Web3 game design patterns and early best practices
What we've learnt from the experiments and failures of earlier web3 games
As web3 games experiment with and evolve their approach to using blockchain to enhance the core gameplay experience, some interesting new patterns and potential best practices for web3 game design1 are beginning to emerge, which point to particular models of gameplay and types/genres of games that might be successful in web3. Here are a few of those ideas I’ve come across, and why I think they might work.
Add-value-to-earn (instead of Play-to-Earn)
From the wreckage of unsustainable game economies ranging from Axie Infinity to StepN, it became clear that over-emphasising the earning incentive in P2E (essentially treating P2E as a means of free user acquisition) led to a drastically unbalanced number of earners (looking to earn and cash out, i.e. extracting value from the game) vs spenders (putting value into the game by spending on play) in the game, which quickly became unsustainable, causing inflation and crashing the token. So the first post-crash lesson learnt was that for a web3 game economy to be sustainable, players should only earn rewards for adding value to the game, other players, or the ecosystem, and not for grinding. What it means to “add value to the game” is an opportunity for innovation in game design.
Earning built into the game narrative
One way to enable earners to add value to the game is by building earning into the game narrative or game world such that earners are rewarded for undertaking actions that help advance the game or provide valuable services for other players who are preferably willing to spend in the game (for said advancement or valuable services). An example is to allow earners to take on roles or professions within a game that Non-Player Characters (NPCs) typically play - quest givers/helpers (or even quest creators?), item creators (blacksmiths, armourers, potion sellers), etc. - and develop (preferably non-grinding) game mechanics for them to fulfil those roles, which will either help to make the game more enjoyable/engaging for other players (spenders) or will provide items/services that other players are willing to pay for. Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are an obvious example where such a pattern might be applicable, but it might be possible to apply an analogous concept to other genres as well.
Ownership of assets and Play-to-Own
One of the key propositions that blockchain offers to games is verifiable ownership of digital assets and the ability for players to actually own (and trade) their in-game assets independently of the game. This idea is naturally applicable to Trading Card Games (TCGs), item/loot-based action Role-Playing Games (RPGs) that can implement item crafting and item progression using NFTs, as well as the broad category of resource management games including 4X Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games. However, the challenge is “so what if a user can own their assets?” i.e. can game designers come up with interesting new game mechanics that uniquely leverage the idea of assets externalised from the game? Aside from the more obvious TCGs, item RPGs and resource management/RTS games, the P2O pattern also prompts us to explore games where tradability makes sense and is an inherent part of the game, and which could be amplified or enhanced through an externalised market, e.g. sports games with player and club trading.
Reward skilled play and Play-to-Win2
A specific pattern that potentially lends itself to a balanced and sustainable token economy is PvP competitive gameplay in which competitors pay entry fees (in tokens) into a prize pool which the winner(s) can claim minus the developer’s take. This makes each competition essentially zero sum, and with the developer’s take subtracted, potentially deflationary, avoiding token inflation from earning. This is applicable to a wide array of eSports-eligible game genres such as First-Person Shooter (FPS), Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), RTS and racing games, but without much else to differentiate them besides the use of tokens to enable entry fees and prize pools, web3 games of this type will need to be competitive with the best-in-genre web2 games, which is a huge challenge. That said, it could be an interesting approach for AAA game publishers with established competitive game IPs to take a step into web3.
Reward players’ time by sharing ad revenue
The web2 Free-to-Play casual games space today is dominated by games that monetise through advertising, where players spend their time in games and are served ads during this time in exchange for getting to play the game for free, while game publishers and ad networks retain all of the financial value generated through ads. Web3 affords an opportunity for players to get a share of this financial value in the form of token rewards for playing, in a sense consensually “renting” their time and data to game publishers and ad networks in return for both financial and entertainment value. A benefit of this model is that there’s potential for the game economy to be sustainable because there is real value inflow into the economy via advertising revenue (i.e. advertisers are the “spenders”) to support the outflow/extraction of value via rewards paid to earners. While this reduces the share of revenue that game publishers and ad networks retain, if the maths works out and developers figure out how to incorporate web3 mechanics into game design such that it grows the overall pie in terms of user acquisition, engagement/retention and advertising lifetime value (LTV) per user, this could potentially increase the size and sustainability of the casual and hypercasual gaming market.
Staking as game subscriptions
We’ve started to see some early thinking around staking tokens in games as an analogue for game subscriptions, giving players access to exclusive loot boxes, VIP tournaments, season pass/battle pass benefits etc. Many web2 games have incorporated a subscription business model as a way to monetise their most engaged players more sustainably, and the concept of staking in web3 (in exchange for yield or APY) feels somewhat analogous. But aside from the benefit of incentivising players to hold their tokens (instead of cashing them out, which may lead to inflation), for staking to be truly like subscriptions (generating inflow of value), the developer will need to find ways to generate revenue/financial value from the staked tokens, and I’m not sure that’s what game developers want to be doing. It’ll be interesting to see how this idea evolves from here.
Reward the creation of User-Generated Content (UGC)
Another way to enable earners to add value to the game is by allowing creators/developers to create and sell UGC on external marketplaces (which increases overall market liquidity vs a single game-owned marketplace). If the core gameplay is designed flexibly enough to utilise UGC, creators can create assets (skins, cosmetic items, digital fashion, components, equipment, maps, levels, mini-games, etc.) with utility that players are willing to spend on to use or experience within the game (and possibly beyond the game, if interoperable/composable hooks are built into the assets), this potentially generates inflow of value and a sustainable economy. Web2 UGC-oriented games like Minecraft, Roblox and Fortnite have already demonstrates the value of such a model, for which external marketplaces could generate a multiplier effect, while games like Shrapnel and Sandbox are hoping to prove this out in web3.
Game as ecosystem/platform (or an ecosystem of games)
A further extrapolation of the UGC model is to design the game as an economy/ecosystem/platform from the start, creating and maintaining an economy instead of a one-to-one economic relationship with each player (i.e. selling things to them). This would involve balancing earners/producers and spenders/consumers, managing “GDP” growth, monetary (token), fiscal (taxes/transaction fees), labour (earners) and industrial (UGC) policy, and setting up the economy so that players contribute, add value, earn and spend, and the growth in value of the whole ecosystem/platform (i.e. “GDP”) benefits all parties. In web3, this can take the form of a platform of multiple games running on a single game ecosystem and token such as Gala Games, Xterio and Magic/Treasure - essentially game universes or meta-games encompassing a growing collection of individual games.
Align incentives of players and investors
In many web3 games today, the incentives of token investors/speculators and gamers aren’t really aligned. In particular, investors buy tokens/assets in the game expecting to hold these assets passively as prices (hopefully) rise, but this may have the effect of pricing actual gamers (who may want to utilise these assets in the game) out of the market (and the game). What if, instead, we let players actually invest in the game if they want to, and we require that investors be players (actively participating in the game) too, in a way that’s integrated into the gameplay (e.g. stadium asset owners provide, operate and maintain PvP tournament venues and own the livestreams which they can monetise), with passivity disincentivised through taxation of passive assets (e.g. new models for land assets that discourage passive holding), instead of just speculating on token/asset price? These are just a few ideas for new patterns of broader gameplay-incorporated investment that some web3 games are beginning to explore.
The above examples suggest how web3-enabled features could enhance core gameplay and potentially drive player retention and long term engagement, and also how web3-oriented approaches could evolve game design and the definition or scope of games in general. As developers experiment with these ideas, as well as additional directions such new genres3, new audiences and new ways of using established IP in web34, we’ll learn which web3-enabled game design patterns make sense and likely start to see new best practices emerge.
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Calling this “game design” might not be technically correct. Some of these ideas extend to economy/ecosystem design and the broader game concept (or even concept of a game).
Not the same thing as Pay-to-Win.
On-chain gaming being an example of a new game genre that didn’t exist before web3, which deserves a deep dive of its own.
As Ubisoft, Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Com2us and Netmarble have been doing.