"We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing."
I've always loved video games. I'm lucky to live in this era—video games are no longer just a children's entertainment, but are gradually becoming a legitimate form of entertainment that adults can enjoy with pride. Elon Musk is a good example.
There is a statistic that is rarely talked about that I would like to mention: the size of the gaming industry is twice the size of the film industry, and the film industry in turn is twice the size of the music industry.
Gaming isn't just mainstream, it's mainstream in a huge way.
Over the past years, the level of video game content has increased imperceptibly.
Now, any major AAA game has between 60 and 100 hours of content, with at least 10 to 30 hours of that being narrative content.
In other words, the story is roughly the length of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. If there is a sequel or the work is adapted into a series, the narrative could actually approach the length of the entire "Game of Thrones" series.
Look at Hideo Kojima's "Death Stranding", it's simply an interactive movie; "Yakuza/Ryu ga Gotoku" tells the life story of Kazuma Kiryu; "The Elder Scrolls" created an entire fantasy world; "Cyberpunk 2077", "Fallout", and "The Last of Us" have all developed their own TV series; "Red Dead Redemption", "Final Fantasy", "The Legend of Zelda", "The Witcher", and "God of War"... even if you give me more space, I won't finish talking about them.
So for someone like me who straddles the cryptocurrency and gaming worlds, seeing Web3 gaming still struggling today is truly heartbreaking. Many people don't really understand what the problem with Web3 gaming is. They think that Web3 gaming is just a cooling-off phase like other industries, and that once the cycle starts and the trajectory shifts again, it will inevitably come back. I'm not very optimistic, because Web3 gaming hasn't resolved its fundamental contradiction yet. Web3 gaming is, after all, gaming. Someone who loves a particular game has to actually spend time playing it and enjoying it.
**But at the same time, Web3 games are considered an investment project. Most projects have their own code and economic model. People who like that "project" will invest money in the hope of receiving a return.
Therefore, unlike other fields: if you want to support a Web3 game project, you must “double invest” - that is, invest both time and money.
This contradiction doesn't stop there. As games, you naturally hope players stay for a long time, not abandoning the game after two or three hours. Ideally, players would be able to play for months, even years. But like any project, the team and investors naturally hope the token takes off as quickly as possible.
The ideal scenario would be to reach the moon a few weeks, or even a few days, after launch. Therefore, these two goals are at odds with each other on the timeline, and they are fundamentally at odds with each other. Ultimately, the development team often has to strike a compromise: either compress the game content and make it shorter, or fill it with a dull experience through routine tasks, which prolongs player retention and forces "community nurturing." This is truly difficult—and there are actually much better alternatives, whether games or investments. If you make me spend 200 hours playing Elden Ring (a game that almost everyone considers to be of the highest quality), I won't be able to spend that time playing other games. If I have to spend $200 buying Web3 game tokens and have to rely on "in-game earnings" to recoup the money, I'd be better off using that $200 to buy other currencies. This is just one of the problems, but it's the most fundamental and difficult to solve.
Of course, the problems facing Web3 games aren't entirely caused by Web3 itself. Changes in the traditional gaming market over the years have also affected Web3: for example, after COVID, most people spent less time gaming; game companies have increasingly relied on established brands to maintain their core base (in 2023, all six games nominated for the TGA Game of the Year Award were sequels or remakes); content that was promoted abroad in terms of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) in past years has now shifted with changing political conditions, forcing many games to reinvent themselves... All of these internal and external issues combined have led to the shape of Web3 games today. But back to the topic—we shouldn't be too pessimistic. Truly excellent Web3 games will emerge, but they require more time, more patience, and even more "letting go of the industry" and courage to focus again on making good games. I'm still waiting for that game to appear, and I trust that one day it will.