two & half gamers session #7 – Is Axie infinity dead? LTV in crypto gaming & web3 UA/marketing

Welcome to our #7 episode of two & half gamers! In this episode we covered various topics:

• Burning questions about block chain games
• What is the current state of the friction funnel for a block-chain based game?
• Play to Earn – Play & Earn – Play to Own

Panelists: Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg, Matej Lančarič

Special Guest: Nicolas Vereecke

As NFTs, Crypto and blockchain gaming are filling up the headlines we are doing a special episode on the current state of crypto gaming – not the peak of November 2021 but the fresh look at the end of Feb 2022.

Play to Earn – Play & Earn – Play to Own

I would start that discussion with the point that  the current consolidation in the big crypto games is more and more pointing to the fact that play to earn is unsustainable as there is “no free lunch” Therefore the buzzword is changing to Play & Earn or even Play to Own as the “earn” part is becoming harder and harder to realize – this is mostly seen in the depreciation of the Axie economy. One other milestone can be considered the recent blog post from Philip La Phil’s Views: Axie Infinity Economy and Reasons to Play where admits this and refocuses the view on the original model of any game – to create fun and engaging experience as the primary reward for the player – not an investment vehicle.

“we will not be optimizing our game or experiences to drive short-term returns as it’s simply not sustainable”

“we will focus on is creating a balanced game economy with proper sources and sinks, just like non-blockchain games have done for years.”

Does this imply that Skymavis wants to compete with companies like Supercell, Playrix or King? The biggest innovation of the free to play model is removing the initial friction of a payment before the player plays the game – the first wave of crypto games have even bigger friction funnels on top of reversing this problem.

What is the current state of the friction funnel for a block-chain based game?

Friction to play a crypto game: current models:

Buy crypto assets first to even play – Browser/PC only (Axie infinity, Crypto Raiders) Download the game for free (find out about the secret crypto layer somehow from the game website – sell NFTs there) (Thetan Arena) Have the game on the store and streamline the funnel to crypto wallet Skyweaver Have a functional F2P game with F2P economy and implement the crypto layer into a later stage of the player progression – Future in hybrid? (Chromatic Souls: Afk Raid, Axie Origin?)

Burning questions about block chain games:

UA

Open economy

NFT design

Gass Fees

Business model – the most burning of them all!

Listen in to learn more! 

Please share feedback and comments – matej@lancaric.me