As 2024 approaches, where to find WEB3 games?

Author: Vanguard 0

Video games are known as the ninth art. Compared to other eight arts like music, they offer higher interactivity, stronger immersion, and greater entertainment value. What kind of sparks will fly when the ninth art meets the more imaginative Web3? The following data can tell you how hot Web3 games are globally.

Despite the rapid development of Web3 games, the failure rate of startups in this sector remains high

A report from DappRadar shows that in 2022, an average of 1.13 million unique active wallets connected to Web3 game Dapps daily, an increase of 60% compared to 2021. Additionally, the trading volume of Web3 games reached $7.4 billion in 2022, growing by 3260% since 2020. As we entered 2023, the surge in Web3 games continued unabated. In Q1, global investment in the Web3 gaming sector reached $739 million, with Q2 and Q3 figures at $937 million and $600 million, respectively.

DappRadar August industry report: Daily unique active wallets for DApps reached 2 million, a month-on-month increase of 17%

It is worth mentioning that the booming Web3 games have captured a massive amount of funding from the traditional Web2 gaming market. Data from digital asset information disclosure platform Xangle shows that investment in blockchain games has steadily increased its share of the entire gaming industry, rising from 1.1% in 2020 to 9.5% in 2021, 38.3% in 2022, and an astonishing 57.2% in Q1 2023. This set of data indicates that the investment focus in the gaming sector is gradually shifting towards the Web3 world.

Data table showing the proportion of funding for blockchain game projects in the entire gaming industry

Of course, the Web3 gaming industry, which has only been around for 5 years, has yet to shake the foundations of the traditional gaming industry. However, the impressive data from blockbuster blockchain games can occasionally spark users' limitless imagination. In the summer of 2021, Axie Infinity's performance once surpassed the ceiling of the mobile game field, "Honor of Kings," igniting enthusiasm in the blockchain gaming market. According to Dapp data statistics company Token Terminal, Axie Infinity's revenue on July 16, 2021, was $9.7 million, exceeding the daily average revenue of "Honor of Kings" at $9.23 million, while its record high single-day revenue of $17.3 million on July 30 was 1.87 times that of "Honor of Kings."

At the same time, Coingecko data shows that since the inception of the GameFi concept, 2,127 Web3 games have failed in the past 5 years, accounting for 75.5% of the total 2,817 GameFi launches. Among them, from 2018 to 2023, the average annual failure rate of Web3 games is 80.8% when comparing the number of failed Web3 games to the number released.

Coingecko defines failure as a GameFi project where the average active users drop by more than 99% from their peak within 14 days.

The above data intuitively reflects the current state and development of the Web3 gaming industry. However, for many players, discovering high-quality Web3 game projects does not seem to be an easy task, and finding an enjoyable game is something every gamer pursues throughout their life.

The challenge of discovering quality Web3 games for users, with the TapTap solution from Web2 worth referencing

Undoubtedly, the rapid development of the Web3 gaming industry has recharged the confidence of investors, developers, and players. However, the overheated development inevitably leads to disorder and fragmentation of industry resources, corresponding to the isolation of key resources such as information, data, tokens, and users, resembling isolated islands.

At the same time, Web3 builders, including laboratories, incubators, capital parties, technical teams, DAO communities, and KOL ambassadors, are also in a state of mutual isolation around different projects. This makes it difficult for quality innovative applications to integrate the best resources and prevents users from accessing investment opportunities in the most efficient way.

Intuitively, if users want to directly reach a specific project and fully grasp relevant resources, they need to switch back and forth between different website pages to gather community, KOL, and data resources, which inadvertently increases users' silent costs and greatly reduces the experience and fluidity of Web3 products. At certain critical time points, users may even miss investment opportunities because of this. To address this issue, the Web3 gaming industry might consider the approach of the Web2 game recommendation platform TapTap.

User-shared game strategy video tutorials on TapTap

TapTap starts with "discovering good games" and provides services to users through community operations. Its main functional sections include a homepage recommending quality projects, a leaderboard with multi-dimensional evaluation features, a dynamic area aggregating popular news and game strategies, a discovery section categorizing game projects, and community and forum themes based on game projects and related topics.

TapTap also provides a full suite of game ecosystem services for game developers, helping them publish, operate, and manage game projects more conveniently. As a platform, TapTap does not take a share from developers, allowing players and developers to establish real connections. Players actively provide feedback and optimization suggestions, helping developers spread the word within the community. Through this, TapTap has established an efficient interaction and dialogue mechanism between developers and players, enhancing the promotional effect of games and increasing user engagement.

TapTap international version product page

It is not difficult to see that as a Web2 game recommendation platform, TapTap's decentralized attributes are more pronounced compared to other Web2 products, and its user-friendliness is also higher. In this regard, the market has given positive and proactive feedback. According to official data from TapTap, in 2022, the platform had over 573 million active users, an annual download volume of 801 million, a year-on-year increase of 32.33%, and a total of over 118 million game reservations.

On the other side of the industry's pain points are user demands and value opportunities. We can easily find that Web3 game applications similar to TapTap's product design have begun to emerge in the past two years. The following will introduce some representative cases, allowing users to conduct preliminary research and then experience the relevant products themselves to compare their features, thus better mastering Web3 gaming tools and not missing any potential opportunities.

Overview of 4 representative Web3 gaming application platforms, gaining insight into the value of P2E

1. Zealy: A Web3 task platform based on community participation, dividing the Web3 community into 4 major modules

Zealy, formerly known as Crew3, completed its brand renaming in early April this year and simultaneously raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed round of financing. As an aggregation platform for Web3 applications, Zealy allows users to publish digital assets, online and offline activities, and reward tasks, aiming to help Web3 applications expand their community size and activity.

Zealy's product homepage aggregates projects from various subfields, including Web3 startups, blockchain games, DeFi, infrastructure, NFTs, metaverse, and Web3 learning platforms, dividing the Web3 community into four modules: new communities, featured communities, popular communities, and upcoming communities. Users can click the blockchain game button on Zealy's official homepage to find corresponding projects or enter the upcoming community section to search for promising blockchain game communities.

It is important to note that users need to bind their MetaMask wallet and complete the signature authorization to register a Zealy account to experience more features.

2. Galxe: A Web3 credential network and task platform that allows users to create community spaces for free without permission

Galxe is a well-known task acquisition platform in the Web3 industry. Galxe attracts users by distributing tasks from different Web3 projects. When users complete on-chain interactions through the Galxe platform, their interaction behaviors are recorded and generate corresponding NFT credentials.

For users, regular tasks include following Twitter, retweeting, liking, joining communities, and specific project interactions such as redeeming, staking, borrowing, and minting related to project experiences. For project parties, obtaining precise users through the Galxe platform significantly benefits the early development of the project, allowing products and features to quickly reach target users.

According to information from Galxe's official website, Galxe has over 11 million unique users and has promoted the development of Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, and over 3,000 partners through a reward-based loyalty program.

On Galxe's official page, users can search and filter tasks released by blockchain game projects and claim airdrops, which is also an important opportunity to reach and understand projects. It is worth noting that Galxe has recently opened the Space application, allowing users to create community spaces for free without permission.

3. PlayToEarn: Web3 game data platform + GameFi vertical news media

PlayToEarn aims to become the most comprehensive aggregator of Web3 game data, while its page also features news updates from the blockchain gaming industry.

The homepage of PlayToEarn ranks blockchain game projects, allowing users to click on projects in the list to enter detail pages and learn about project overviews. Users can also click the download button to complete game downloads. Users can also enter the name of the blockchain game project in the search box to find corresponding projects. There is also a section for project airdrops and industry news at the top of the homepage.

It is worth mentioning that PlayToEarn categorizes blockchain game projects more meticulously, with classification criteria including game type (such as fighting or nurturing), blockchain, client (such as Android or iOS), current status (such as pre-sale or delisted), and whether there are NFTs, etc.

In addition to the three representative projects mentioned above, products like RabbitHole, Layer3, Pyme, Kleoverse, Utopia Labs, and DappBack also have similar functions. Interested users can search for and experience them on their own; due to space limitations, this article will not elaborate on each one. It is noteworthy that a similar project, DeGame, announced it would officially launch a new version of its product in early December, attracting widespread attention from users. At the end of this article, a brief introduction to the features of the revamped DeGame will be provided for reference, without any investment advice or promotional intent.

4. DeGame: A Web3 game aggregator, game community + download station + game ranking + creator platform

As a Web3 game collection platform, DeGame currently focuses on the global Web3 gaming sector. After continuously refining and enriching product features from this entry point, it will gradually expand to all categories of Web3, such as DeFi, NFTs, and SocialFi, etc. Below are the main functional modules of the product:

Top Communities: Aggregates the most Web3 game projects globally, currently boasting over 10,000 game communities. Users can directly click on the corresponding project to choose to jump to the project's official website, official Twitter, or official community, gaining a comprehensive and intuitive understanding of GameFi projects and directly interacting with project parties or community users;

Feeds: The most comprehensive information flow entry in the Web3 ecosystem, fully capturing all news information in the Web3 industry. Users can conveniently read industry news without opening Web3 vertical news websites. At the same time, this feature supports both PGC and UGC models, allowing quality creators approved by the platform to open accounts in the Feeds section to publish graphic and text content, delivering valuable information to users;

Quest: A task publishing window that balances fairness and incentives, where ordinary users, game project parties, KOLs, and development teams can publish customized tasks and set corresponding rewards to attract more interactions among Web3 users, thereby aggregating more traffic and creating value in the Web3 ecosystem;

Leader Board: Real-time game data rankings, regularly analyzing and ranking global Web3 games, Web3 game KOLs, and game guilds weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Users can directly search for the games, KOLs, guilds, and TOKEN information they want to query. For each game, players can directly rate and evaluate, completing a truly decentralized game rating;

Gaming: Real-time display of recently popular Web3 games and reminders for new game launches, allowing users to click to download and start their gaming journey;

Event: The most comprehensive online and offline event entry for Web3 gaming activities, where users can click to choose to participate in events. Players who meet certain conditions and platform requirements can also publish their own events on the Event section;

Discover: Aggregates high-quality game videos from across the internet, allowing game video creators to upload their produced game videos to the platform for sharing, enabling more players to watch and share exciting game moments and high-energy game montages, game strategies, tutorials, and funny game videos, making it easier for users to find the content they want.

It is worth mentioning that during the Token 2049 conference in September this year, Linea achieved significant brand exposure through a community event co-hosted with DeGame, with over 85,000 participants, fully demonstrating the platform's activity.

DeGame new product official website page

It is foreseeable that DeGame is currently the most comprehensive product in the Web3 gaming field, allowing users to freely and simply participate in games and express their ideas. Game teams can directly face game users, communicate with them, and build communities together, completing a highly autonomous gaming community. In the developing Web3 gaming industry, more players need a large community to gather for emotional communication about games and to tell their own stories. More game project parties need a fully functional aggregator platform to better serve game users. The ability for users to rate games, create events, access game data, automate advertising matchmaking, utilize creator centers, complete tasks, and engage in communities provides ample reasons for both players and game parties to use it. Undoubtedly, DeGame is a very good choice.