Former YC investor, now entrepreneur: What are the values and issues of the full-chain game?

Original Author: Tax_Cuts

Original Translation: Wenser, Odaily Star Daily

Editor's Note: As one of the hopes for Mass Adoption in the Web3 field, full-chain games have always been a hot topic of market attention. However, due to factors such as entry barriers, operating costs, and game playability, they have not yet become mainstream in the industry, and the user base is relatively limited. Odaily Star Daily has found an article from former Alliance DAO, YC investor, and current co-founder of full-chain game Primodium, Tax, sharing the value of full-chain games and the existing issues for everyone to consider and analyze.

4 Practical Problems Solved by Full-Chain Games

First of all, new products need to solve problems that could not be solved before, otherwise existing products will occupy all market share. Fortunately, full-chain games are a blue ocean field, with not many producers competing for attention in this field. In other words, we do not need to compete with Web2 game giants like Rockstar for player attention.

However, to achieve this, it is crucial to ensure that new problems are effectively addressed.

For full-chain games, this means providing players with a new type of experience that cannot be found in other games. Full-chain games are relatively slow and clumsy to operate, so the experience they provide needs to be significantly different from traditional games, with its value mainly reflected in the following aspects:

Value Point One: Real Value Assets

Strictly speaking, encrypted assets are just numbers, but due to the decentralization (strength of the network) consensus, we can truly give them economic value. For traditional games, giving economic value to their game assets often depends on the support of large mature companies. However, full-chain games come with this attribute from day one.

Value Point Two: Value Transfer Freedom

In traditional games, game assets are often restricted by custody supervision and technical limitations. Developers are usually unable to custody US dollar cash funds, and banks do not have API interfaces for developers to build corresponding applications. In contrast, full-chain games allow players to transfer assets through in-game actions.

Value Point Three: Betting Chip Properties

Betting chips can make originally boring gameplay (due to its intrinsic gaming nature) more interesting, with poker often being a typical example. The gameplay of full-chain games can be simple, but betting chips can make the game results more anticipated, as they are based on the cryptocurrency system (closely related to the market performance of cryptocurrencies).

Value Point Four: Removal of Consumption Restrictions

Traditional game channels often have certain restrictions on in-game purchases. For example, the in-app consumption limit is $99, which makes the user experience of purchasing any in-game asset costing more than about 0.03 ETH (about $100) very poor. In contrast, the cryptocurrency market has no consumption restrictions, with sufficient market depth, allowing full-chain games to continue operating in this risk environment.

Ideal and Reality of Full-Chain Games

3 Implicit Issues Existing in Full-Chain Games

You may have noticed that common advantages of full-chain games such as decentralization, persistence, and composability have been omitted. In my opinion, these "features" of solutions often do not reflect the actual problems of full-chain game players, so they are not good reasons to build on-chain games.

Issue One: Decentralization of Power

Players often want more game updates and content. Real-time operations in traditional video games are an important part of game studio work. Decentralized games will weaken the central role of "game studios". In traditional games, data balance and weakening are usually done for the benefit of players. Vitalik's experience with the "centralization story" of World of Warcraft games has its merits, but in the long run, unbalanced gameplay will hinder more players from joining. However, for the operation of the in-game economic system, trustlessness will play an important role in its viability. In other words, an economic system that does not rely on a single role is healthier for the game ecosystem.

Issue Two: Game Persistence

The lifeline of full-chain games lies in their click-through rate. It is quite rare for a game, whether traditional or full-chain, to be able to run for ten years and maintain a certain player retention rate. The problem with most games is not that they go offline, but that players lose interest in them. Just because it can "exist forever on the blockchain" does not mean more people are interested in playing the game.

Issue Three: Composability

Writable plugins are beneficial for creating more interesting player dynamics, but full-chain games are not the only way to achieve this feature. Web2 games themselves have usable editing plugins, but many people do not use them because players prefer to consume game content rather than produce content for games. Players may have other reasons to participate in game content production, but composability is not an absolute reason for playing games.

Conclusion: A Completely New Gaming Experience is Key

Overall, full-chain games can solve problems that Web2 (even a combination of Web2 traditional games and blockchain games in a Web2.5 type) games cannot solve. However, most of these problems largely depend on the primary principle of "why everything must be built on-chain."

However, the most important point is that full-chain games should be able to provide a completely new gaming experience. But today, almost all encrypted games have not been developed with this approach in mind. They are either just traditional games with token systems (commonly referred to as Web2.5 games); or completely on-chain, providing regular gaming experiences. In the long run, no real players will experience these games just for consumption.

Therefore, we still have a lot to do, and full-chain games still have a long way to go.

Associated Labels Full-Chain Games, Value Assets, Betting Chips, Consumption Restrictions, Persistence, Composability, Gaming Experience ChainCatcher reminds readers to rationally view blockchain, enhance risk awareness, be vigilant against various virtual token issuances and speculation. All content on the site is only market information or the views of relevant parties and does not constitute any form of investment advice. If sensitive information is found in the content on the site, you can click "Report", and we will handle it promptly. 　　Disclaimer: Includes third-party opinions. No financial advice. See Risk Warning.