Lessons Learned in the Game of Life, Basketball
Gaming is Bigger Than You Think
What is a “Game” & What are “web3 Games”?
Manticore’s Core is one of the blockchain based games available on the Epic Games Store. The game developer, Yuga Labs, earns 5% royalties on the sale of the Golden Key (not to mention all the royalties Yuga earned on secondary trading of Sewer Passes). It is in the context of the unique roles Apple and Google play in mobile games.
The project was launched in April 2021 and quickly became one of the most popular NFT collections in the world. The game was released in 2003 and has since become one of the most popular MMORPGs in the world. It was released in 2017 and has since become one of the most popular games in the world.
The tournament is held every year and is one of the most popular sporting events in the United States.
But …Don’t Gamers Hate web3 and NFTs?
Okay, so maybe web3 enhanced games and NFTs aren’t dead!
Ownership of Assets
If there is a liquid market for the virtual item, it can be resold potentially at a profit for the gamer and accrue a royalty for the game developer and/or the gamer. Further, even if the virtual item exists on-chain and under the control of the gamer who purchased or earned the asset, there is no guarantee that the virtual item will exist in-game (until the game state / game logic itself moves fully on-chain).
Gaming Assets are Programmable and Composable
161 https://nftnow.com/features/exclusive-yuga-labs-executive-talks-dookey-dash-hacks-and-whats- next/. 165 https://nftnow.com/features/exclusive-yuga-labs-executive-talks-dookey-dash-hacks-and-whats- next/.
Web3 Community & Bringing Non-Spenders into Game Economies
This changes in web3 when non-spenders are given the opportunity to mint free NFTs or earn NFTs that they now own, which brings them. for the first time — directly into the game economy and community. Note that the preceding applies equally to using fungible tokens in games, which I discuss below in Ownership of the Game.).
Royalties for Game Developers …and gamers!
I personally purchase my Pokémon Go PokeCoins on Niantic’s Pokémon Go Web Store because I get more coins for the same price when I do so. Wouldn’t Niantic, Pokémon Go’s developer, like to earn fees on any secondary sale of my shiny Gyarados. After spending ~2,500 hours playing Pokémon Go and material sums of money on IAPs, don’t I — not Niantic — deserve to own my Pokémon.
Democratization; UGC on Steroids
Finally, many creators would like to earn in US dollars instead of in their local fiat currencies, which is yet another reason using US dollar backed stablecoins like USDC and PYUSD for creator payouts is beneficial.229. It will be interesting to see if Hyperwallet eventually incorporates the use of PYUSD230, which would enable what I’ve described above: instantly settled creator payouts in US dollars, creator payouts in denominations. 230 PYUSD is PayPal’s newly announced stablecoin, which I discuss below in The Blockchain is the IAP System.
Ownership of the Game
FNITE Gamer is allocated these tokens to reward her for the time she spent making web3 Fortnite valuable in its infancy, which helped drive the. Additionally, with web3 Fortnite, FNITE Gamer owns all skins and emotes that she purchases in the game and is free to sell them on any secondary marketplace. Receiving all these incentives from web3 Fortnite certainly motivates FNITE Gamer to keep playing and contributing to the game; most likely FNITE Gamer feels a sense of loyalty, community, and economic alignment.
The Convergence of Mobile and web3
Mobile has historically been the fastest-growing segment of gaming, partly driven by advances in the technical capabilities of mobile devices — microprocessors equivalent to those used in past video game consoles are increasingly becoming more powerful and incorporated into phones. While much of what I’ve written in other areas of this essay applies equally to mobile games, there are two important factors that we need to cover that are unique to mobile: (i) there are two large gatekeepers to mobile games, Apple and Google, and (ii) those two gatekeepers present unique challenges to the mobile game industry. 240 Naavik: Bringing PC & Console Games to Mobile – 7 Reasons Why AAA Brand Extensions Are so Popular (click on “read the full essay” and you’ll get a .pdf).
A The Gatekeepers in Mobile Games …are not Benevolent
B Mobile Gaming: A Sea of Red
C Apple Nerfs F2P Monetization with ATT
257 https://newzoo.com/resources/blog/over-80-of-us-consumers-play-video-games-how-can-brands- accelerate-engagement-with-this-big-audience-of-game-enthusiasts. 260 https://www.coinbase.com/blog/new-national-survey-of-2-000-american-adults-suggests-20-of- americans-own. 270 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4528887-starbucks-corporation-sbux-ceo-howard-schultz-on-q3- 2022-results-earnings-call-transcript.
D The Grind: Why aren’t Digital Payments Embedded into the Internet?
These efforts failed — which Marc Andreessen refers to as the “original sin”279 of the Internet — due to many factors including an unclear regulatory environment, the inability to cost-effectively process. This opened the door for companies like PayPal, Stripe, Plaid, and Shopify to provide “bridges” from TradFi into the Internet to create the rich and robust. Any innovation in Internet native digital money that may have occurred at the advent of the Internet was effectively stalled until the Bitcoin whitepaper was published in October 2008.
E Crypto vs. All the Money in the World ...which makes Apple and Google seem
F The Blockchain is the IAP System
Additionally, non-blockchain based payment systems offer features that blockchain based payment systems do not, e.g., (i) credit cards allow spending money that consumers do not yet have and arguably, a portion of the high fees charged by credit card issuers are there to cover the risk of default; (ii) ACH and credit card payments can be disputed while no such consumer protection exists with blockchain based payments; (iii) credit cards may share revenue with customers in the form of rewards. As noted below, until recently, developers were restricted to fewer than 100 possible price points in the App Store, which previously started at a minimum of $0.49. 304 The majority of USDC is issued as Ethereum USDC in the form of ERC-20 tokens, which is why I note that this chain is battle-tested.
G A Deeper Dive into the 30% Abyss
It’s also notable that while Apple always took its 30% cut on purchases made in apps, until 2011, companies were allowed to direct users to buy content in a web browser to bypass the 30% fee instead of in-app.316 In a sense, Epic Games has expended a tremendous amount of money and time over the last 3.5 years in hopes that the judicial system will restore the App Store of 12 years ago, when developers were permitted to link to alternate payment systems for in-app purchases. Although a bit dated, it offers a solid background on how games are disproportionately impacted by App Store fees. The App Store is closed garden and competing app stores are not (yet!) permitted within the App Store (e.g., Epic Games can’t launch the Epic Games Store within the App Store) whereas Google Play is open and side loading is possible, albeit filled with friction.
H Web Stores and PWAs, while a step in the right direction, don’t solve the problem
Does web3 technology (and modern technology more generally) solve some of the problems Second Life experienced. It is held in San Francisco, California, and is one of the largest and most prestigious game development conferences in the world. It is one of the most popular game engines in the world and is used to create a variety of games, from indie titles to AAA blockbusters.
I Netflix: the way to ultimately win the “Streaming Wars” is through games
J TikTok: UGC for the (younger) masses
Like Netflix, TikTok also sees tremendous opportunity post ATT and is aggressively recruiting “gaming brands” to advertise on TikTok as a. 361 https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-US/blog/tiktok-made-me-play-it-supercharging-game- discovery?redirected=1. Subway Surfers is an old game — it launched 11 years ago — but it has had a massive resurgence over the last year thanks to UGC on TikTok.
Instead, I log into web3 games with an empty, burner wallet, which doesn't help the game developer in identifying me / segmenting me. Through using these attestation models, I could log into a game with a burner / hot wallet, but the game developer could still see all the assets that I have “delegated” or “attested” to the hot wallet from the assets sitting safely in a cold wallet. This allows the game developer to effectively segment / profile me and, for example, immediately drop me an NFT from the game commensurate with the assets in my wallet to entice me to play.
The Institutions are Coming …just not the ones we expected
Brand / Game Collabs
382 https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/retail/bof-insights-nike-and-gucci-top-gen-zs-favourite- fashion-brands/. 399 https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/why-nikes-next-web3-move-is-a-black-hoodie-rtfkts- founders-tell-all#intcid=_voguebusiness-uk-bottom-recirc_14448817-6a48-4a59-907e-. 403 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/syky-debuts-luxury-fashion-incubator-for-digital- designers-301793993.html.
Nike in web3
412 Nike sold more than 97,000 OF1s to 53,000 members of the .SWOOSH community (including me!) generating ~$2 million in revenue.413 Immediately following the OF1 NFT sale, Nike announced two gaming partnerships:. EA SPORTS414, the division of Electronic Arts that publishes EA FC. formerly, FIFA) and Madden NFL (among many others), under which select .SWOOSH virtual creations are expected to be available in EA SPORTS titles. Fortnite, where .SWOOSH members were able to link their .SWOOSH accounts to their Fortnite account for a limited period and claim.
Do brands still care about web3 after the crypto events of 2022
Indeed, “forever brands” have an uncanny ability to not only see, but feel, what’s coming around the corner and then lean in. While 2022 will undoubtedly go down as one of the worst years in crypto history, the fact that we see these “forever brands” doubling down should be as solid of an indicator as any that crypto is here to stay. In 2023, we have seen web3 brand activations shift from NFT PFP drops with potential future value to more thoughtful provision of actual utility, experiences, and added value now to consumers.435.
The Tokenization of RWA is Really… Twinning!
In many ways, we have privacy backwards: humans should have more of it and physical goods should have less of it when it comes to accountability and sustainability. One more point that needs to be made is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha really care about sustainability. 441https://www.coindesk.com/business vitalik-buterin-says-ethereum-merge-cut-global- energy-usage-by-02-one-of-biggest-decarbonization-events-ever/.
Today, Loyalty is Boring …tomorrow, it’s a game
A couple of months ago, I asked my husband to go to a physical Starbucks location and buy a bag of coffee, which totally confused him because we have a Nespresso machine that uses coffee capsules. On the date I sent my husband on my Odyssey “journey,” this particular stamp had a floor price of $100 and the bag of coffee was $13. Odyssey is like Pokémon Go for coffee.”451 It’s a loyalty game, it’s fun, and, importantly for Starbucks, it caused me to engage with Starbucks in a very different way and to spend more money than I otherwise would have.
Community Commerce via Collabs = Multiplayer
RTFKT is partnering with L’Oreal Group’s Shu Uemura to develop physical stickers that will be worn around both human eyes and CloneX PFP avatar eyes. This is a true multiplayer collab consisting of the L’Oreal Group, Shu Uemura, RTFKT (owned by Nike), and RTFKT’s community, which will be invited to co-create stickers for their clones. We believe the future of beauty is physical, digital and virtual, and we know there will be new codes of beauty for new audiences,” Dubey says.
But isn’t Everything Old, just New Again? …and what about
I recently heard Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, speak at an event and he addressed the issue of “why didn’t Second Life scale”. 465 Rosedale himself said it took the average user 40 hours just to learn how to interact with Second Life. I don’t think Second Life will get a second life in web3 (nor do I think its residents want that).
It’s all about the (Digital) Benjamins for Kids …and we have an
They are used to vote on decisions about the future of the game, such as new features and changes to the economy. Tether was one of the first stablecoins created and is the largest stablecoin by market capitalization at the time of this essay. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the franchises Half-Life, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota.
