Thread by @amytongwu

1/ After speaking with several large game publishers the past wks it’s clear that @AxieInfinity has lit a fire around the adoption of blockchain in gaming ($10M+ rev / day will do it). Some takeaways 👇

2/ Every major gaming publisher is exploring blockchain, overcoming suspicions that it’s a solution in search of a problem, and also navigating the challenges of who/how to partner in a crowded landscape and what questions to ask. Many compliance-related ones have come up.

3/ Some practical questions: Will the partner provide compliant fiat-crypto on/off-ramp? In how many countries? Will they support payments in-app? Tax reporting for creators? Can they act as a merchant of record? What products are they whitelabeling? What’s actually live?

4/ Game publishers will need 2 layers of blockchain partners: (1) a compliant infrastructure provider for the wallet, payments, NFT minting, marketplace, and (2) a blockchain

5/ There are 3 predominant blockchain game strategies in a crawl, walk, run progression: (1) Take your (valuable) IP and mint NFTs with it, generate merchandising-like revenues

6/ (2) Move some or all in-game items on-chain as NFTs, enable trading in a closed or open exchange. (1) and (2) largely capitalizes on the novelty of NFTs and players who care about the perception of ownership

7/ (3) Full play-to-earn economics, launching tokenized currencies and tradable game assets on-chain. I think (3) can deepen game economy and liquidity a lot. Today, a player would struggle to spend $1M in-game. That’s a flaw in game economy design that blockchain can help solve

8/ We’re also just starting to explore in-game tokenomics / P2E design. It’s complex with unintended edge cases. Is F2P a better system than pay-to-win? How to design for both F2P and P2E mechanics? How to balance hard vs soft currency in-game? Can you support 1st-party guilds?

9/ If you’re a game designer thinking about launching on-chain, would love to hear your thoughts!