Blockchain Games Suck | Hacker dinner

One of the small dangers of being in what is probably still a fairly niche industry within a huge industry is that social listening tends to give you what you want to hear. Or at least what it thinks you want to hear.

So, for someone working with blockchain gaming (the niche industry) within the general gaming scene (the huge industry), you’re bound to see a lot of nice things being said online.

I keep an eye on our Discord where our player community is most present. I’ve also tried as much as possible to get on Twitter Spaces to spar with other blockchain or gaming or NFT industry people about developments and discussions.

Like just a couple of weeks, where I had the pleasure of meeting HackerNoon’s very own Utsav Jaiswal raving about Web3 user acquisition.

And sure, there’s a lot of toxicity and negativity (especially when crypto sentiment gets soured by everything going on in the background), but there’s probably a lot more that’s positive and encouraging – so that helps keep the momentum going for us in the business of building things .

“Great project”, so what?

I won’t deny that it’s nice to see people buzzing with excitement every time we share a sneak peek of our upcoming game or when we sit and field questions from a number of interested crypto geeks.

To me, it provides continuous and reinforcing evidence that blockchain gaming is building on the promise and potential to be one of the true entry points for crypto and the enablers of tomorrow’s Web3.

But at the same time, I find a lot of value in looking at the ugly. Pay attention to the critics and listen to the naysayers, because often much of what they say and feel is at least partially based on fact.

Sure, some of the arguments against blockchain games have a lot more meat than most of the positivisms I see about my work or blockchain games in general… you know what I mean.

“Great project”.

“Fantastic project”.

“Immense potential”.

“This is going to explode”.

“Bad project”…so what?

If I notice some of the negative sentiment on Twitter, for example (and there are some tools to help with this), there are some valid points. Strip away the pure, unsubstantiated drivel and you find truly frustrated players, almost as in righteous anger.

Check out some of these recent comments below from Twitter, for example about a guy who can’t even try a new blockchain game because it’s too expensive:

Or this writer’s post about a game developer who has written a manifesto about why he will never make an NFT game.

Converting the masses to blockchain gaming will not be an easy task. Especially since the mainstream gamer is a veteran of all kinds of money grabs and shady things that are already going on in the gaming industry.

The modern gamer is a cynic. Used to being disappointed. Used to being seen as a wallet. Used to being inundated with all kinds of promises that end up not being a decent game for them to enjoy.

We at Blockchain Gaming have to do our job

As my team continues to pour our love, sweat and blood into our game, I think it’s important to pause every now and then and ask ourselves the questions that set us on this path of blockchain gaming.

Yes, our focus is to build a great game with a great experience. Yes, we intend to explore and develop our own unique proposals for blockchain technological improvements.

But blockchain technology is an enabler, not the main feature or the noticeable one.

We must answer the questions:

Why do players play?

What do they dislike about blockchain games?

What can we do to create more robust cryptogaming ecosystems?

How can we ensure our games are as inclusive as possible?

How do we meet the unique needs of modern players who want to recoup financial value, without alienating the “purer” player for the sake of gaming?

How do we keep games fun and not drown newcomers with crypto terminology they may not care about?

And we may never arrive at the perfect answers, but we believe the effort to search for those answers will help us build better games.

Because we have to admit it for now. Blockchain games are not fun… that is the truth of most of what is available out there.

And it’s up to us to fix.