🎮 Metaproof Gaming

Hey frens, this is Sophia from 🎮 Metaproof Gaming, the weekly newsletter where we keep you informed on how the metaverse and web3 are changing the gaming industry.

Stay informed via our Twitter and Subscribe here to get your metaverse gaming news every Thursday.

💌 A quick thanks to our friends…

This edition is sponsored by Atmos. Mine, fabricate, and compete in what we like to call “intergalactic F1 racing.” The Atmos team is made up of experienced game developers and web3 OGs that are building an incredible experience.  Join up and build the fastest, most efficient Exosuit possible to race for glory in ExoGP. Check them out today!

📲 By the numbers

A new Accenture report on consumer and business interest in the metaverse offers telling insights on gaming (Source):

• Gaming appeals to 59% of metaverse users, yet only 4% of consumers see the metaverse as just a gaming platform; 70% say they intend to use it to access products and services across media and entertainment, fitness, and other spaces.

• Around 51% of gamers say they have already experienced the metaverse.

• Gamers are 3 times as likely to have experienced the metaverse than non-gamers.

• 27% of respondents ranked gaming as their number 1 use case. 

📫 News & trends

🔥 Final Fantasy publisher locks in $7 billion USD deal with mobile developer Gumi

Square Enix, which publishes the highly acclaimed Final Fantasy franchise, has entered into a $7B deal with Japanese mobile and game developer Gumi. Working with Square Enix previously on two games, Gumi says the new investment will make its metaverse business a “second earnings pillar” besides its mobile game business, its primary revenue stream today. 

Saying it will break away from “the highly speculative blockchain games of the past,” Gumi deems it necessary to create a blockchain game that realizes “Wow and Earn,” to be built off globally recognized IP that’s integrated into blockchain-based P2E game features. 

Square Enix and Gumi also revealed the possibility of building an NFT marketplace dedicated to blockchain games, providing a “one-stop service” to develop and distribute blockchain games as well as sell and distribute tokens and NFTs. 

💲Web3 startups raised $7.1B in funding during 2022 - Gaming accounted for 62%

2022 ended with web3 raising $7.1B in funding, with gaming, metaverse, and social networks emerging as the top three investment categories, according to Metaverse Post’s year-end report. Gaming rose as the winning category by amassing $4.49B, accounting for 62.5% of the total amount invested in web3. Epic Games collected the most significant investment during the year, raising $2B in funding from Sony and LEGO company KIRKBI and closing the year at a juicy $31.5B valuation. The metaverse is the second top category, collecting $1.82B in funding or 25.4% of total investment. Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs was the second company to collect the largest funding, raising $450M in March to launch the Otherside metaverse. 

🗡️ NPixel’s Gran Saga: Unlimited Aptos will be the first game on the blockchain

A brand new year, a new venture by game developer Npixel. It is set to release its first game Gran Saga: Unlimited on new web3 platform Aptos network, a multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) inspired from Npixel’s original Web2 game Gran Saga, one of the most popular apps on the iOS App Store. The Gran Saga: Unlimited will leverage NFTs, blockchain, and gamification. The next title Aptos is releasing, along with the rapidly expanding South Korean game developer Anpixel, will be the first of many gaming projects to launch on the network as it launches a number of web3 gaming projects in the immediate future.

👓 Graffity partners with Qualcomm and Nreal to launch 2 AR games

Tokyo-based AR entertainment company Graffity has launched two augmented reality games using AR glasses, called GrooveWave and SushiCraft. The new games were created in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies and AR glasses startup Nreal at CES 2023, where Graffity is exhibiting to meet with partners interested in developing AR entertainment content using its patented multiplayer AR tech and game planning and development knowledge. AR games are the initial use case for the real-world metaverse, thus attracting much attention and giving the Japanese firm leverage in AR game planning, development, maintenance, and operation. 

🏢 As metaverse hype subsides, in-game advertising companies are focusing on their gaming roots

In-game marketing businesses have relied on the metaverse in its critical infancy stage, i.e., 2022. However, skepticism is fast creeping in as the frost of crypto winter extends into the new year, partly because of a misalignment of the marketer’s expectation with the reality on the ground. Some remain bullish in the long term, claiming they are not hit hard by the prevailing crypto winter as most of the brands entering the metaverse today are not doing so for crypto reasons. Other in-game advertisers don’t share the bullishness, keeping the metaverse at arms’ length and remaining wary of playing into marketers’ misconceptions about the space. While in-game advertisers will inevitably return to the metaverse, gaming is king for now.

🎮 Dell's Concept Nyx is metaverse-ready (and just as real)

Dell shows off the Nyx controller, which appears like a conventional gamepad but has quite a few spanking new functions. If last year’s Concept Nyx was a home gaming server that lets you store games in one place and play them from across screens around your house, a new Nyx controller has a lot of added features packed in. The Nyx brand is also expanding to a few experimental hybrid office connectivity products, offering a prelude of things to come in a future metaverse-related workspace - one that can seamlessly accommodate people in VR, on flat displays, or meeting rooms as they choose. 

🕹️ Best metaverse games

With over 3.2 billion gamers worldwide, the online gaming business is one of the primary drivers of increasing demand for digital products and services. Despite severe economic conditions, the metaverse buzzed with innovation and growth, with gamers contributing $200 billion in revenue in 2022 alone (up by +2.1% year on year and expected to further climb in the years ahead), demonstrating being recession-resistant. Peek into the top games today in the metaverse - defined as a 3D, shared, and immersive virtual reality where you can experience life in ways you couldn’t in the physical world, and where powered by decentralized autonomous organizations or DAOs. In metaverse games in the web3 umbrella, players can monetize in-game items and vote on changes to the gaming environment, giving users unprecedented levels of ownership and openness.

🌳 Axie Infinity releases Homeland

Axie Infinity has released Homeland, bringing landowners the first land gameplay experience. An early alpha build that’s about three years in the making, Homeland enables users to play on their $1,000 land plots, with the central goal of managing a settlement as efficiently as possible to equip adventurers with gear and supplies, defeating waves of monsters in the process. No rewards so far as this is an alpha build, but Axie Infinity: Homeland - with a range of features including gather, craft, trade, and decorate - is already available for all landholders through Mavis Hub for Windows and Mac. 

🐦 What is a gaming chain?

Rich Cabrera, co-founder of Ready Player DAO, has spoken with many game studios to come up with a list of what makes up a gaming chain. On top of the list is user experience, where tooling or integrating with chains provides a smooth user experience for getting and managing one’s wallet. Narrative control is another, where games might as well break out of the “NFT scam” and “killing the planet” narrative molds and push the carbon neutrality story out while they’re at it. Of course, there’s security and efficiency, which historically worked against each other (read: fast = less secure, secure = lower speed/less data on every block). A chain that does well with both bodes well for players and other stakeholders.  

💵 Programmable money and monetization in games according to ZEBEDEE’s Ben Cousens

Have you ever wondered how real monetary value translates inside a video game? Will in-game monetization ever become “organic”? At the online conference Pocket Gamer Connects London in 2022, Ben Cousens of P2E Bitcoin platform ZEBEDEE noted that from Mario to Grand Theft Auto, games have always intrinsically involved money - only that money inserted into arcade games didn’t actually offered players actual value inside the game. Then came digital games, where in-game currencies started to have weight in virtual environments. On the ZEBEDEE platform, for instance, users can collect in-game coins worth certain Bitcoin amounts as well as explore areas offering special perks and superpowers. 

🔮 Predictions for gaming in 2023

While the metaverse may not readily prove its worth in 2023, it will continue to inspire, according to DeanBeat. We will start to lay the groundwork for the metaverse this year with the launch of 10G cable networks and real-time interaction, although it will likely take years to deliver the games and creative experiences that will attract the masses. Expect some backlash, too, just like the one against web3 gaming and cryptocurrency - something game designer Noah Falstein calls “meta-averse” reaction. All industries, though, are likely to converge on a 3D internet, with tools for interoperability and reusability of assets enough to get people to use it. 

🎥 Video: What’s next in the evolution of game economies? A panel of experts shares their views

What’s the route to making game economies flourish, particularly blockchain games and the learning curve that comes with them? Experts at the Pocket Gamer Connects London 2022 delved on this question and more in a 40-minute session on blockchain gaming and its numerous facets, from drawing more players to P2E games to keeping the game’s core community engaged (read: trust, fun, and entertainment!). Tokenomics, decentralization, and interoperability are all part of the discussion, too, when it comes to the future of blockchain games. 

💸 Finance buzz

• California-based web3 platform Aptos, which has built a layer 1 blockchain called the Aptos Network and is launching a series of web3 games this year, has raised over $400M from investors including a16z, Jump Crypto, Binance Labs, Katie Hahn, Multicoin Capital, PayPal Ventures and Coinbase Ventures. (Source)

• American game publisher Gamefam raised $25M in series A funding in 2022, led by Konvoy Ventures and enabling it to invest in new creator partnerships, analytics and live ops tools, plus advertising tech. The successful investment round also helped grow its team to over 250 members. (Source)

🗣️ Quote of the week

All content on this newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not aim to serve as or replace expert investment advice.

--

If you are a startup building in the metaverse / web3 ecosystem and are raising capital, please reach out to Sfermion. Sfermion is an investment firm focused on accelerating the emergence of the metaverse.

If you enjoyed this content, Subscribe here and stay informed via our Twitter to get your fix of metaverse gaming news. See you next Thursday!