summarize
Summarize
The game project side provides games, and the game guild can help provide the demand side (player community). The game mechanism or incentive created by the Web3 game project has indeed played a huge role in influencing the behavior of the game guild. When there is ample supply of in-game incentives like in many P2E games, gaming guilds are naturally inclined towards value extraction, whereas when there are fewer incentives, gaming guilds are more likely to choose to add value to the game.
For the future of the Web3 game space, it is in the interest of both parties to have more partnerships between game projects and game guilds to align incentives, provide mutual feedback, and help the Web3 game space grow to its fullest potential advantageous.
A bright future for Web3 gaming is possible as long as everyone works together. With the right team, strategy, and sufficient resources, gaming guilds have the potential to add value throughout the lifecycle of a game, and at that point, we can envision some future gaming guilds that may meet the gaming industry's "fat application thesis" criteria.
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