NFT games after Axie Infinity’s Fall will be made for players, not Degens: Aqua CEO

Unlike NFT marketplaces that cover the wide spectrum of the Web3, Aqua.xyz is only for players. Aqua doesn’t try to be like Open sea after all: the marketplace was designed for people who actually play games – not deens or high-volume traders – and the startup is working with Polygon Labs to offer games that Mojo Melee easy Web3 on ramps.

Aqua manager Sean Ryan and marketing manager Alay Joglekar told Decrypt in an interview about their approach to Web3 gaming economies, embedded marketplace design for clients that Undead blocks and Estates Unchainedand where the industry will go after the rapid rise and massive collapse of games to make money Axie Infinity in 2021-22.

Ryan said Aqua’s NFT marketplace – which supports Ethereum and scaling networks Immutable X and Polygon – focuses less on the financial element of it all and more on the assets’ qualities, which he believes players care about first and foremost.

“We think gaming is a big enough category and will be the largest of the Web3 categories,” said Ryan, who previously worked at Facebook and Sega. Decrypt. “Historically, gamers want to hang out with other gamers. And they want to have a website or a service that speaks to them in a way that’s not just about price.”

Embedded economies

Beyond the overall game-centric platform, Aqua also creates built-in marketplaces for Web3 game developers, with the team working hand-in-hand with game studios to find the best approach and ultimately produce a functional in-game NFT store.

“In Web3 is [game projects] have to build the marketplaces themselves, and they’re just not good at it, Ryan said. “That’s not their expertise.”

“What we found in the last six to nine months, talking to 50 to 75 developers, is that they want someone to take care of the marketplace for them,” Aqua’s CEO added. “They want someone to do it in a native way that’s within Unreal [Engine] or Unity which is much more seamless than the way you see in Web2.”

Any external marketplace — where players have to “tab out” of their game or otherwise minimize the application to make a purchase — causes players to drop out, Joglekar explained.

“The fact that you’re actually pushing people out of the game client is probably the biggest rule breaker when it comes to game studios,” Joglekar said. “The most important thing you want is storage.”

But how does a third-party platform like Aqua—which has also began to develop and publish their own games – create in-game marketplaces that feel organic to the games themselves?

The answer is actually quite simple: Aqua’s team plays its customers’ game.

“What players care about most is progression, right? We play games to have fun, not to make money,” said Joglekar, who previously worked at powerhouse League of Legends publisher Riot Games.

“What we have to show them is that if you buy this asset, you can move forward and you will get better,” Joglekar said of Aqua’s approach to Web3 gaming. “Our whole belief is that if you act smarter, you play better.”

The future of gaming

But are Web3 games about trading? It depends on the game, but developer sentiment has changed dramatically since Axie Infinity’s economy collapsed in early 2022 following a boom that yielded billions of dollars worth of NFT trades. And then Axie’s Ronin sidechain was utilized in a massive $622 million hack in March 2022, adding insult to injury.

Axie Infinity popularized the idea of ​​games to earn money and earn token rewards through gameplay, but the game’s economy was not strong enough to sustain interest. Ryan believes that the days of overtly financial game design are over and that such models will not become popular again anytime soon.

“The early parts of Web3 gaming were honestly people not even playing the game – they were just buying assets and selling assets. They were degenerates, Ryan said. “It wasn’t that interesting, and those games collapsed, like Axie Infinity.”

“Our belief is that the games will get better at first,” he added, “because the first games were not very good.”