Polygon Labs gaming boss more bullish than ever on blockchain gaming – GameDaily.biz | We make games for our business GameDaily.biz

As vice president of games at blockchain technology company Polygon Labs, Urvit Goel is a key link between publishers and their Web3 ambitions. Polygon’s Ethereum-based services are used by gaming companies such as Square Enix, Nexon and more.

Speaking to GameDaily, Goel said he doesn’t see himself as an evangelist, trying to convert game companies to Web3. “My team’s focus has not been to convince established publishers to integrate with blockchain. Our focus is to find the companies that have signaled to the market that they are very interested in leveraging [Web3] technology, and then bring Polygon’s solutions to the forefront to help bring their vision to life.”

Before joining Polygon last March, Goel spent nearly a decade at Amazon, working with gaming companies to leverage the company’s range of tablets and gaming devices as well as its app store. “I had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of developers over the course of several years,” he says, noting that this was during a massive shift toward free-to-play, especially in the mobile sector.

His view is that there are clear parallels with the state of Web3 gaming now, and the burgeoning ftp market a decade ago. “During that time, developers were divided. Some leaned towards the free-to-model, while others were convinced by the premium model.” He argues that in its earliest days, free-to-play was often portrayed (sometimes accurately) as predatory, or was seen as a threat to the existence of game publishers.

“Many companies didn’t think it was a good model. I quickly realized that it wasn’t up to me to convince developers to move to free-to-play, it was up to me to help developers who were already convinced by this new model to help them succeed.”

Moonshot projects

He believes that – as in the mobile ftp market – companies committed to blockchain are likely to stay the course. Some of those who have recently attracted venture capital funding will become the “behemoths” of tomorrow.

In contrast, it is much more difficult for established companies to switch to unfamiliar models, especially if they appear to threaten the current order. Even when these companies do make an investment, it’s often a “moonshot” project to be cut only when problems arise, or when budgets are tightened.

“There is so much demand in the space for building blockchain games right now,” he says. “Billions of dollars in venture capital have been deployed. It’s not fruitful for a small team like ours to go out and try to evangelize blockchain or convert people.”

Web3 critics, of course, point to recent market failures, and to the undoubtedly poor quality of many blockchain games currently available. But Goel says it’s still early days. Most of the VC investments in blockchain games are still in development. “As bullish as I am on blockchain games, we don’t have an example of a success case. But examples are going to emerge over the next 12 to 18 months. They will serve as success case studies.”

He adds: “Web3 or blockchain does not change the laws of gravity and the challenges of game development. In fact, it only makes it more complex. If someone thinks they can bring a game to market in six months, they’re probably not going to succeed.”

The recent cooling in blockchain gaming speculation is a “washout,” he says, of games that functioned as Ponzi schemes, and companies that “came in to make a quick buck in the bull market … now you’re left with high quality and high quality conviction builders’.

He adds: “In the last three, four months we have seen a slight decline in terms of volume. But on the flip side, we’ve announced some of our biggest partnerships to date. It has actually helped us because there is a lot less noise that we have to sift through.”

Basic design

Sifting through the noise is a key part of Goel’s team’s mission. Developers and publishers seek technological solutions, which Polygon offers, but also navigation guidance in a rapidly changing market.

“We have dozens of conversations every week with developers, and we get signals every day,” he says. “A single developer could never get these signals. There is a gap for information sharing that we can fill.”

The best advice he has for game developers is to focus on the fundamentals of game design. – It must be fun and engaging. There must be very low friction on board new players. The user experience for using wallets must be positive, but does not have to be.

“I can come in and play a blockchain game and I can choose to never trade my assets. I come in, I play. I enjoy my time and that’s fine. There could be other people playing for whose profit and trading assets is their gamification of the game.”

Goel says he’s no evangelist, but he clearly believes in the consumer-based proposition of ownership of digital assets. “Over the years I’ve probably spent thousands of dollars on in-game assets like cosmetics. A bunch of these games I don’t play anymore. I’d like to be able to share my assets with friends who still play those games. I’d like to be able to sell them to third parties.” He mentions the potential of using assets across multiple games, a difficult problem to solve but one that many companies are keen to exploit.

“We’re on this long journey,” he says. “It’s not going to happen overnight. But if you have two equal games, I think users will choose to play the one that gives them ownership versus one that doesn’t, even if they choose not to take advantage of that ownership. That’s what drives my bullishness, not to mention all the companies building blockchain games right now.”