PlayEmber CEO Hugo Furneaux outlines the reasons behind the studios moving from hypercasual game development to enabling the creation of web3 gaming experiences for mobile.
Blockchain gaming has certainly had a bad press in the gaming community – you’re probably used to reading words like “ponzinomics” or hearing about “Degens” and lots of “LFG’s”. As an industry, there has been a lot of debate around the concept of asset ownership, what you actually own and the benefits blockchain technology can bring to gaming. Not to mention that the crypto industry is now in a bear market.
So this is clearly a great time to build a blockchain gamefi startup, right?
The first 50 million
PlayEmber started our journey several years ago by creating hypercasual games, partnering with leading publishers and successfully publishing six games with Kwalee, Lion Studios and Voodoo. So about a year ago we entered into a joint venture with Boombit to create PlayEmber, and in the first year we had over 50 million downloads from our mobile games across hypercasual, idle arcade and idle. We even just released our first Nintendo Switch title.
…in the first year we got over 50 million downloads from our mobile games…
Hugo Furneaux
While we were focused on mobile game development, we also started doing our homework on blockchain gaming and GameFi 1.0 to understand the landscape – as well as where the biggest pain points were. We had questions:
- Who made an actual game? Most of the games were Web GL builds to enable gamified staking mechanics and yield farming with crazy APYs
- Distribution and user acquisition (UA) was highly decentralized and fragmented. Primarily via gaming guilds and/or direct community building, running CPA campaigns on Facebook/Twitter to get people to sign up to your Discord in hopes of whitelisting and those people then ‘MINT’ your NFT to develop the first liquidity game.
- User introduction – unless you’re a crypto native, you’ll need a PhD to figure out some of the wallet registrations, not to mention exchanging tokens and bridging chains. This is not usable for ‘normies’ (non-crypto natives)
- Paywalls (NFTs) create huge barriers for mass market players – charging $50, $100, $500, $1000 to buy an NFT to access a game (hence the rise of gaming guilds to rent assets to scholars)
Many blockchain games started looking at mobile gaming and creating “companion games” for their existing NFT holders to play and create additional sinks for their tokens – but what about including non-native crypto players into their ecosystem?
No advertising revenue or limited free-to-play (F2P) mode – unlike mobile games with a multi-billion dollar advertising industry to help balance cost per install (CPI) and lifetime value (LTV) – web3 game revenue is currently related to NFT sales (and its secondary market) and some form of token event (initial DEX or coin offering aka IDO/ICO). All this makes revenue forecasts and the sustainability of projects a major challenge.
As a mobile game studio, we understand the challenges and barriers of blockchain game development…
Hugo Furneaux
New technology
As a mobile game studio, we understand the challenges and barriers of developing blockchain games with new programming languages, smart contracts, security concerns and requirements. In addition to financial and compliance barriers around setting up a new entity to handle cryptocurrency and tokens.
Simply put, unlike web2 publishing contracts, where did the upfront money come from to pay for these web3 projects – to build a community, hire a team, or navigate the complexities of web3 games?
After a lot of research, the biggest thing that left us scratching our heads was why no one was trying to bring the benefits of blockchain technology to mobile games. According to Newzoo, by 2023 there will be 3.7 billion mobile gamers. So why are we trying to get mobile gamers to switch platforms and abandon the games they love to play?
At least give them a better mobile gaming experience than the one they are currently playing!
So about six months ago, we put together our business plan and set out to solve a complex problem. How could we seamlessly integrate web2/mobile players into web3, all within mobile games?
We wanted to build the gamefi middleware layer for web3 to bring together billions of mobile gamers by creating an open, decentralized advertising platform for gamers, creators, mobile game studios, brands and blockchain games.
After a lot of research, the biggest thing that left us scratching our heads was why no one was trying to bring the benefits of blockchain technology to mobile games.
Hugo Furneaux
Creating the metagame
Using our years of experience converting ad-based players to in-app purchase (IAP) players and building on proven web2 monetization techniques to increase player retention and re-engagement (rewards, contests, etc.), we built and designed a simple metagame that live in existing mobile games.
It is built into a Unity-based SDK with a built-in web3 wallet to seamlessly allow web2 players to become web3 players. The SDK is currently in a closed beta test with our partners, and our goal in phase one is to create one million new wallets. Along with understanding the key motivation for F2P games to engage with web3 – play and own? Play and reward? Play and compete?
Or just play?
For mobile game studios, we take care of all the smart contract side of things, tokens, NFTs, marketplace, etc. And in return, we bring new revenue channels and revenue via our metagame and increase the retention of their existing players. As well as providing a platform for player acquisition. The more games a studio chooses to onboard, we will reward them with our Governance Token for joining our Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and voting on key decisions and governing the future development of our platform.
New rewards
And for players? Simply play the game you play and love, but unlock a new gamified reward and competition metagame that is available and transferable to hundreds of games in the app stores. In addition to being able to save and if you wish to sell your progress via your own custom avatar (NFT) via our marketplace. Plus upgrade your own personal avatar via custom skins and cosmetics.
For blockchain games, game guilds and profile picture (PFP) collections looking to extend their IP to mobile players and acquire new players, we provide access to mobile players with existing web3 wallets to introduce to your game via our innovative new ad formats.
Think of our platform as Coinbase’s Learning Rewards – our platform introduces mobile players to web3 and moves them through a funnel, teaching them in a gamified way about NFTs, tokens, wallets, etc.
To power our platform, we evaluated various blockchains to understand what is the best fit for our project and chose the NEAR protocol.
Why? We loved their wallet experience, it was built for “normies” – non-crypto natives. A simple email signup and off you go. And of course we loved the vision and technical core of the team.
After presenting our vision, we are proud to announce a significant grant from the NEAR Foundation to kick-start our exciting new chapter.
Ripe for disruption
NEAR Foundation CEO Marieke Flament said: “PlayEmber is a fantastic startup that we are proud to support as it aligns with our mission to bring the best of Web3 to a global audience. We are particularly keen to support initiatives that spread joy and bring communities together – and games do just that.
“This sector is ripe for disruption – and through our technology we can make significant inroads in helping to determine what the future of gaming entertainment will look like – by supporting the creators who have the vision to design it.”
Right now we are in the final stages of our pre-seed fundraising and are excited to share some of the exciting investors, ecosystem partners, game studios and new team members who are joining us on our journey. And for those of you at NEARCON, see you in Lisbon next week!
