Tyler Farnsworth on ‘Hashing It Out’ Episode 25: Blockchain gaming is the next wave of gaming

At the Global Blockchain Convention Dubai in May, I had the pleasure of moderating the “Small Payments, Big Fun: Micropayments for Casual Games” panel with Tyler Farnsworth, CMO of Built By Gamers (BBG), as one of the speakers.

BBG is a “gaming lifestyle organization”, as described by Farnsworth.

“We have professional teams competing in big AAA-style titles like Valorant and Halo, as well as a number of content creators who aren’t necessarily professional gamers, but they have huge fan bases,” he explained.

“We’re creating this whole ecosystem that we’re gathering fans for in the gaming world to celebrate it and just to bring together this whole mix of fashion and film and sports and gaming, it’s this new pop culture that’s unified,” he added. .

Current gaming revenue models

Micropayments are set to disrupt the current revenue models in the gaming space, an area of ​​gaming that is in dire need of a makeover. Farnsworth described the four core revenue models and touched on some of the pitfalls:

Buy the game. This is risky for the player because they might not like the game, and while it does provide a revenue stream for the game developer, it’s just a one-time fee and there’s a cap.

Subscription model. A problem for players and the player may not get much out of the cost if they play infrequently.

Purchase in the app. These are skin cells or other upgrades available for purchase that will unlock new levels.

Advertising. The most unpleasant of all models and a terrible user experience for the player.

“It’s this move of how we can balance a good revenue model for the publisher so they’re motivated to keep building and have a good user experience for the player,” Farnsworth explained.

“This is where micropayments offer a new way that before this, you really couldn’t get that small. And so you can have all kinds of different transactions for fractions of a cent,” he said.

“It enables these large-scale publishers to make a lot of money. So [the gamer is] If you choose it, you won’t have to go see this ad or be interrupted every time you make any kind of payment. You make that choice. And it’s so small that it doesn’t even cause a problem,” Farnsworth added.

Haste as a partner

Farnsworth is a big fan of the Haste Arcade team and their use of micropayments. As a result, BBG and Haste have been working closely together since April 2021, and with the help of BBG’s fan base, Farnsworth believes the partnership will help bring Haste’s vision of mass adoption to life.

“Haste is a good partner. They’ve built a great software development kit for game developers to go in and make these games with their structure, which is their ‘ILP,’ their instant leaderboard payout,” he said.

The Haste Arcade games are profitable to earn using micropayments – the games are simple, fun and provide instant gratification for those who reach the leaderboard. Game developers can also enjoy a new revenue stream as they receive instant micropayments every time players play their games.

“We know that [Haste] need more users. We need more players in an arcade. And so we recently worked on the campaign with four of our streamers where we ran a tournament on the game Jump…we ran all kinds of traffic,” Farnsworth revealed.

“Our goal was to get 10% conversion. We hit 38% conversion. So 38% of the people who clicked over from those Twitch streamers converted to become a Haste Arcade user. And it’s not like they just played a match and left. On average, they played 28 times in the first week alone, he said.

“It’s sticky and it should be exciting for everyone in the BSV community, but also much bigger. Blockchain gaming is the next wave of gaming. This is web3 gaming. But this blockchain-powered gaming is huge and we’re honestly just at the starting line, he added.

Why BSV?

Haste Arcade’s ILP system is based on the ability to make instant micropayments and this is only possible with the BSV blockchain. While BBG’s community includes fans of games powered by other blockchains, Farnsworth is a big believer in BSV and its unique ability to scale.

“Right now there are a ton of choices [of blockchains] and it is very muddy, there is a lot of foam in the water. So many people are building games, some of them are complete crap, some of them are complete scams and some of them are really great,” Farnsworth said.

“We needed very low fees because if we’re going to record all these interactions on chain for a game, if a game was completed, you want to restart a new game or if you died in the game and you want a new life, you’ll not pay a $50 gas fee on Ethereum every time, it’s unsustainable,” he said.

“BSV provided all the parameters we needed for blockchain games or web3 games,” he added.

Start building now

Now that we know that the BSV blockchain can drive a new and improved economy for gaming, it’s important to grow and nurture the ecosystem to push it into the mainstream. Partnerships between companies like BBG and Haste are a giant step forward, but we still have a long way to go.

– We need more people to build. Developers, partners, influencers, thought leaders. And that’s the only way we’re going to move blockchain gaming into the mainstream,” Farnsworth said.

“It’s coming, if you want to be one of the people to help build it and make it happen, jump in. Let’s do it,” he said.

See: BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Metaverse, NFTs & Blockchain

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