Counting the development of the GameFi model, the future is still expected?

Original title: "Detailed GameFi model development, the future is still expected? "

Original author: W Labs, Footprint Analytics

Data source: Footprint, W Labs GameFi Report Dashboard

GameFi has also gone through a cycle of ups and downs. This article uses a large number of charts to burst the bubble of GameFi's original sin and discuss what kind of model can develop in the future for a long time.

GameFi has been on the rise for more than a year. From the rapid upward climb in the number of users in the last quarter of 2021, it began to weaken in early 2022, and there was an obvious decline in February. of fall.

By March 2022, with the popularity of StarSharks, Crabada and other projects, GameFi seems to have rekindled hope, but in April and May these two The game also inevitably fell into a death spiral. StepN, which has made people shine because of the new Move-to-eran model, has also failed to recover after announcing the removal of Chinese users.

GameFi has experienced rapid ups and downs within a year. The base of 3 billion gamers around the world has not brought much benefit to Web3, and more players still come from  DeFi  or NFT   and other encrypted world circles. Looking at it, most of GameFi 's active cycles are not long, but their development paths have also brought some enlightenment to the market:

1. Fast but lack of high-quality projects

GameFi projects are mixed, and there are many fork projects that want to make a fortune. 70% to 80% of the GameFi projects on the market can't reach the active state of 200 people per day for 5 consecutive days. Among the projects launched in 2022, more than 80% of the projects will be active within 30 days of launching, but how long have they persisted?

Footprint Analytics - Days from Project Launch to Active

2. The active cycle of the project is worrying

60% of the projects fell into silence after being active for less than 30 days. Since November last year, few projects have been able to remain active for more than three months.

Footprint Analytics - Days from Project  Active Launch to Inactive

Most of the GameFi projects on the chain go online to become active Quick, but not very long to stay active.

3. The development paths of each public chain are different

Through the GameFi project From online to active and then to inactive cycle analysis, the horizontal axis is set to the number of days required for the project to go from online to active state, the vertical axis is the number of days from active state, and the size of the bubble is the total number of users.

The farther to the left, the sooner the project will become active after it goes online, and the higher to the top, the longer the active time of the project, so the projects that fall in the upper left corner have better performance Performance.

HIVE is outstanding in many projects with Splinterlands . yellow speech bubbles.

Footprint Analytics - Project Lifecycle Layout

Ethereum is not friendly to GameFi in terms of gas fees and transaction efficiency, which makes it in the GameFi field Not ideal. Many projects have a long climbing cycle in the early stage, short active time, and the total number of users is not high. But it has a solid foundation after all. Perhaps after solving these problems, the launch of more high-quality games will allow it to occupy a wider market share in GameFi.

Compared to the projects on BSC, it is easier to quickly sell hot items, the duration is medium, and the user volume is relatively good. Polygon  Compared to the standard, ThunderCore has shown an unexpected active duration.

Footprint Analytics - Project Lifecycle Layout (Zoom in)

GameFi's current situation is not only fueled by the bear market, but also its original sin secret Inseparable. This report will attempt to uncover the reasons for the above problems and explore the possible future of GameFi.

1. The original sin of the GameFi 1.0 model 

1. The first half of barbaric development Field

The core of the GameFi 1.0 period led by Axie Infinity   is around Play-to-earn. Whether it is in terms of gameplay (such as simple and rude staking, tower climbing PVE, card battle PVP), or in the economic model (single currency, dual currency, Token + NFT, U standard, currency standard, etc.), its essence The framework still belongs to the Ponzi structure, that is, the "outer circulation" model that relies too much on the continuous entry of funds.

The so-called external cycle means that old players use the funds invested by new players to reinvest, and new players continue to pay interest and short-term returns to old players to create old players The illusion of making money. Therefore, all the tokens generated by old players in the game need to be purchased and consumed by new players, otherwise players will continue to sell them, causing the token liquidity pool to have only selling orders but no buying orders, and the token price will spiral downward.

External Loop Mode

From the market value of GameFi token in Footprint Analytics statistics, GameFi has experienced a 2021 July-September After the steady growth period and the outbreak period from October to November, due to the impact of the general environment and individual projects, the entry funds of the entire field began to slow down. In this case, the external circulation mode of GameFi 1.0 will quickly have problems, and the off-site funds cannot meet the continuous interest-generating needs of the on-site funds, thus gradually changing from a positive spiral to a death spiral.

Footprint Analytics - GameFi Token MarketCap

Therefore, most GameFi 1.0 projects will have a life cycle, and only one cycle, Once the death spiral is over, it is very difficult to restart upwards. Different models, teams, backgrounds, operations, and environments all affect the entire project throughout the process, and will also produce various cycle forms.

Blue chip project form

Axie Infinity as The originator of Play-to-earn, its background, resources, and player consensus are unmatched by other chain games in the current period. Therefore, with only the basic dual currency model and breeding system, it can still maintain a rising period for several months, and then slowly decline, and there are still some loyal users.

Footprint Analytics - Axie Users & AXS Token Price

Strong background project form

BinaryX , which is also a dual-token model, has attracted large investors to lock their positions and created a strong wealth-creating effect by virtue of community consensus. user. But it also faces the problem of unlimited inflation of sub-coins. Once there is not enough gold-making effect, it will immediately enter the negative feedback stage, and the number of users will drop rapidly.

However, with the help of the trading platform and the project side's high degree of control over BNX, the currency price has rebounded, but there are still very few game users.

Footprint Analytics - Binary Users & BNX Token Price

Pure capital disk project form
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CryptoMines  of the single currency model is a pure fund, and its life cycle shape also represents the development of most Tugou projects.

At the initial stage of the project, a large amount of funds were attracted to enter the market with a very short payback cycle, and users and market value will have a huge increase in a very short period of time Lift. When the bubble blows to the critical point of market capital and sentiment, it bursts quickly, and the higher the rise, the faster the fall. The once hot projects are almost all cliff-like death spirals.

Footprint Analytics - CryptoMines Users & ETERNAL Token Price

Although the economic model, operation mode and life form of the project are different, But whether it is the regular army Axie Infinity, the earth dog king CryptoMines or the  The Sandbox  of the Metaverse concept, they are all in trouble in December 2021.

Footprint Analytics - MC of Axie & The Sandbox

The entire GameFi field has ushered in a cold winter, perhaps due to the impact of the general environment , but more of it stems from the Ponzi attributes of the entire GameFi itself. With the blessing of FOMO sentiment for several months, the growth rate of the token’s overall capital expansion has been unable to keep up with the demand for internal capital income in the game, so the bubble burst has become inevitable.

2. The second half of gradual innovation

After a round of cleaning and a period of time After precipitation, some high-quality projects with reliable backgrounds, small innovations in economic models, and strong operational capabilities can still set off a small wave of GameFi boom in February and March this year in a poor market environment.

The more eye-catching ones are Crabada of Avalanche   chain and StarSharks of BSC . StarSharks  used the gimmicks of "Tianmei" and "Binance " in the early stage of the project to keep its popularity high, and its creation blind box has a high premium even before the game is launched.

Unfortunately, it just happened to catch up with GameFi’s cold winter period, and users’ desire to make gold dropped extremely. Therefore, the number of StarSharks players in the early stage was not too high, and it was also called "the peak at the opening" at the time.

However, compared with many projects in the previous barbaric development era, StarSharks has certain advantages in terms of background, economic model, and game quality. Coupled with the help of some communities, it has grown steadily throughout Q1 this year, reaching its peak in April and then gradually declining.

Footprint Analytics - StarSharks Monthly New Users & Active Users

Analyze its model, StarSharks also uses the classic double token model, mainly The output is SEA, and the governance token is SSS.

In order to prevent the death spiral caused by the infinite inflation of sub-token SEA like other dual-token models, StarSharks has changed the entry threshold to consume SEA to buy blind boxes, so by The selling pressure of the token is transferred to the NFT pool. SEA acts as the main control effect, and 90% of the sub-coins consumed are directly destroyed, making the circulation of sub-coins even less.

The mother currency SSS is mainly the empowerment of pledge dividends, and its output is not much when its empowerment effect is average.

StarSharks Model Introduction

From Footprint Analytics , the number of active users has been growing at a constant rate from January to March, indicating that the The SEA consumed by field time is also growing at a constant speed. However, since the beginning of March, the price of SEA has started to trend downwards, reflecting that after several months of accumulation, the quantity of SEA produced in the market is showing an acceleration trend, and the output exceeds consumption, which will soon be reflected in the price drop .

Sure enough, starting in early April, StarSharks ignited the fuse after canceling daily tasks and the rental market, and the number of users began to fall off a cliff. Therefore, for the GameFi project, model analysis and data tracking can reflect the cycle of the project to a certain extent.

Footprint Analytics - StarSharks Token Price vs Active Users

StarSharks is going against the current in the downward trend, although it has not escaped death spiral. In this ups and downs, StarSharks' own advantages and disadvantages are enough for other projects on the GameFi  track to learn from and learn from:

Advantages:

Due to the current small amount of GameFi funds, hundreds of active users can revitalize the project in the early stage

The project combines the background narrative to support players' expectations for the GameFi project from March to April, and has won the interest and trust of a large number of users

The team has successfully grasped the turning point of the two periods and returned the cost of violent gold The cycle is adjusted to a stable gold return cycle. Under the maintenance of the community and large households, the spread of the wealth creation effect is stable

Disadvantages:

Although the life cycle has been lengthened, it has not changed the overall structure in essence

The follow-up new update rhythm is not timely Keeping up, causing some profitable users to flee, disrupting the balance

Second, what are the possibilities for the future of GameFi

StarSharks did not escape the ending of the death spiral in the end, but it also reflects from the side: this simple and rude P2E model with 5 to 7 days payback has been gradually eliminated, and it is more inclined to have certain quality assurance and pay back High-quality chain games with a period between 30  and 90 days.

When everyone was looking forward to it, GameFi 1.0, which officially entered the second half, did not seem to have a very impressive performance in Q2 this year. Whether it is from the number of online games or the overall game assets, there is a slow decline trend.

Footprint Analytics - Monthly Number of New Projects

So, what kind of model will enable GameFi to develop for a long time in the future?

1. 3A games with content quality first

The so-called 3A games refer to some high-quality Development cost, high-volume, high-quality games. However, 3A  has no objective criteria for judging. Therefore, in the GameFi field, chain games are generally evaluated based on the strength, background, project vision and game demo of the project team. Currently recognized 3A games include BigTime, Illuvium, StarTerra, Sidus, Shrapnel, Phantom Galaxies, etc.

These 3A games have obvious advantages and often get huge attention in the early stage of the project, but there are still various problems that are criticized by players:

The development process is too slow

Compared with Web3, the content and image quality are only slightly superior, far from the level of traditional games

p>After IDO and INO, there is not enough empowerment for game assets

Roadmap is blurred or not fully implemented, etc.

Some published In the first half of this year, the market value of the token project also followed the overall GameFi  market downhill.

Footprint Analytics - Monthly Number of New Projects

Even so, 3A games are still worth looking forward to, because in the GameFi field Play-to -earn has always been controversial, but high-quality game content and quality have always been what players want to see. Therefore, as long as there are some good news and activities in these 3A games based on this, they can increase players’ confidence in them to a certain extent.

BigTime often holds some parties or competitions in today's games

Illuvium was able to sell all 20,000 pieces of land in a very short time in early June

In the future, there will be a period of time when 3A games will flourish. MOBA, RPG, SLG, etc. will create different scenes and different content according to their own positioning. There is no need to think too much about P2E issues in the game, but to use really interesting gameplay and content to attract users to really experience the game and enjoy the difference brought by blockchain games. Maybe users have to wait for a while, maybe next year Q2, Q3, or even longer, but this will be the direction of the purest game.

2. Narrative-based X2E products

StepN is a well-deserved ace project this year. There was a wave of Move-to-earn both inside and outside the circle. At the same time, it also created the subdivision of X2E , Learn-to-earn, Sleep-to-earn, Watch-to-earn, Sing-to-earn...

According to Footprint Analytics , although the X2E of other models is still in the initial conceptual stage, the StepN of M2E led a wave of upsurge in May, and other imitators are emerging in an endless stream.

Footprint Analytics - X-to-earn Token Price

But except for the Pokémon game like Genopets, other X2E's projects, such as StepN, Korean running shoes SNKRZ, singing Melody, rope skipping FitR, etc., are more like Web3 products with money-making attributes. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the social attributes brought by product functions to users.

As a big scene in the Metaverse, SocialFi   has always been what players are looking for. Big world chat, leaderboard comparison, game event competition, and guild battle content can all give players a flow experience beyond Earn. At present, there are not many real GameFi  in this direction, and perhaps many casual and card-type chain games can be combined and tried from this aspect.

3. The Fi game of interest transition

No matter what the future holds, the mainstream form at the current stage Still based on the Play-to-earn model. The consensus of Web3 players playing gold is still deeply imprinted in their minds, so more project parties are still iteratively updating the economic model.

The dual currency model that has been verified by the market is a system that has been verified by the market at present. Therefore, it can be expected that the future GameFi model will still use a large number of dual-coin or multi-coin models, but at the same time it is necessary to set up the  DAO   treasury and NFT trading market, and to add innovations in different links. More cautious settings.

It should be noted that the NFT  trading market must be the project party's own trading market, which can at least ensure that taxation is the main source of income for the project party at the current stage , rather than relying entirely on the funds of players who entered late.

Because NFT will be an indispensable and very important part of GameFi in the future, the project party can try to use NFT props as the main output of the game, Whether it is ERC-721, ERC-1155 or EIP-3664, a new protocol that can evolve.

The second most important thing is the framework design of the game model, which is related to the sustainability of the project. A simple cycle like GameFi 1.0 that uses tokens and NFTs between spawning monsters and improving character attributes will appear too thin. This model is more like a Ponzi-style framework, where the late entry funds continue to contribute to the previous funds, and the project side puts the token selling pressure on NFT, and when the NFT reservoir overflows, it will fall into a death spiral.

Sample: One of the design ideas of W labs GameFi economic model

To enrich the game ecology and prolong the life cycle of the game, it is necessary to There are models that do more extensions horizontally and vertically. When the power of the game's own internal circulation is large enough, it will generate centrifugal force that can get rid of the inertia of falling into the death vortex.

Lateral extension

The horizontal extension The setting used to enrich the basic scene is a framework parallel to the original model. Here you can add more token and NFT equipment output and consumption scenarios, such as setting the equipment life mechanism and repair standards; or layering Free-to-earn and Play-to-earn players to Set different gameplay.

Longitudinal extension

Longitudinal extension can be divided into 2 schemas up and down. Among them, the upward extension is used to solve the problem of too few optional characters for players. 99% of players rely on the single mode of mining, withdrawing and selling to make profits, so more scenes can be added. For example, adding advanced dungeons, PVE, and PVP, and these scenarios must be differentiated, and more empowerment will be given through interests and consensus.

The downward extension is different from the upward extension. It prolongs the life cycle of the entire project by greatly increasing the number of props and gameplay. For example, the fragments and gems of props are added to increase the functions of synthesis and decomposition. The downward framework can borrow a lot from the gameplay of traditional games.

3. Conclusion

GameFi 1.0 proves Web 2 and Web 3 players after a cycle At least at this stage, there are still great attribute differences. This kind of partial Ponzi is a drainage method in the early stage of the project, but it is not feasible to rely solely on the external circulation mode. If the project party cannot find its own internal circulation method to absorb the previous bubbles, it will be difficult to escape the fate of the death spiral.

Currently, most of the GameFi projects are still not playable enough, and the technology does not reflect the advantages of the blockchain. Therefore, a transitional GameFi model can only be constructed from the perspective of Web 3 users and economic models. The project life cycle constructed by this model is not long, and the development of each public chain is not ideal. Some public chains have many games but the quality is not good, and some public chains have a popular game but the ecosystem on the chain is very unbalanced.

The future of GameFi needs to find a way out in terms of game content, gameplay, and image quality. If there is a strong background blessing, it will be more effective. On this basis, the community consensus can be continuously maintained to extend the life cycle of the game player. Whether it is a 3A game with better content and picture quality, an X2E project starting from a narrative, or a game with a deeper economic model, it may be a new starting point for GameFi to bottom out.

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