1/ .@jeremysliew and I are thrilled to lead the $100M Series A of @Splitgate, the competitive AAA arena shooter that’s taken the gaming world by storm. In 1 month post console launch they’ve had over 13M downloads.
2/ CEO Ian Proulx first built @Splitgate, a “Halo meets Portal” game, as his senior undergrad project at Stanford. In the first ever playtest, friends played for 5 hrs straight during finals and Ian knew he found the fun.
3/ The next 5 years, Ian and co-founder Nicholas Bagamian grinded on a ramen budget. They launched on PC in 2019, absorbing player feedback before launching last month on console, and reaching 200k concurrents within 3 wks
4/ Ian and Nick are truly special founders with the vision to build a generational gaming platform, starting with @Splitgate. We at @lightspeedvp are thrilled to join existing investors @GalaxyDigitalHQ and VGames. Our investment thesis below 👇
1/ As a gaming and a crypto investor, I get asked sometimes what’s the bigger opportunity. Well today, there are ~10M active DeFi users, 100-200M cryptocurrency holders. There are 2B gamers in the world today.
2/ Annual sales in gaming was $175B last yr and larger than music + video combined. The top 50 game franchises have all done $2B+ in sales. Crypto projects are *worth* more but games generate more revenues and have more users today.
3/ And comparing still to social networks, the biggest game platforms have 100-200M MAUs (Roblox, Steam, PlayStation). FB has 2.8B MAUs. I believe gaming and social network use cases are the best ones to bring the next 1B users to web3.
1/ Play-to-earn in blockchain gaming. Some thoughts on what I think it is, what it is not, and the future
2/ What it is: Enabled millions of people around the world a way to earn more money than they had before. The @AxieInfinity, @YieldGuild and other Axie guild teams have truly changed lives, in the Philippines, Brazil, Venezuela and beyond
3/ What it is: Brought legitimacy to what has been a decade of grey and black market where players have grinded for in-game items, gold, and services for other players who were willing to pay
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?
1/ After spending more time in the @AxieInfinity ecosystem, I feel that the heart of the play-to-earn (P2E) model lies in the new guild system, like @YieldGuild
2/ Guilds have been at the heart of MMO/open world games for decades. Players grind and chop trees not because it’s fun, but because they value their identity and reputation within their guild
3/ P2E has created the 2.0 Guild, revenue-generating organizations that buy, breed, lease assets, and provide employment, in addition to community. They can solve the cold start challenge for new NFT games, and also become dominant net new asset buyers (Eg Axies)
1/ @axieinfinity. It took them 3+ yrs to make their first $10M in revenue and 5 days to make their latest $10M. Runrating $1B+/mo of GMV. 350k DAUs. What is going on here…
3/ People compare @axieinfinity to @PokemonGoApp but other than core meta (cute collectible characters with distinct properties) and battle mechanics, the game hook is entirely different.
4/ @PokemonGoApp is free-to-play (F2P) where players collect (“gotta catchem all”). @axieinfinity is an incredible execution of play-to-earn (P2E), where players earn. There are grinders who earn and spenders who battle, and players doing both.
1/ As a gaming + crypto investor, I’ve been thinking about the intersection of the 2 for months. We’ve yet to see a major game or publisher adopt blockchain tech. Yet it’s really intriguing. Why has this been so hard?
2/ First what could crypto in a game look like? In-game digital currency + ICOs, fiat-crypto payments, items exchange, NFT items/skins/land, gold farming marketplace, interoperable NFTs cross-game, decentralized transactions in the metaverse. Why isn’t there broad adoption?
3/ 1. Big publishers are worried about regulatory risk 2. You can do a lot of that without blockchain
3.Inevitable pay-to-win dynamics, not popular in western games. In fact, this may break F2P progression
4.Attracting crypto speculators rather than a loyal gamer community