GameFi’s constantly evolving model could make “today’s AAA game companies look like peanuts,” said Jack O’Holleran, CEO of Skale, a multichain Ethereum-native network that powers Web3 games. In fact, blockchain-based games and metaverse projects are showing resilience amid a winter that has dragged down many players in the crypto industry, with $1.3 billion raised in the last quarter, as reported by DappRadar.
Finding a sustainable GameFi model, however, remains a challenge. User experience ranks amid the top struggles in the industry, mainly because of gas fees and the complexity of buying, owning and trading NFTs. “Charging users fees every time they transact or trigger a smart contract creates a disincentive to play,” noted O’Holleran, adding that “in order to appeal to the mass market, there’s a ton of work that needs to be done around usability.”
Despite usability challenges, Web3 games accounted for nearly half of blockchain activity across 50 networks in the last quarter, according to DappRadar, with 912,000 daily Unique Active Wallets interacting with games’ smart contracts in September only.
Most common in-game business models include play-to-earn (P2E), which allows players to earn rewards such as tokens and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and play-to-own (P2O), which is a more detailed version of P2E, providing…
