This is the first of a three part series by Sterling Campbell on Web3 gaming examining its past, its potential, and its future.
Since before the launch of Ethereum, gaming has been a burgeoning sector in crypto. Developers have recognized the value in crypto’s interoperability, player-owned economies, and tradable digital assets, leading powerful executives to leave traditional media to build out Web3 gaming. Late last year, gaming accounted for over half of blockchain activity, and $739 million has been invested in blockchain games in Q1 2023 alone.
There are nearly 3.2 billion gamers worldwide, and gaming is one of the largest onboarding opportunities in crypto. We’ve already seen the power of this funnel in NFTs and select GameFi projects, but we still have a long way to go if this dream is going to be realized.
To better understand the future of Web3 gaming, it’s important to examine the past decade of Web3 gaming and all of the learnings therein. Only by understanding where we have fallen short can we correctly navigate the future of this industry. So let’s start at the beginning.
The Beginning
On-chain games got their start in 2014 when Huntercoin was introduced as a way to test multiplayer blockchain usage and see if blockchains could handle gaming environments. Coins were littered throughout a virtual world where players competed against each other to collect them. The game mechanics were kept simple, and eventually (as predicted) bots overtook the game, but Huntercoin nonetheless demonstrated that blockchain technology could be used in full-on game worlds.
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- Source: https://blockchain.capital/a-brief-history-of-web3-gaming-what-weve-learned-so-far/
