Some thoughts on the recent "web3" gaming hype

It's probably no news to other gamers that there's a lot of new web3 games being released and are in the making, many of these labeled triple A games by prominent makers in the web2 space. I've personally not had much time to delve into them but have been planning on taking the time to write about some I find interesting in the near future, but before I do that I wanted to take some time to write about some thoughts I have about what people constitute as #web3 in general lately.

While this post may not be specifically about gaming, it is one of the spaces I do have quite a degenerate experience in growing up and often find myself playing some games on my free time here and there, although lately it's just been the odd Gods Unchained matches here and there and maybe some dumb mobile games to make time go faster.

The name #web3 has in general been shat on quite hard in the space, we've seen actors use it to drive attention and traffic to their projects even though they have a history of having gone against web3 pretty hard. People like Justin Sun probably don't need an introduction to you Hive readers but he's been one of those desperately trying to brag about having money to buy up things or support people who've unfairly lost money in the name of web3. Quite frankly it's very disappointing that these kind of people have this amount of money to begin with, even though I'm sure it's mostly exaggeration from his part and empty promises with caveats if push came to shove, they still posses quite a bit of money either way. Knowing what kind of projects he's started or bought and that the markets keep accepting them as web3 when they should be treating them similar to currencies such as hex by blacklisting them from sites like coinmarketcap/coingecko, it's not surprising that he does have money, money many blind traders have given to him by trying to profit off of his coins and persona. Money that's allowing him to continue doing what he does in plan sight while he continues selling of his pre-mines openly and using that to invest in other currencies he most likely knows have a better chance at survival and to thrive than his own projects.

Either way, without making it mostly about him I'm going to get on to my next part which is relevant to his situation. I personally don't agree with the way some people use and brand web3. Many may think web3 and think all it means is that assets and tokens are on a blockchain and while that is true with most web3 projects I think to be established as web3 fully you need to guarantee a few more things that many fail on.

Freedom is one of them. In the web3 space this should mean that people are allowed to speak their minds and be heard, do what they want with their assets and no one being able to stop them. Here already we have to take a step back and think about what this means because outside of Hive a lot of these things don't really mean much to people where most #web3 projects make use of web2 for communication, planning and organization. Most projects don't have an immutable text-based blockchain that can give them the freedom of speech the way Hive offers. We can see this on Hive for instance with projects such as @splinterlands where players of all sorts can weigh in on their thoughts, praise, criticism and ideas with others and anyone can pitch in whether they're welcomed to or not. You can track what founders, employees, supporters and fans are saying and what they're supporting with their funds through the blockchain. The same goes not for most other projects in the space. Most discussions, plans and decisions happen behind closed doors with people having no say in the matter. Even some projects that build some kind of governance tokens to help with it often fall short as the distribution was unfair to begin with, but I'll get to that point later.
Point being with everything being transparent you give readers, players and possible investors a chance to do research and get informed in a different way than those just following big numbers or "hype" in #web2 which in many ways is quite easy to fake. Here you can see that someone speaking about a game is also invested in it, even if they may have spread their assets up over different accounts or hide them away they still have some kind of reputation that's different from the easily faked one on web2 because they have immutable history on the chain that may weigh in on their words and actions that others can take in for free. In web2 if something suspicious is going on those voices could easily be blocked, muted or overwhelmed with fake/bought activity thus it makes it easier for bad actors to get away with a lot of value if that was there plan all along or suddenly changed.

There's a lot more that can be said about freedom but I think you get the gist of it, they're branding themselves as #web3 while only using the bare minimum of what it entails to me personally.

Fairness.
Web3 to me means community, the "layer 0" if you will, which we need to use as a slogan more often to be honest cause there's no community out there the way we are. Close to no community has managed to get away from centralization and web2 the same way we have and not only left them in the dust but are now thriving in comparison. This is web3 the way it's mean to be and while it is disappointing that the markets and space haven't paid enough attention considering the marketcap of our ecosystem, it's inevitable to eventually correct considering what else exists above us that's anything but web3.
When I think about fairness I don't think about what some people may consider "socialism", in proof of stake at least it's still quite capitalistic but it doesn't mean that there's no hope for people to gain value from it and looking at web2 compared to what we have here, the odds of doing good far outweigh the odds of web2 where only a tiny fraction of a percentage of users actually make a living and an even tinier percentage of that do very well.

Anyway, back to my point and the reason I posted this in this community.

Many of the upcoming games may be branded web3 but you have got to wonder where the money is coming from to have them be "Triple A" games off the gate, and more importantly, what will they do to regain that investment and profit off of it.

Yes, they may use blockchain technology for ingame assets, tokens, etc, players may very well earn something compared to web2 games, but that's like comparing a slightly less evil wizard to Voldemort. Excuse my Harry Potter reference as I'm currently watching them cause my gf somehow hasn't read nor seen them before. Web2 games are the worst of the worst these days. They've become much worse than they were in the past and a lot of people are waking up to what they've become. Here's a video I'd recommend you watching to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about:

Similar to the early days of esports and "older folks" brushing it off and laughing about people calling it a "sport", others have noticed that there's a lot of people who enjoy gaming, the increase in not just players but also money being spent within gaming has resulted in most gaming companies being managed by those looking to extract the most value out of their players. It doesn't even end there neither, it even touches on gambling and how games are turning people into gamblers in mindfucking ways through lootboxes and all of that sort.

So what made me want to make this post, well, the way I see it, we're now entering the zone of when these game makers have noticed that there's also money to be had in "web3". While web3 gaming was also inevitable I'd like to warn you that it's not all going to be what web3 really stands for.

These are some of the first serious games now entering the scene, by serious I mean with big money behind them, venture capital, shareholders, etc. While they may use some of the aspects of web3 such as giving you ownership of assets, letting you trade them freely with others, etc, don't for a second think that they have the players best interest in mind. I can almost guarantee you that most of them will implement lootboxes they'll sell you and in general most of the profits and revenue will end up in their pockets while players are left with scraps.

Now of course what I'm saying may not reflect on all of them, there may be indie-games or some with better intentions but it's going to take quite a lot of time, trials by error, etc, until players find something more fair and reflecting of how web3 should have been from the beginning.

The same goes for social media platforms and other aspects of web3 as well. Bringing back the example of Justin Sun, most new projects being released that somehow instantly land on big exchanges and have huge evaluations in marketcap get there because they already have insane funding from VC's, the same VC's that got a big supply of the tokens cheaper than you'll ever get it and a supple where the founders own most of the stake. This is web2 the same way web2 has always been where most users are locked out of the early investment phase that just enriches those already rich enough and continues to give them unfair advantages. The new wave of web3 gaming won't be any different because these same VC's have seen what big gaming companies are doing these days.

Okay but what can be done different?
Well, it's not easy to determine that right now but I think it all boils down to fairness and "soft launches" with an evolving slope rather than those coming out the gate already polished and heavily invested. What I mean by that is look at @splinterlands, they started off small and have grown into a very large gaming company. They gave players the opportunity to invest with them from the very beginning and have shared the success with them. On top of it all they do care about the community as can be seen through their communication, etc. One of the great things about NFT's and ownership is the usecases you can give those assets in other games within the same company or partnerships with others. You want to invest in companies that are going to make sure these assets will hold their value and that they profit at the same time as you, not profit from you and won't care about the future of the games because they've already gotten what they were looking for in the beginning.

Let's also take a look at @threespeak's founder @theycallmedan for instance, not only is he making the SPK network fairly distributed to all Hive Power holders but he's doing the same for the game Ragnarok. He could easily have given himself 30-50% of all tokens and only airdropped part of them to Hive power holders, I'm sure at this point in time with the current mindset most people wouldn't have minded. Instead he's choosing to put his money where his mouth is and possibly buy up his own token fairly along with everyone else speculating or wanting to support it. What this means is that if the SPK network and game do well, he profits from it along with everyone else. It means that he's not going to profit off of you by selling 10% (as example) on the next pump to re-coup his costs and initial investment as other VC's/founders may do to avoid risk, he's all in on it the way others may be who now first may buy up some of his tokens.

Now these are all just examples of course and you shouldn't judge people's actions based on what I'm bringing up here, but they're great comparisons to what is coming into the space from companies and people using the web3 brand. Just something to keep in mind.

I'd personally look much more for games that may start small and have potential to grow, improve and scale where companies profit off of its success rather than most of the profit coming from it's early userbase who are getting breadcrumbs in comparison and are fine with it. I'll be looking for games with longetivity, assets that can be used in many ways and have many different utilities and of course signs that the games want what's best for the players compared to always looking out for their own interest with each decision and update.

To end this already long rambly post, you could also compare these upcoming projects with Hive. Sure those with the most stake have the most to lose and the most to gain, but it makes it fair to anyone and everyone to become invested in all aspects rather than just a small part of it. If you buy in you get the same advantages as everyone else holding it, you're not buying in at lower costs than the general public, the money of you buying in going to founders/VC's but to other regular stakeholders. Similarly Hive let's you earn your way into its main token, so a good comparison would be if these gaming companies let players earn their way into their main token as well or will it be strictly assets, that comparison could be like posting/curating on hive would only let you earn L2 tokens while only investors/block producers are allowed to earn Hive which I'd be strictly against.

Anyway, I'll be keeping an eye for some games and speaking my mind about them in the near future, hope you'll be interested in reading what I think about them. I'll make sure to mention it's not financial advice :P but will try being transparent about how much I'm investing in them if at all.