Web3 Game Adoption Hinges on Free-to-Play Approach, Says YGG Co-Founder

cryptonews.com:

To increase adoption, in 2024, most successful Web3 games will move away from the play-to-earn (P2E) model to free-to-play, according to Gabby Dizon, the co-founder of Yield Guild Games.

Dizon told Cointelegraph that a new wave of Web3 games will be taking over soon.

Now we see games like Axie Infinity Classic, where players must buy a minimum of three non-fungible token (NFT) Axies to play. The new games will want to do away with technical and financial entry barriers.

The point is, Dizon argued, that in order for mass adoption to happen, games need to be free to play first.

He said that,

“There’s an evolution of the business model where the games are free to play, and then at some point along the way while you’re playing, then you’re able to mint an NFT or start earning tokens, but a lot of new games aren’t really starting with requiring NFT ownership at the start.”

And it’s not an unexpected pivot, it seems.

Dizon said that there is a wider effort among Web3 game developers to put gameplay first and tokenomics second.

Additionally, there is an issue of speculative Web3 gaming bubbles – and this pivot will be a part of the solution. Per Dizon, developers are focusing more on making games that players will continue playing,  reinvesting money in the game, thus preventing “the in-game economy from becoming a cash-generating machine.”

There are plenty more developments on the horizon, Dizon said – adding that things are “going to get really interesting.”

The last two years have been unfavorable to blockchain gaming. The crypto market was in a freezing winter for quite a while. Meanwhile, values associated with Axie Infinity dropped in 2021.

In 2022, gamers continued leaving the space, citing the above-mentioned issues: too much