If the 3A chain game is properly designed, it can solve the problems of word-of-mouth, sustainability, players breaking the circle, and user experience to a certain extent; chain games can not only allow players to have asset ownership, but also greatly improve the fault tolerance rate of the game, bringing Come to fresh user experience.
Written by: Steven Cryogenics
In the previous article (" Imagination of 3A chain games: the dilemma faced by chain games and 3A major manufacturers "), the author discussed the plight of chain games from the perspectives of players, economic models, infrastructure, and lack of constraints. This article mainly introduces what problems and advantages that chain games and 3A games can solve for each other.
I used to think about what new tricks 3A games can bring to the mechanism of Web3.0 and blockchain games, and what problems can they solve? Which of these are the pain points of blockchain games? Which are just needed? Can these pain points and problems be solved by making 3A? But this kind of thinking is a bit one-sided. On the whole, we should look for the pain points of 3A games and 3A major manufacturers at the same time, and think about which unique attributes of chain games can help solve the pain points and problems of 3A games. We need to figure out the problems of both sides. Make comprehensive preparations for designing a sustainable 3A chain game. Parts 3 and 4 are to talk about and think about what problems 3A and chain games may solve each other.
3. What problems can 3A blockchain games solve?
The biggest problems of chain games are word-of-mouth, sustainability, players breaking the circle, and user experience. If 3A chain games are properly designed, they can solve these problems to a certain extent.
3.1 Change traditional players' cognition of blockchain games
In August 2021, Axie Infinity's monthly revenue reached 334 million U.S. dollars, and DAU exceeded one million. In February 2022, NFT sales exceeded 4 billion U.S. dollars. This had a great impact on the traditional game industry. Major game manufacturers have begun Researching chain games, the result is that the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. With the burst of the Ponzi bubble, NFT, AXS, and SLP all plummeted. The traditional game industry sneered at chain games, and was deeply impressed by the "Ponzi scheme". Axie Infinity's imitation disks are emerging one after another. The Move2Earn star project STEPN has once again made everyone see the hope of chain games, but it completely collapsed after the players in mainland China were cleared. It seems that many people think that since they are doing Web3.0, the purpose should be to earn quick money and cut leeks. Everyone has reached a consensus, and the point of effort is how to earn the most money in the shortest time. The vicious circle will come out more and more. The Ponzi economic model has deeply rooted traditional game players' negative perception of chain games.
Axie will have 1 million daily activities in August 21, and the total wallet daily activities of chain games in the fourth quarter of 2022 will be 800,000
The game companies that are most actively trying blockchain games have not had a positive impact on the reputation of blockchain games. Many old Korean web game companies such as Wemix (developer of the "Legend" series), Netmarble (developer of "A3: STILL ALIVE Survivor" )’s entry is simply to focus on the convenience of micro-transactions brought by blockchain technology, and seamlessly convert the mature and highly metal-ready web games into chain games, leaving the art and gameplay intact, and then inside the game Join the mining system to increase player activity and stickiness, and finally get high profits through taxation. This is of no harm to the project side. The data shown in the financial statements will be very good-looking. Players who enter the market early can also benefit, but in the end it will be Ponzi, which will damage the interests of most players and the reputation of the project side. Nor can it be reversed.
Some common MMORPG page games (for example: "Legend 4") have a mature mining process after chain reform
The chain game market lacks a game that can reverse word of mouth. If the player buys an NFT Pass card, he can freely control a Pikachu, a unique Millennium Falcon that can be used in several games, a wand that matches your personality, and then experience a "Grand Theft Train 5" "/"Elden Ring"/"Zelda"/"Original God" level games, and many assets only need to pay a certain handling fee (the project party collects taxes), and can be transferred to other games to continue seamlessly Use (for example: Pikachu caught in "Pokémon GO" & "Pokémon Zhu Zi" can be used in "Pokémon Gathering" or even become a stamp on the gun of "CS:GO"), will What a wonderful thing, the achievements of different games played will be concentrated on the same NFT, recording all the wonderful journeys that this NFT has accompanied the player.
A simple design is cool
Chain games can truly achieve 3A level, allowing players to have an unparalleled gaming experience. It has the ability to reverse word-of-mouth, and only by allowing traditional players to accept chain games can they truly break the circle.
3.2 Rich game content, prolonging the life of the game
For 3A chain games, the overall idea of extending the life of the game is to change the purpose of most players from Earn to Play, and the in-game tokens circulate inside the game instead of withdrawing money immediately. Axie Infinity and STEPN, and their imitations, are more like games serving economic models than economic models serving games. Although it is decentralized in name, it is actually the profit of early entrants and project parties, and the damage of mid-late entrants. The core reason for being able to make money is poor information, rather than the value of the game itself worthy of player investment.
From the perspective of economic models, there are several ideas for extending lifespan:
- Plug-in economic system, gold cannot be earned in the game, only out-of-game transactions (for example: "CS:GO" skin trading)
- Greatly increase the difficulty of playing gold, but also greatly increase the gold rewards (for example: in the e-sports industry, only the best players can get the benefits)
- The game is fun enough, the scene is rich enough, players are willing to pay for the consumption scene, and deposit the value on the NFT, the consumption scene is far greater than the gold withdrawal scene (for example: various rare mounts and equipment in "World of Warcraft")
- There are enough players in the game, and only a small part of the gold-playing guild and gold-playing players (for example: leveling and accompanying players of various large-scale games)
The latter two ideas are very suitable for use in 3A chain games. The amount of content filling in 3A games usually starts at 15 hours for the main line. Counting all the branch lines, other interactive gameplay and multi-week settings, players can explore a lot of content. It is easy to invest hundreds of hours in the game, and there are many options for the project party to accumulate value in the game. High-quality, in-depth plot 3A chain games. During the process of players exploring the entire game, the project party can easily design a large number of consumption scenarios. The 3A link is designed to serve gamers, not for players who want to earn gold. Players who want to earn gold will definitely still exist, but due to the threshold limit of the 3A chain game itself, the number is also limited.
3.3 Expand the dimension of players
The game itself should have the ability to determine the user group. MOBA, FPS, SLG, dress-up, cultivation, simulation management, etc. all attract player groups with different characteristics. But when it comes to chain games, no matter how diverse the chain games seem to be, the economic model is also very complicated. There is only one type of players-gold players, and subdivided into those who have no principal to play low-threshold and low-yield chain games. Play high-threshold and high-yield chain games with high capital. At this stage, even competitive game categories such as MOBA and FPS are easy to learn and strong in gaming. Most of them are different gameplays in the game or corresponding to different yields and revenue cycles. The indicators that all players pay attention to are ROI, NFT floor price, token price, etc. When the project party pays too much attention to the cycle of the economic model, it will inevitably ignore the gameplay. It is extremely risky for a game to attract players with only one purpose. Mistakes in decision-making in subsequent operations will lead to instant loss of players; Will go to choose the next game.
On the other hand, just like the open world adventure RPG "Red Dead Redemption 2" (Red Dead Redemption 2) produced by Rock Star, some players want to experience the life of being a western cowboy, and some players want to study it well. Take a look at the horse riding skills, some can enjoy the scenery, and some players directly regard the game as a "Texas Hold'em Simulator". In addition to the unified threshold of $59.99, the player's choice is free, and the players that the game can attract are also diverse. of. If a game removes Texas Hold'em, there's no chance that players will collectively stop playing the game.
The "Texas Hold'em Simulator" in "Red Dead Redemption 2" has also attracted a large number of players
This not only requires rich gameplay, but also requires the project party to make every gameplay fun and attractive to players, so that the game can expand to different user groups. Another advantage for 3A chain games is that in addition to expanding the gameplay to obtain different users, players can also play different identities in the entire game ecosystem to obtain different experiences.
3.4 Potential User Monopoly Opportunities
Chain games usually cannot take into account both Web3.0 and Web2.0, and habitually make subtractions in terms of gameplay or game quality (for example: MOBA cuts a road directly, gives up competing in the 3D game market), and directly abandons the traditional game. Competition; focus on the financial attributes of blockchain games.
It is not particularly difficult to provide players with a good user experience at the technical level. The Unity development engine is also accessing more and more Web3.0-related SDKs. Epic Games behind UE is also open to blockchain games . The chain reaction brought about by the good user experience brought by high-quality games and the improvement of user stickiness is immeasurable. High-quality games will make the transaction value of virtual items high. At the same time, if the metalworking properties can match other chain games, a chain game project will have a better chance of survival. Much like the development of the “3A craze” at that time, the gameplay is similar with minor differences. Games with good picture quality, plot, and characters attract potential users, increase R&D costs and establish barriers with technical capabilities, so that the user experience can reach the best. The Matthew produced by chain games The effect is far greater than that of traditional 3A games, and the project party has the opportunity to achieve a certain degree of user monopoly in the blue ocean market of blockchain games.
4. What can chain games bring to 3A games?
When the project party introduces the game, what they often say is: the chain game can provide the game with a secondary market that can be traded, and it can allow players to have asset ownership, which has basically become everyone's consensus. In fact, traditional games such as "Fantasy Westward Journey", "World of Warcraft" and "CS:GO" already have very mature secondary asset transactions. If you think about it from the perspective of 3A, what new tricks can blockchain games bring to 3A games?
4.1 Ownership of Assets
Asset ownership has always been centrally managed by the project party, ranging from modifying values and redoing heroes (common in Moba), to directly stopping the service of games and distribution platforms. In fact, if you think about it from the perspective of Web3.0, a Without the operation of the game, even if the ownership of data assets belongs to the user through chaining, most of these data will eventually lose their meaning. To give a simple example: if Sky Mavis says that Axie is discontinued, then SLP and Axie babies will be reset to zero, and the probability that AXS will still be useful in the next game as a governance token (representing the value of Sky Mavis) is very small .
What kind of risks will there be in the centralized management of game assets? V God created Ethereum back then because of a version update of "World of Warcraft" (he is a heavy game player and loves "Warlock"). For the sake of game balance, the official version 3.10 patch will replace the "Warlock" who was too strong at the time. The skill "Life Siphon" was cancelled, and felt the horror of centralization. Players were completely unable to do anything for their beloved characters.
World of Warcraft nerfs Warlock class, prompting Ethereum
At the beginning of this year, Blizzard and NetEase stopped renewing their contracts. All Blizzard players in mainland China lost their game accounts. If you expand this matter, what will happen to the closure of Valve Corporation (the parent company of the Steam platform)? According to the agreement in Steam, the purchase operation of the player is actually a kind of subscription to this game, so if Valve chooses to stop, or if there is a situation like Blizzard quitting China and clearing all Chinese accounts, then the game in the account of the Chinese player , achievements, and social relationships will disappear. Basically, the vast majority of stand-alone end game players should be greatly affected. This is a very scary thing.
What will happen to the user's games on the day when Steam will stop operating?
But if you think about it carefully, even if the assets are on the chain, there will be no substantial change. Just like when STEPN cleared users in mainland China, the value of running shoes NFT is zero for Chinese users, and selling them in the secondary market as soon as possible is the most rational choice. Therefore, the power given to players by asset ownership is only the right to freely trade an asset, not the permanent preservation of a data asset. Project parties need to think about things beyond the game itself. For example: game achievements, commemorative props, deeper social relationships, these are many hard-won things that players may not play this game, but are reluctant to part with.
On April 2, 2023, when the game anchor Super Xiaojie was out, his mother brought the children of relatives to play at home. In the game "Super Mario Maker 2", the record of 15,000+ difficult groups and the top 30 in the world was cleared. In addition to requiring extremely high technology, this record is even more commendable because it was witnessed in the live broadcast room of the anchor It is achieved by the next step, which has a value far beyond the game itself. At that time, I was thinking, if the top 100 players in the world can cast an NFT and award it to the person who broke the record every time the record is updated, will there be a period when this record is emptied in the future? Memories, giving it collection value.
The historical records witnessed with the water friends were emptied with regret
Compared with traditional games, the 3A chain game itself is easier to create some valuable things, the companions and weapons that accompany the player in battle, a magnificent experience that the player will never forget, the Boss that finally cleared the level after repeated practice, and the completion after hard work An achievement, even a group photo of a character fabricated by the player and an NPC in the game, etc. These in-game data belong to the player's unique game experience, and the emotional experience and good memories created will prompt many players to pay and take it outside the game .
4.2 The fault tolerance rate has been greatly improved
In the early days, 3A game studios used the All In method to develop the first few products. If they succeed, they will become famous in one battle. If they fail, the studio will be disbanded directly, which has great risks. On the other hand, chain games can obtain rich development funds during the R&D process, and at the same time endow the game with a richer business model after the game is developed. In addition, in the process of operation, those core users who love this game and have a lot of investment can also get their due incentives from it, which turns into stronger user stickiness. These have greatly improved the fault tolerance rate of a game, making 3A chain games more likely to be successful than traditional 3A games.
4.2.1 Rich R&D funds
A major dilemma for 3A game studios is the problem of early funding. During the research and development process, in order to show the greatest sincerity, they must burn money crazily, but the source of funds can only be through financing and out of pocket. Many newly established 3A studios are Unable to show off.
"No Man's Sky" (No Man's Sky) is a sci-fi background sandbox adventure survival game developed by Hello Games. If you experience this game now, you will definitely marvel at the boundlessness of the universe, and "No Man's Sky" "Ingenious automatic generation technology and unrestrained imagination, but now the game in hand has been updated in 20 versions (you can follow Hello Games' Twitter , which is still actively updating).
No Man's Sky is the ultimate space exploration game
Before it went online in 2016, it was officially announced that there were 2 to the power of 64 planets that could be explored, and multiplayer mode was available. After multiple bounces, the player's expectations were pulled to the peak. However, after the launch, the actual game content and The content of the game in the promotional film is very different. The planets that can be explored in the game are pitiful, the multiplayer mode is not online at all, and the price is still the same as the 3A game at $60. As a result, the favorable rate was only 38% two weeks later, a large number of players refunded, and 95% of the players were lost within 40 days after the game went live. Founder Sean Murray said in an interview two years later: "Before the game is released, I am willing to sacrifice my hands to get more time. We have encountered great pressure from the community and the outside world, and the studio's funds have been exhausted. , and working overtime has exhausted the team, and it has reached the point where it has to be released.”
After the first wave of sales obtained the funds to continue development, the team worked hard and continued to iterate the version. In addition to perfectly completing the multiplayer mode, it also added a lot of game content and gameplay, and finally won the "TGA Best Operation Award" in 2020. Award", the team's continuous persistence finally did not make this game disappear. If there is enough research and development funds, presumably Hello Games will be able to shorten the development cycle and at the same time be able to launch a relatively complete game in the first release.
A Universe That Makes You Dream
3A chain games have great advantages in terms of research and development funds. At the moment when chain games have not broken the circle to traditional players, games with the name of 3A quality already have a strong ability to attract money. Taking the well-known 3A chain games Big Time and Illuvium as examples, the total number of NFT sales and token fundraising alone exceeded US$100 million; Star Atlas’ NFT sales exceeded US$40 million. These are the incomes that the project party can flexibly control. For traditional game teams, this will be a strong reassurance. Maybe there will be more players like "No Man's Sky" that can survive the pressure of players and the community. Premium games appear.
Illuvium Land Sale Brings Over $72M in Direct Cash Flow to Team
4.2.2 Flexible and diverse business models
In addition to being able to obtain sufficient development funds in the development stage, the project party can also flexibly choose different business models in the long-term operation to continue to make profits. In addition to the common buyout system for traditional 3A games, other familiar game business models
——Subscription system, in-game advertising, DLC/skin/drawing cards/opening boxes/gashapon and other micro-transactions, these can be tried in chain games, and the business model brought by chain games is for 3A games It might also fit better. Items, props, skins, storylines, achievements, and other data assets in 3A games can all be turned into data assets on the chain, which is the common land and prop sales in chain games. If the transaction value of 3A blockchain game items is high enough, a lower handling fee will be harmless to players.
The Space sold by Big Time provides a good business model for players who need to show off. Big Time itself is an MMORPG that competes with "World of Warcraft" and "Diablo". Gamers can obtain props and equipment by brushing copies, trading in the secondary market, and opening blind boxes. Space is like the home of every player. Different rarities determine the size of Space. Players can decorate Space in various ways and display all the props they have obtained in the game. Players can choose to buy according to their own situation.
Big Time's highest-quality Space, the player's private world
3A games will have a large number of players who want to collect, share, and bring things outside the game. There must be many business models that can be expanded around these needs. And the project party can also wait for the game to go online, and add or delete the business model at any time according to the demands of the players. The most important thing is to ensure that the core player group is retained through gameplay.
4.2.3 Content capitalization makes the project party and players share the risk
Blockchain games can give value to valuable items in the game, and then choose to sell the assets at the right time. Whenever these assets are sold, for the project side, it is a move to share the risks in the game with the players.
Traditional game players can support their favorite and upcoming games in the form of crowdfunding and pre-sale, often after the game has a relatively solid demo or internal test. Buying assets in advance or subscribing for tokens before development is a disguised form of "shareholding", and directly binds the value with the blockchain game project party. This is actually very difficult for traditional game players to buy. Users are required to fully trust the game team without any trial version. However, a large number of chain games have proved that it is acceptable for players to expect speculation on the chain game NFT whitelists.
4.3 Promote community development by motivating players to increase stickiness
The most indispensable thing in Web3.0 is to motivate users. The most typical way is to send AirDrop to encourage players to participate in community building, and give corresponding incentives according to the contributions of players. The content of the 3A chain game AirDrop can also be richer, not necessarily just a simple token incentive. The project party should give more carefully designed rewards to the special contributors to the development of the game, so that these players become loyal users of the game, instead of like many web3. A wave of quick money, and then continue to interact with other projects that are expected to issue coins like ZKsync.
When Arbitrium issues coins, it attracts more users who want to flirt, rather than users who really want to contribute to the ecology
4.4 Fresh user experience
The current development trend priority of the mobile game market: picture quality = plot = character design > gameplay, mobile phone games are now following the old path of consoles, and all kinds of mobile games led by Yuanshen have been upgraded from 2D to 3D, and the gameplay has no innovation. At that time, Europe and the United States set off a "3A boom", expanding the audience through scrolling screen art, increasing costs to block low-capital entry, reducing innovation and avoiding risks, and now consoles have begun to improve the screen and gradually enter the bottleneck. New things and fun games are gradually returning to the player's field of vision. At this time, the financial attributes of chain games are very interesting to traditional game players. At the same time, they can also bring in-game assets outside the game and seamlessly bring them to different 3A games. On the premise of quality assurance , I believe that many traditional game players are very willing to try 3A blockchain games. Therefore, in addition to the design of the economic model, the chain game team should also pay attention to the innovation of the gameplay (like Darkforest).
The art volume of the mobile game started with "Yuan Shen"
The fifth part will mainly provide some references for the future design of 3A chain games based on some design ideas of traditional games, and fully imagine the future of 3A chain games.
