Remember the hype of web/3 games back in late 2021? All these projects raised tons of cash from smart money and dumb money to create these vast visions that were all going to compete with Axie Infinity. Axie, they all said, was boring and no one would play it if it weren't for the play2earn (P2E) element. Games like
Rumble Kong League
Galaxy Fight Club
Evaverse
Illuvium
Star Atlas
Aurory
Sipher
There are more. We won't count Pegaxy; that's a 100% loss in my book. (DM me on Twitter; I'll tell you the ones I think will actually make it.)
In order to fully participate in many of these games, you needed to lock up any value you invested, similar to a VC vesting. The difference between traditional vesting and crypto token locks is that VCs vest dollars. The numerical value of those dollars doesn't change. But crypto retail — hoo boy.
Let's say you vested in Illuvium when staking came out. You had to sit there and watch as the $ILV token price tanked from a high of almost $2000 to where it stands as I write this, at $78. I don't care what the APR is on those pools (and they shrink over time, by the way), there is no way you're going to justify that opportunity cost.
Well, there is one way.
If you actually want to play Illuvium.
But do you?
I'm Actually Playing these Web/3 Games Now, And...
Let's switch gears into the web3 game I'm most into, Aurory.
First of all, there is still no real utility for the genesis NFTs. To their credit, Aurory said there would be no utility from the start — they were flex vehicles only. Which is why I sold mine months ago for a few thousand bucks. But now, even though there is no logical reason to buy back in, when I play the game demo, I feel incomplete. Not incomplete enough to buy back, but this is a hurdle.
First of all, the gameplay showcases nothing more than a better produced Axie. Basic game loop is pet battles with a point system. Nothing new here. Sooo.... what am I waiting for exactly? So far, this is no better than the NFT scammers shitposting about their "hidden utility" that they'll "show you after mint."
The game also heats up my fuckin laptop and runs like shit because the Solana blockchain is some bullshit. Load time was completely uncompetitive. Took like 6-7 minutes to load up a one screen demo. That's a whole nuther story, and it's really bad when I can't even focus on the game because the infrastructure is bullshit.
Actually, Investing NOW Isn't That Bad...
If you put your money into these web3 games NOW, you're actually taking on much less risk than if you did so back in the hype days of late 2021. You're buying the tokens for a way lower price. What you also find is the airdrops you missed cost less now than if you had vested the tokens/held the NFTs/grinded the Discords to get the airdrops "for free." So there was no real reason to hold the shit in the first place.
So if you're coming in now, I'd say you can disregard somewhat the caution this article implies. Unless, of course, you think the games won't make it.
There's no guarantee that just because these games take a buttload of time to make that they'll be successful. Tokenomics don't care about how long you vested. And looking over the tokenomics of these games, they are really no better than Axie. They rely wholly on a steady base of players and overall growth in the player base. The big risk is that by the time these games go fully live, the meta has changed.
Back to Illuvium, for instance. I fully expect the "fight for ETH" rewards will be handsome in the beginning and taper off the longer gameplay goes. They won't be stable because the treasury will slowly deplete and will be forced to reduce rewards to stay solvent.
In order for these P2E games to make sense, and these games are STUCK being P2E because it's too late to go back, the rewards they emit must be consistently higher than the F2P games coming out now. And these F2P games are coming from bigger studios with more runway. Basically, they can undercut the early web/3 games on the list above by giving away NFTs and just waiting on those web/3 games to run out of rewards.
Web/3 Community Pride
But Alucard, remember there's interoperability between projects! You'll be able to bring your NFTs into a bunch of universes!
Yeah, I love this one. Fortnite, anyone? Multiversus?
But Alucard! Composability!
Have you seen, like, ANY versus screen on ANY fighting game ever? Have you played Roblox? This web3 shit is just words right now.
AND you don't have to pay $25,000 to get a famous character! Let's see. I can play as Shaggy for free in a world that has millions of players, or some random snot nosed, possibly racist ape for $25,000 in a world that is full of like 100,000 web3 losers max, who are all counting pennies on their fingers, making secret alliances in Discord to prey upon new players. Tough choice.
Web3 community pride won't last. We see that in every NFT Discord that clears out after mint. People will sit there and shamelessly lie like, "I love this community!" as they sell the NFT and prepare to leave the Discord. When the big boys come and undercut, these games are going to be in trouble.
And you see how quickly NFTWorlds crashed after they lost their "partnership" with Minecraft. There is no new tech coming out of web3 so far; just a bunch of people outside the mainstream gaming studio system trying to get your dollars.
That's the bottom line. Don't let the length of time these games have been in production fool you. The meta is changing, and these games may not be able to compete, especially since they've locked themselves (and your tokens) into their 2021 meta.
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