It’s much higher risk bet to focus on AAA games because not only are they exceptionally expensive to make, but they also take a LOT of time and talent to build.
And they too can fail. Look no further than recently released Skull & Bones and Kill The Suicide Squad, both of which have failed - and from large AAA studios. Compare to Helldivers2 and PalWorld, neither of which is a AAA game, and cost under $10M to make.
There are quite a few quality AA games coming to Web3, and in various genres. e.g. Shrapnel, Domi Online etc. Thing is that all of the noteworthy games coming to Web3 and of AAA or AA quality ilk, are made by experienced and well-funded teams who can already afford to fund them. And most of them don’t need these immaterial pocket change grants from chains. And so, they have no incentive to switch chains because not even the tech & gas are USPs now. I mentioned this in my earlier posts above.
This is why I cautioned about how to approach this GCP in terms of incentives for game devs. Bribing game devs to migrate over from another chain, isn’t a sustainable plan in the long term. And so, what’s left is to 1) identify the games already in the ARB ecosystem, and finds ways to grow them. That’s where I believe Treasure and others come in 2) curate worthy games already building or about to, with a 2 yr span to release, and fund what it takes to not only get them done sooner, but also within the realms of the ARB ecosystem.
Since becoming involved in this GCP discussion, I have taken a closer look at the games in the ARB ecosystem; as well as ARB proper (no Treasure affiliation); and what I see, besides the underperforming games, is that these games tend not to pass the “why should I play this?” smell test. Tokenomics (another issue) aside, when you remove P2E and farming from the equation, if the game isn’t fun, there’s no reason to play. Also, if you remove tokens from the equation, why would a Web3 degen play it?
Yes, this is probably my thesis on why I believe that making several smaller ($250K - $10M) bets (indie & AA) is better than making larger bets due to the failure rate of games in general.
Let me give you an example. Since 2022, when I created a Web3 startup, separate from my primary studio, we have been working to release an MMORPG for Web3. That’s a game that, since inception many years ago to today, has cost almost $30M to make. It didn’t cost me that to make because I had bought it. But my investment is already hovering over $10M, and with another 12-14 months left to deploy, with a token listing coming later this year, it will cost another $2M for GTM, and approx $1M+ per month post-release to operate because, as an MMO, it’s a live service game - the most expensive games to operate.
Those aren’t small numbers. And they certainly aren’t the type of numbers that you would expect a chain to give in grants - though I do know of grants (they are actually investments) of up to $15M by some chains.
So, of what use is a micro grant to a game dev like me or my friends, just to switch to a chain - or even to build on a chain that I normally wouldn’t? It’s all about perspective. To date, I haven’t taken a single penny from any chain because I wanted the flexibility of building on a chain that not only has use case tech (and low gas) for my games; but also which comes with a built-in community because I know that I will most certainly lose a good percentage of my core Web2 gamers when I release a Web3 or Web 2.5 game.
And so, when you start thinking about playing in the realm of curating games, you have to decide if you’re going big or just going for the low hanging fruit. The latter is why there are so many subpar cash grab games in Web3, even as better Web2 games are languishing on Steam and EGS because nobody is playing them due to the glut of games on those platforms.
GCP has some challenges ahead, we know this. As I have said before, people need to look past the amount of money and realize that this proposal is basically setting up and parking a BD + venture team - on ARB. That’s no small thing; and the DAO is basically looking at building Treasure 2.0 in order to boost gaming adoption of the chain.
That said, I still wonder why all this is even needed when the foundation could simply have put up a gaming fund, and hire external BD people to curate and fund games - just like what other chains have done. Then again, those chains are run by people who see games as a serious enterprise. But it is what it is, and this is where we are now. And so, forward and onward. The only easy day was yesterday.
