Compilation of the original text: The Way of DeFi

Compilation of the original text: The Way of DeFi

In Navigating Crypto in 2023 | Gaming, Piers Kicks, Head of Gaming at Delphi Digital, summarizes the current state of crypto gaming and talks about his vision for the future of crypto gaming.

secondary title

Question 1. What is the current stage of Crypto games?

Piers Kicks：In 2021, Crypto games have experienced a round of large-scale speculation, which was mainly driven by the rise of Axie Infinity (AXS) earlier. This year, it really changed the thinking of relevant leaders in the traditional game industry. Around November, December, and even into January this year, more than 50% of all crypto-related financing was game-related. So we're clearly seeing a huge wave of interest in crypto games, at that stage people are obsessed with the idea of ​​50-100x token returns even though there isn't anything playable yet. Then, we're seeing a lot of game projects coming into the space, which is very encouraging, but they take time to build, and that's one of the things we're tracking.

secondary title

Question 2. Which projects stand out this year?

Piers Kicks：One of the projects that really stood out to me was Webaverse, and I think it's very exciting that these guys are building a game engine that's completely web-native and built entirely on open web standards. They have some kind of native webxr support and deep integration with Crypto, the engine is still open for wider usage. Seeing the progress these guys have made, and the very little money they raised about 12 months ago, I think people will be very surprised when it all comes together.

secondary title

Question 3. What do you want to say to the Crypto game skeptics?

Piers Kicks：I don't think their concerns are wrong because Crypto is just a tool, like anything else, and I think it can do good as well as harm. My particular focus in 2023 is Gabriel Leydon's LimitBreak company, you know, they raised hundreds of millions of dollars, they also released their first project DigiDaigaku, Gabriel's previous company Machine Zone adopted free to play mobile terminal monetization model, its monetization practices are very aggressive and predatory, so whether this will be a better path than "fun games" remains to be seen.

I certainly hope the answer is no, and I think what many of us are excited about about Crypto games is the possibility of a more elegant and fair exchange between all stakeholders, investors, players, and developers in the ecosystem. Alignment, that's something I think we're going to validate and prove over a long period of time. Changing the minds of mainstream players is not something that can be achieved by writing blogs or the like. It's up to us as an industry to build and demo some really fun games. So for the crypto game skeptics in 2022, we try to give something in the next 1-2 years that can really explain why we are so excited.

secondary title

Question 4. What can attract millions of players in 2023?

Piers Kicks：I'm honestly not sure if 2023 is going to happen in terms of what's going to drive the next millions of players, I think a lot of the teams that I'm really excited about are hard at work building professional teams and we've seen A large number of talents have poured in from the traditional game field, including senior developers from companies such as EA and Riot Games. These people are hard at work. They are building high-quality games. Epilogue, projects like Ember Sword, Illuvium, and Guild Of Guardians, they'll have something publicly playable in about 6 months or so, and I've been keeping an eye on those builders.

secondary title

Question 5. What is the best way to track Crypto games in 2023?

Piers Kicks：secondary title

Question 6. What will the Crypto game look like in 10 years?

Piers Kicks：secondary title

Question 7. What will make Crypto games truly mainstream?

Piers Kicks：I think it's going to be really exciting to see Epic Games come out with some digital collectibles, something crypto related, you know Fortnite is still a huge game, it's making billions of dollars a year , I think maybe instead of selling things to start with, maybe enabling you to own skins or items that you use, I think that's a possible way to incorporate digital ownership, rather than selling something, which might again make The player base is uneasy.

As a side note, I think Tim Sweeney (CEO of Epic Games) gave a presentation in 2019 that really showed the depth of his knowledge in decentralized system technology, he actually has a pretty amazing understanding of "decentralization" , and came up with two paths, one of which is to really get some sort of state-of-the-art chain that is fast and scalable enough to really meet our needs in some of these economies, and the other is a federated model that A consortium of large game studios and publishers who have all chosen to maintain a blockchain that satisfies the technical requirements, but may sacrifice decentralization for that, I think will be a very interesting development.

If one day, Epic Games chooses to cooperate with Sony and some other game companies to form an alliance, in my opinion, this will mark a big step for the mass adoption of Crypto games. Of course, this can only be expected at present.