1
Why human beings enjoy playing video games
Like you, I am also an ordinary gamer.
We all know that "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles", which is how philosopher Bernard Suits defines gaming. Metaphysical theory aside, for the past twenty years or so, from the first day I was introduced to video games as a child, I have continued to explore what gaming really means to me and why I am so fascinated by the experience in the digital world. Of course, there are billions of other gamers in the world who, like me, continue to explore, day in and day out, what it is that we, as gamers, are seeking while playing video games.
Gamers is a very general term for a group of people, and within the gamer community, gamers in different platforms and different categories can pursue very different goals, which has led to a complex and obvious chain of contempt between different gamers in the entire gaming world today. However, as a general type of gamers who can enjoy feedback from traditional console AAA to pure Pay2Win games, to various subtle indie games, and then to simulation or sandbox games that can make people addicted, I can generally sum up very directly that as a gamer, after I have invested different costs in different games (whether it's time cost, learning cost, or money cost, etc.), I am seeking some kind of different but similar mental feedback and satisfaction.
For example, when I spent almost all my pocket money to pay for game props in the era of PC-based MMO games, when I paid for higher strength and ranking in SLG or MMO mobile games, I knew very clearly that the feedback I was seeking was a sense of self-existence. And when I began to notice that the feedback I received from this sense of existence could not maintain a stable relationship with my cost of input, I would easily switch to a new game. I must admit I had no loyalty to any P2W games. In these games, the satisfaction of winning by paying for stronger game props is actually a quantifiable way to measure my self-existence - when I can no longer get the same feedback with the same extra cost, it actually indicates that the feedback mechanism inside is starting to get out of balance.
Another example is simulation or sandbox or open-world games. These games are my favorites. SimCity, The Sims, GTA V, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Zelda, Animal Crossing, RollerCoaster Star, City Skyline, Civilization, Elite: Dangerous, Minecraft, etc. These are all games that I have played for at least 300 hrs on average. In these games, what I actually seek is not a short-term sense of self-existence by winning, but rather a long-term engagement when I create my own piece of home, a city, a career (cool starships in Elite Dangerous or rare vehicles and big houses in GTA V), a kingdom (As an Age of Empires 2 gamer for over a decade, I now play AOE2 even more as a simulation game, and I'm not the first to feel that way) within the game, I then developed an unbreakable spiritual connection to the game. It's something I've put time and effort into creating, and even though they only exist in the virtual world, It's enough to hold my soul and become the ingredients of my dreams in the real world.
As for the traditional console or PC-based AAA masterpiece, in recent years I have played less and less in person, and instead, I have become a ‘cloud player’ (through live streaming or game commentary video to understand the game's full plot or special gameplay). I don't see there's anything wrong with being a cloud gamer, but it really shows the decline of the attraction from traditional AAA. I've been playing traditional AAA titles like Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, etc. since I was a kid, but as more PC and mobile MMOs or open worlds emerge, the sense of accomplishment these games can give me by relying on a strong narrative and almost "movie-viewing" experience is diminishing. Once I knew that clearing Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty’s main storyline is just a fixed process, the sense of ownership and presence in this process was far less than what other MMOs or open-world games could bring me. On the contrary, what I see today is that these traditional AAA experiences are still mainly on console, and the mentality of these gamers is already more like collecting, and these types of games basically have to rely on a long-lasting or very strong IP, and the users are proud to be fans of the IP, and the narrative experience of the game is only used to strengthen the players’ sense of belonging to the IP.
After talking so much about my own experience and feelings, in fact, the games mentioned above are only a very small part of the whole gaming universe, and also very sketchy, and even some parts are very subjective.
However, when I look at myself and compare myself with other gamers from an out-of-self perspective, I find that the kind of game feedback mechanism a gamer can accept or be fascinated by depends a lot on his/her "Pavlovian training" from the first contact with video games. The social, educational, and family environments around different people are different when they first get in touch with video games, so they are all implicitly influenced by different feedback mechanisms. This has resulted in a very divided gamer base today, such as the typical traditional console gamers are always difficult to understand and accept the P2W experience - and for those OG console gamers, in my opinion, it's impossible to get them to really accept it - as evidenced by the latest Diablo Immortal. As a gamer with close to a thousand hours playing Diablo 3, I was surprised to see two sides of gamers arguing in the world channel about the impact of P2W on the infiltration of Immortal's game system and the balance of the game. As a gamer who can accept feedback from both sides of the game mechanics, I am happy to see such attempts like Immortal did, but the rift in the gamer community has continued to make me think over the past few months about what would really give different gamers a better experience while allowing the game team to have a more agile and healthy business model, rather than sticking with the high risk of traditional AAA or the struggling of indie games.
2
X2E is not the real Web3
Most Web3 games before, now, and in the future are failures.
Since the rise of Axie Infinity, the Web3 game model that began with P2E has been a constant debate and argument for many industry insiders and gamers. Whether it’s traditional console gamers' rejection of NFT in-game assets and props, or P2W game developers and publishers' confusion at giving up ready-made, enviable revenue streams to so-called tokenomics, it's a microcosm of the confusion and disarray that has plagued the industry for the past year or so. We have seen countless traditional game studios and game creators being attracted by this gorgeous-looking model and unable to resist the urge to try it, and we have also seen some decent teams and mostly gamers, repeatedly flogging this model. So when we think hard about why we're hooked on video games, you can easily join me in concluding that most Web3 games before, now, and in the future have failed and will fail.
While the X to Earn model has its historical significance: educating the market and the industry and attracting a wave of builders who can really suffer in the process of critical thinking and eventually hammering out real gold, its problem is also obvious: no real gamer, when playing games, is making money as the main way to get feedback from the game, nor is it possible to play the game with the purpose of making money. What gamers get when they are addicted to video games is a kind of mental feedback, and you can even say that this feedback is sometimes addictive, which we have to admit. But making money is not spiritual feedback, we can easily imagine, if a P2W game, only has a bunch of yield farming guilds to generate resources, and no paying users are really in the consumption, paying for the resources, the game model is impossible to establish. And once the game leads players to make money for their purposes, even if the game is fun and able to attract real gamers, the ecosystem will inevitably turn into a game dominated by speculators and people purely for the purpose of making money after its token goes to the exchange listing, which will eventually destroy the experience of those real gamers.
You might ask, "These speculators don't affect the in-game experience, and as long as the game experience is good enough, gamers will continue to play, and the ecosystem will continue to have utility and liquidity." But perhaps in the past year, everyone has focused too much on the so-called "feature" of Web3 that "allows players to make money" and ignored the real meaning of Web3 for gamers. The real meaning is the incentive. The incentive, naturally, cannot be direct money (fiat or stablecoin), since if it is direct money, there is no doubt that it is a Ponzi, and it is a typical Ponzi to use making money for players as an attraction. The reason why it is called an incentive is the significance of token as a pass/certificate/proof, which is the real meaning of blockchain. Token as a pass essentially represents the proof of governance, voting and other powers, the proof of rights through the contribution to the ecosystem prosperity, however, it is also obvious that most of the tokens that had issued by Web3 games, you probably haven't seen anyone really valuable so far. Instead, these tokens are controlled by speculators and are always strongly influenced by market fluctuations, and once the price collapses due to market fluctuations, the token held by the real gamers will also be extremely shrunken at the same time, and eventually, through the integration of tokenomics and the game's economic system, leading to the collapse of the game's economic system or directly affecting the game experience.
Therefore, my first point is that so-called tokenomics should exist independently of the in-game economic system, gameplay, and cycles of the game itself. This is the first step towards making Web3 a truly meaningful and valuable part of the gamer experience, and a step that must be taken to build a sustainable and truly stable Web3 ecosystem. What Web3 gives gamers is a new incentive layer that recognizes their contributions and efforts in the ecosystem, whether it's the interactions, the time contributed or the self-improvement of their game skills. In short, the game (including the in-game economic system) is decoupled from the pure Web3 incentive layer as an experience layer, so that gamers do not even need to bind their wallets when they enter the experience layer, and can play exactly as they play Web2 games before. This separate Web3 incentive layer should:
It is more than just a payment method. For example, there has been some hype around the news that Valorant players have paid 32M USD for cool weapon skins in the past month. Some crypto scammers even fantasize about how great it would be if these were all NFTs. This is total nonsense. In-game assets are by nature not made for hype, so what's the difference between buying them via crypto or fiat currency when players are just buying them to show off their fancy outlooks? Not to mention that crypto also adds obvious onboarding costs for the user. So instead, we should think about what essential enhancements and new value Web3 can bring to the gamer experience, rather than simply making a crude replacement.
It is also more than just a credential. If we want to recognize and incentivize gamers for their contributions and efforts in the game, can I create a prop, a badge, or an achievement in the game instead? If you are an OG of World of Warcraft or Fantasy West, you must be clear that WOW and Fantasy West can have an evergreen reputation among OG gamers (although today's Fantasy West has transformed into a pure P2W game), largely because their account and props retain their value, so that many OG gamers do not feel that their efforts they have invested ended up into nothing.
On the contrary, to take an example of the opposite extreme, FIFA Online 3, that is operated by Tencent. Friends who played FIFA know that FIFA Online is a very unique branch, the general orthodox FIFA players will choose to chase the latest FIFA every year, and enjoy the smooth game experience brought by the most advanced physics engine. But FIFA Online has been more focused on MMO, or you can say that in the Chinese server, especially after Tencent tailored the mobile version, it began to fall into the abyss of doom, and finally more like a P2W card game. And the extreme inflation caused by the crazy over-issued player cards greatly weakened the identity of the early gamers for the time and money they invested (like me).
Therefore, Web3, as an incentive, one very important point is that this incentive can naturally be measured by real-world value, not just only a string of numbers in the game. Otherwise, a string of numbers followed by many zeros can be easily controlled by the game operators. In the end, if the game's economic system can't hold up anymore one day, for the game operators, it's not a big deal to shut down the service and start over a new sequel to rug their players again, but the gamers, they could never go back into the old days.
3
The warm future of Web3 gaming
We will eventually start a raging fire with our enthusiasm.
I've never been a blind follower, nor am I a rash one. In the recent year, we started to embrace Web3 starting from a gamer's view to create a real Metaverse to prove the greater value of AI, and in the past year, we experienced both a bull market and a bear market, which made us continuously think critically every day, how to contribute ourselves in order to make the industry go in the right direction.
In today's gaming industry, the two major business models are naturally conflicted. The traditional console game copy-selling model sets an unattainable threshold for the broader emerging market of gamers, both in terms of the price of purchasing games and the hardware requirements for consoles or PCs; while those who cannot meet the conditions are given the same opportunity because of the rise of F2P, which has evolved into the more commercially viable P2W model. Either way, there is no way to provide a truly equal incentive to different groups and types of gamers, which eventually evolved into the current situation of a divided gamer community. And when we want to provide a possibility for different types of gamers to be able to participate equally together in the same ecosystem, we inevitably need to face the very realistic community argument and the rift between gamers like what happened in Diablo Immortal.
And Web3, as an incentive layer, a decentralized, freer, and more open incentive layer, might just be the key to changing that.
In the P2W model, the conflict between two types of gamers is naturally irreconcilable: low-value gamers who have no money but love the game and devote a lot of time to it, also the vast majority of us, who want to become stronger by contributing more time and activity; and high-value gamers who have strong ability to invest a lot of money, and they want to do less repetitive and meaningless work through quick investment in-game props, which means less time actual playing in the game. However, there is only one winner to get the most feedback from the game mechanism, and only one of the two must be absolutely stronger, so priority can only be given to high-value users, who are, after all, the contributors that actually bring revenue to the game team. So, the loss of those low-value gamers is inevitable, it also gave birth to a lot of GS or GM to take the place of the low-value gamers. Although these low-value gamers are not directly exploited for money, their time and efforts also become the "sacrifice", and it’s hard to tell the difference between them and the bag holders who got rugged by the P2E scammers.
However, when we can achieve different incentives for different types of gamers’ behavior, contribution or participation in the game through a Web3 incentive layer, there may be new hope for optimizing this situation: let those low-value gamers get recognition and identification for their contribution and participation in the game so that even if they lose to high-value players, they will not feel discouraged. Even better, the incentive credentials can also strengthen the identity of those high-value players (for example, some P2W games have shamelessly created some rankings of the money you charged), it could also be an additional value recognition for them. Therefore, my second point is that Web3's main incentive for gamers must be an "extra" incentive, recognition, and credential for gamers who have invested time, efforts, and money in the game, rather than something that requires users to invest capital for entering into the game and getting incentives. This credential may be able to create more meaningful application scenarios outside the experience layer. This way, both a new game and even an existing Web2 game that has been around for a long time can easily embrace this model without hurting the in-game balance and gamers’ experience at all.
What connects the experience and incentive layers is the data layer in between. By making key in-game data accessible in real-time on-chain, developers can easily discover new values based on in-game data. For example, Blizzard, EA, Riot, and almost all decent and professional game studios have very mature open APIs for in-game data, including Diablo, WOW, Hearthstone, Apex, Valorant, PUBG, League of Legends, etc. There are many developer products around these APIs already, but most of them are just data-based tools, while Web3 can provide gamers with new incentives and new values based on these data. These values will not only make the business model of the game fairer and the ecosystem more prosperous but also make the contribution of real gamers in the game more meaningful and make them more willing to stay for a longer time. Although this model based on Free to Own innovation has not been tried and verified by anyone decently, this possible future, can't it bring some really different hope to the gamers in this cold bear market? Moreover and more importantly, we can stop focusing on making those speculators believe and rely on token prices through so-called tokenomics, stop focusing on these flashy models, and instead focus on creating a better, more immersive, more belonging experience layer in a lighter way.
Of course, this whole vision of the future, obviously, still heavily relies on an experience layer that is really fun and gives the gamers strong belongings, so that OWN could be something to be proud of and positive, then Web3+game can hopefully really "merge" together in this particular way and really create a sustainable and stable ecosystem. But for real builders like us, this is exactly what we want to do and what we are good at doing. All we need is a flame in the cold dark night, and we will eventually start a raging fire with our enthusiasm.