I'd like to make the argument that web3 in its most idealistic form and blockchain gaming in its popular current form are fundamentally incompatible with each other.
Lets agree on web3
Before proceeding it is important to define exactly what we mean by web3. It is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down and it seems to mean various things in different contexts. In popular usage the term web3 appears to mean 'uses a blockchain' but lets take that out of the picture. Fundamentally most web3 idealists will claim a perfect World-Wide-Web-3.0 would provide:
- Control and Sovereignty - Users retain full control over their own data and can control how it is used. Access to protocols is not regulated by anyone.
- Choice - Users are free to move between protocols and platforms and are also free to modify existing ones to better suit their needs. The protocol software must be open source to permit this.
- Ownership and Participation - Users collectively own the protocols they use and have a say in how these will evolve in the future.
An example of something that meets all of these points today is well governed blockchain protocol. Users retain control over their data in the sense that everything they submit is public and any user running a full node can observe the state of the ledger and submit transactions. The chain can be forked at any time and, if it demonstrates an advantage over the previous version, users can migrate to a new fork. If effective governance is in place then users could participate in governance to direct future developments in the protocol.
While this may meet web3 idealism, at the end of the day it only really offers a replacement to one tiny fraction of the current web - public peer-to-peer payments. There is still a long way to go.
Current state of blockchain gaming
As it stands in 2022 the majority of blockchain games are using the technology for two main purposes:
- Feature gating based on token/NFT ownership
- Rewarding users with tokens/NFTs
In the first case access to features, either cosmetic or relating to the gameplay itself, is gated. Unlocking these gates requires purchasing or otherwise obtaining a token. These are the micro-transaction and DLC models from modern games with ownership delegated to a blockchain layer. It does offer some advantages such as an open market and portability for tokens.
The second is the so called play-to-earn model which has its origins in the MMO gaming world. Players can engage in activities which consume time and/or require skill to produce in-game rewards. These rewards might form in-game economies and may themselves un-gate certain features. The blockchain forms the ledger for ownership of rewards and allows these to integrate with the external blockchain based economies.
My criticisms
At this point I think it is pretty clear how these models are incompatible with web3 but lets go over them in detail.
If users truly have choice then many might chose to play a version of the game where unlocking features doesn't require purchasing anything at all. In fact I imagine all users would prefer to play this version of the game. The feature gating model requires games be both closed source and have some kind of DRM that takes this choice away from players and puts it in the hands of the game developers.
The second is even more insidious. User clients cannot interact with the blockchain directly to obtain rewards since they could modify their local copy to produce rewards with no effort. The game state needs to be globally agreed upon by all players but is far too complex to exist on the blockchain layer itself. The only solution is a server maintaining the state of players and deciding when rewards should be minted on the blockchain. In this case we have one centralized body deciding the rules of the game and retaining full control over the economy. This is how all play-to-earn games operate today. The users have no control, no choice and no ownership.
Is there any hope for web3 gaming?
The current trends of micro-transactions and play-to-earn are popular because they are potentially very profitable for the developers. But there is a whole class of games that have received very little attention at all: peer-to-peer games.
These have captivated humans for thousands of years and many types (e.g. trading card games, board games, gambling) are simple enough to implement directly on top of existing blockchain protocols.
Users retain choice because at the moment they decide to engage with another player they can collectively agree on the rules they wish to play with. Take for example a battle-style trading card game. If I am playing with a friend then we can decide that the game is more fun if a particular card is nerfed or the rules are tweaked in some other way. The company that printed the card has no say in the matter.
In Conclusion
I'm a big fan of gaming and a believer in the virtues of technology based on web3 ideals. I would love to see some pioneers break out of the money-grabbing rut that the blockchain gaming world seems to be in at the moment and build something fun, novel and empowering. Shout out to Dark Forest (love your work).