As we look at everything that is being built in the Web3 space, an overarching goal for the whole ecosystem is the fundamental question: “How we are going to onboard the next billion users into Web3?” While it may be the various music artists selling their music to fans as NFTs, or visual artists selling their art for millions, gaming paints a convincing picture on how it will bring more people to this space.

As the second-largest media category after television, beating out film and music segments combined at a market size of approximately $180bn in 2021, gaming is taking over our free time. Gaming is becoming a social norm in our lives, whether it is by playing a quick game on your phone while taking public transit, watching gaming content on YouTube while doing homework, or being a full-time competitive streamer. Even Netflix has noted that Fortnite is one of its biggest competitors, and even started rolling out its own gaming service.

Once regarded as an escape for social castaways, geeks and nerds, gaming has turned into the next big thing. In the US, E-Sports has more viewers than every other professional sports team other than the NFL (yes, that means more people watched a single League of Legends game than Giannis winning his first NBA ring - 8x as many to be exact!). Especially as we are seeing more games move from a $60-per-game price point to a free-to-play model where you can play with friends on any platform, the growth of gaming is becoming less about the gameplay, and more about the social aspect of spending time with others.

The move to blockchain does not mean that the whole gaming ecosystem is being uprooted, just the opposite. The addition of blockchain-based gaming ecosystems will allow for more power to be put in the player’s hands, and allow for better experiences across the board.

Imagine you are playing Call of Duty and you unlock one of the rarest skins in the game. Instead of the gaming company Activision just letting you “borrow” the skin in that one title until it slowly declines in popularity, you now own that skin and can bring it to any compatible game. As an example, you could potentially bring that skin into Fortnite, Battlefield, and show off as if you got the hottest Supreme drop.

A lot of gamers are worried about how NFTs can potentially poison the gaming ecosystem, with some games in the past implementing assets that would allow for players to pay-to-win. They don’t want their favourite games to become unenjoyable because some players can afford the best assets in the game, giving them an unfair advantage. Thankfully, the majority of Web3 gaming is not play-to-win, but play-to-earn (P2E). Instead of overpowered assets, these new assets can be earned in-game, and resold for the equivalent of currency in the physical world.

This concept of selling and trading assets is nothing new - gaming marketplaces have been active for years, like Steam Marketplace, or dMarket. Now, the experience is more decentralized, allowing for anyone to buy and sell assets that they own with minimal transaction fees. In this new digital world, you also have many choices on where you want to list your items for sale, whether it is a large open market like OpenSea or Rarible, or on a platform strictly for gaming assets like Fractal. Or maybe even listing it in the game itself, like on Sandbox or Gallium.

With the free-to-play model like Battle Royales or sandbox games showing great success, marketplaces are becoming the place where these companies make their money. With increased trading volume in their internal marketplaces, minimal transaction fees add up to allow developers to make money while letting games have greater accessibility to a wider range of audiences.

Currently, the state of Web3 gaming is in its infancy. There are hundreds of developers around the world trying to build new games for millions to enjoy. Along with these developers are the teams looking to put in place infrastructure for the ecosystem to grow sustainably.

When building a game on the blockchain and offering assets as NFTs, a key decision is which blockchain is best suited to the task. While many teams chose Ethereum which hosts the largest ecosystem of dApps, they have come to deal with the downsides. Ethereum has a very low transaction speed, meaning that there is less throughput when transacting items on-chain. Fed up with this limitation affecting the number of users that can complete transactions at one time, teams chose or developed alternative layer-one solutions such as Solana or Flow. Alternatively, some organizations decided to stick with Ethereum, yet add a layer-two solution like Polygon or ImmutableX to keep the same benefits as Ethereum while increasing transaction speed and sovereignty.

Another key piece of the puzzle is determining the economic models or having easy-to-use SDKs, wallets, and platforms to implement, store and transact these assets for games that are crypto-native or not. Instead of dedicating valuable time and resources to making a custom-made solution in-house, teams like Forte and Enjin are allowing developers to integrate these aspects easily in their titles.

The last step of the foundation piece is developing the actual game. While games throughout the years have taken on a variety of engines and evolved over time, two major game engines stand out as the biggest players in the market. If you are playing a popular game on your iPhone, odds are that it was made with Unity. On the flip side, if you are looking for the most beautiful and realistic games, you may be playing a game made with Unreal Engine. Unreal creates such realistic environments that you’ve likely watched movies where the film set is actually digitally created with their engine. Available to build on a variety of platforms, these game engines are allowing developers that build games to let you play with friends on any device you choose at the same time. While many games are opting into building their own engines, Unity and Unreal have simply mastered the art of creating engines that are built for developers to create immersive games at a low technical cost.

In the gaming space, the actual game is just the beginning of the conversation. When gamers aren’t playing the game, they also spend time watching recorded gameplay on YouTube, watching their favourite streamers on Twitch play with other creators, or compete for millions of dollars in Esports tournaments. If you are looking for an organization that is putting on a masterclass in building a creator space and community in gaming, look no further than 100 Thieves. Gaining revenue from exclusive apparel drops, to signing the biggest creators on Twitch, to winning some of the largest tournaments in Esports, 100 Thieves is giving a glimpse of how gaming is becoming mainstream in the way we dress, spend our free time, and enjoy content.

Outside of creators and content, communities are being built for passionate gamers globally through communication tools like Discord. Whether it is hosting watch parties for different games and tournaments or chatting about upcoming releases, Discord has become the place for conversation.

While these pieces of the market are mainly built on Web2 technologies, it is the common ground where these creators and communities are building their products, services, and following in the Web3 space. In fact, the majority of Web3 communities are based in Discord, including notorious gated communities like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or Friends with Benefits.

With the emergence of Play2Earn gaming, some communities are being built to work together, building asset wealth and turn their time gaming into a profitable business. Yield Guild Games has almost 100 thousand members in their community that allows for players with no capital to turn gaming into a side hustle. Web3 gaming is not only allowing for a more enjoyable gaming experience, but jobs in the digital realm.

The advent of applying Web3 technologies to games has blossomed a new class of games and genres, or blockchain games inspired by existing franchises. Instead of having card games in which your cards are tied to the single title like Hearthstone or Magic The Gathering: Arena, games like Axie Infinity or Skyweaver are allowing for these cards to have ownership rights to them and be utilized in other ecosystems in the future.

Picture Minecraft or Roblox where the assets you build and how they are sold are not controlled by a centralized development studio, but by the players who play them. Platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox are not only allowing for users to play and create their own mini-games, but also act as social platforms, digital storefronts, and the early signs of the Metaverse. In some instances like Gallium Studios and their game Proxi, Web3-inspired developers to come up with new ideas that can be brought to life through NFTs.

Now you may be thinking - these games sound fun, but what about all the other games out there today? Well, some development studios are ignoring this trend or outright banning them, while others are embracing the technology with open arms. Incumbents such as Ubisoft are actively experimenting with the NFT space, while others like Epic Games are opening their platform to NFT games.

One company that is the perfect use case for NFTs is EA and their Ultimate Team platform. In 2020, EA made over $1.5 billion strictly from their Ultimate Team platform, which allows gamers to purchase packs on their sports game like FIFA, and play with them in-game. With NFTs, instead of the packs being a waste as soon as the next FIFA title comes out, users could own these cards and bring them over to the next year’s game. While EA has expressed interest in NFTs being integrated into their games, how they do it is yet to be seen.

While all of this is exciting, the world of Web3 gaming is not all sunshine and roses. The initial reaction of gamers towards NFTs has not been necessarily pleasant. When Ubisoft was the first major studio to mint NFTs for their game Ghost Recon Breakpoint, it was not received well by its fan base. As noted by the Ubisoft team, this is just the beginning of a process that will take time for fans to see the true benefits.

Earlier this year, there was lots of backlash towards the Discord team as they teased future integration of cryptocurrencies and NFTs into the social platform. Due to the criticism, Discord suspended the launch of the integration for the interim. This just shows the resistance to change, even in technology platforms and games that currently host many communities that are involved in the space. It matter be a matter of selling the benefits first, rather than forcing the costs.

Like many other verticals in Web3, this is just the beginning of a long journey. While some may not see the upside, it presents a new change in the gaming ecosystem that empowers the players, and more importantly the developers. Instead of being restricted to consoles and app stores that take 30% of every sale, transactions on the blockchain offer a new payment rail that empowers developers to reap more benefits of their creations. Instead of throwing money into a game that will slowly fade, players will be able to use their assets across multiple titles and platforms, or sell them to see a return. While it may be just one of the many ways that Web3 will onboard its next billion users, it is a great time to be a gamer.

As we look at everything that is being built in the Web3 space, an overarching goal for the whole ecosystem is the fundamental question: “How we are going to onboard the next billion users into Web3?” While it may be the various music artists selling their music to fans as NFTs, or visual artists selling their art for millions, gaming paints a convincing picture on how it will bring more people to this space.

As the second-largest media category after television, beating out film and music segments combined at a market size of approximately $180bn in 2021, gaming is taking over our free time. Gaming is becoming a social norm in our lives, whether it is by playing a quick game on your phone while taking public transit, watching gaming content on YouTube while doing homework, or being a full-time competitive streamer. Even Netflix has noted that Fortnite is one of its biggest competitors, and even started rolling out its own gaming service.

Once regarded as an escape for social castaways, geeks and nerds, gaming has turned into the next big thing. In the US, E-Sports has more viewers than every other professional sports team other than the NFL (yes, that means more people watched a single League of Legends game than Giannis winning his first NBA ring - 8x as many to be exact!). Especially as we are seeing more games move from a $60-per-game price point to a free-to-play model where you can play with friends on any platform, the growth of gaming is becoming less about the gameplay, and more about the social aspect of spending time with others.

The move to blockchain does not mean that the whole gaming ecosystem is being uprooted, just the opposite. The addition of blockchain-based gaming ecosystems will allow for more power to be put in the player’s hands, and allow for better experiences across the board.

Imagine you are playing Call of Duty and you unlock one of the rarest skins in the game. Instead of the gaming company Activision just letting you “borrow” the skin in that one title until it slowly declines in popularity, you now own that skin and can bring it to any compatible game. As an example, you could potentially bring that skin into Fortnite, Battlefield, and show off as if you got the hottest Supreme drop.

A lot of gamers are worried about how NFTs can potentially poison the gaming ecosystem, with some games in the past implementing assets that would allow for players to pay-to-win. They don’t want their favourite games to become unenjoyable because some players can afford the best assets in the game, giving them an unfair advantage. Thankfully, the majority of Web3 gaming is not play-to-win, but play-to-earn (P2E). Instead of overpowered assets, these new assets can be earned in-game, and resold for the equivalent of currency in the physical world.

This concept of selling and trading assets is nothing new - gaming marketplaces have been active for years, like Steam Marketplace, or dMarket. Now, the experience is more decentralized, allowing for anyone to buy and sell assets that they own with minimal transaction fees. In this new digital world, you also have many choices on where you want to list your items for sale, whether it is a large open market like OpenSea or Rarible, or on a platform strictly for gaming assets like Fractal. Or maybe even listing it in the game itself, like on Sandbox or Gallium.

With the free-to-play model like Battle Royales or sandbox games showing great success, marketplaces are becoming the place where these companies make their money. With increased trading volume in their internal marketplaces, minimal transaction fees add up to allow developers to make money while letting games have greater accessibility to a wider range of audiences.

Currently, the state of Web3 gaming is in its infancy. There are hundreds of developers around the world trying to build new games for millions to enjoy. Along with these developers are the teams looking to put in place infrastructure for the ecosystem to grow sustainably.

When building a game on the blockchain and offering assets as NFTs, a key decision is which blockchain is best suited to the task. While many teams chose Ethereum which hosts the largest ecosystem of dApps, they have come to deal with the downsides. Ethereum has a very low transaction speed, meaning that there is less throughput when transacting items on-chain. Fed up with this limitation affecting the number of users that can complete transactions at one time, teams chose or developed alternative layer-one solutions such as Solana or Flow. Alternatively, some organizations decided to stick with Ethereum, yet add a layer-two solution like Polygon or ImmutableX to keep the same benefits as Ethereum while increasing transaction speed and sovereignty.

Another key piece of the puzzle is determining the economic models or having easy-to-use SDKs, wallets, and platforms to implement, store and transact these assets for games that are crypto-native or not. Instead of dedicating valuable time and resources to making a custom-made solution in-house, teams like Forte and Enjin are allowing developers to integrate these aspects easily in their titles.

The last step of the foundation piece is developing the actual game. While games throughout the years have taken on a variety of engines and evolved over time, two major game engines stand out as the biggest players in the market. If you are playing a popular game on your iPhone, odds are that it was made with Unity. On the flip side, if you are looking for the most beautiful and realistic games, you may be playing a game made with Unreal Engine. Unreal creates such realistic environments that you’ve likely watched movies where the film set is actually digitally created with their engine. Available to build on a variety of platforms, these game engines are allowing developers that build games to let you play with friends on any device you choose at the same time. While many games are opting into building their own engines, Unity and Unreal have simply mastered the art of creating engines that are built for developers to create immersive games at a low technical cost.

In the gaming space, the actual game is just the beginning of the conversation. When gamers aren’t playing the game, they also spend time watching recorded gameplay on YouTube, watching their favourite streamers on Twitch play with other creators, or compete for millions of dollars in Esports tournaments. If you are looking for an organization that is putting on a masterclass in building a creator space and community in gaming, look no further than 100 Thieves. Gaining revenue from exclusive apparel drops, to signing the biggest creators on Twitch, to winning some of the largest tournaments in Esports, 100 Thieves is giving a glimpse of how gaming is becoming mainstream in the way we dress, spend our free time, and enjoy content.

Outside of creators and content, communities are being built for passionate gamers globally through communication tools like Discord. Whether it is hosting watch parties for different games and tournaments or chatting about upcoming releases, Discord has become the place for conversation.

While these pieces of the market are mainly built on Web2 technologies, it is the common ground where these creators and communities are building their products, services, and following in the Web3 space. In fact, the majority of Web3 communities are based in Discord, including notorious gated communities like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or Friends with Benefits.

With the emergence of Play2Earn gaming, some communities are being built to work together, building asset wealth and turn their time gaming into a profitable business. Yield Guild Games has almost 100 thousand members in their community that allows for players with no capital to turn gaming into a side hustle. Web3 gaming is not only allowing for a more enjoyable gaming experience, but jobs in the digital realm.

The advent of applying Web3 technologies to games has blossomed a new class of games and genres, or blockchain games inspired by existing franchises. Instead of having card games in which your cards are tied to the single title like Hearthstone or Magic The Gathering: Arena, games like Axie Infinity or Skyweaver are allowing for these cards to have ownership rights to them and be utilized in other ecosystems in the future.

Picture Minecraft or Roblox where the assets you build and how they are sold are not controlled by a centralized development studio, but by the players who play them. Platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox are not only allowing for users to play and create their own mini-games, but also act as social platforms, digital storefronts, and the early signs of the Metaverse. In some instances like Gallium Studios and their game Proxi, Web3-inspired developers to come up with new ideas that can be brought to life through NFTs.

Now you may be thinking - these games sound fun, but what about all the other games out there today? Well, some development studios are ignoring this trend or outright banning them, while others are embracing the technology with open arms. Incumbents such as Ubisoft are actively experimenting with the NFT space, while others like Epic Games are opening their platform to NFT games.

One company that is the perfect use case for NFTs is EA and their Ultimate Team platform. In 2020, EA made over $1.5 billion strictly from their Ultimate Team platform, which allows gamers to purchase packs on their sports game like FIFA, and play with them in-game. With NFTs, instead of the packs being a waste as soon as the next FIFA title comes out, users could own these cards and bring them over to the next year’s game. While EA has expressed interest in NFTs being integrated into their games, how they do it is yet to be seen.

While all of this is exciting, the world of Web3 gaming is not all sunshine and roses. The initial reaction of gamers towards NFTs has not been necessarily pleasant. When Ubisoft was the first major studio to mint NFTs for their game Ghost Recon Breakpoint, it was not received well by its fan base. As noted by the Ubisoft team, this is just the beginning of a process that will take time for fans to see the true benefits.

Earlier this year, there was lots of backlash towards the Discord team as they teased future integration of cryptocurrencies and NFTs into the social platform. Due to the criticism, Discord suspended the launch of the integration for the interim. This just shows the resistance to change, even in technology platforms and games that currently host many communities that are involved in the space. It matter be a matter of selling the benefits first, rather than forcing the costs.

Like many other verticals in Web3, this is just the beginning of a long journey. While some may not see the upside, it presents a new change in the gaming ecosystem that empowers the players, and more importantly the developers. Instead of being restricted to consoles and app stores that take 30% of every sale, transactions on the blockchain offer a new payment rail that empowers developers to reap more benefits of their creations. Instead of throwing money into a game that will slowly fade, players will be able to use their assets across multiple titles and platforms, or sell them to see a return. While it may be just one of the many ways that Web3 will onboard its next billion users, it is a great time to be a gamer.