Last month, Tencent launched a game called "Let's Catch Monsters Together", which topped the game list on the day it was launched, and set off a wave of "catch monsters".
Although playing around the edge of the blockchain, "Let's Catch Monsters" does not have too many blockchain elements, but this game, which was prepared as early as April last year, no matter in terms of quality, creativity, or user volume, All blockchain games are beyond the reach.
Looking at the blockchain ecology, it is still gambling and quiz games that can occupy the top of the DApp statistics list for a long time. Hacking incidents that occur from time to time also make these games hover on the "edge of crisis".
"Funding is the number one problem facing blockchain developers." Nicky, producer of BLOCKLORDS, told 31QU that the short-term gold-absorbing effect of spinach games is amazing, but it doesn't last long. In the downturn of the market, the chain game team is still struggling to find profits.
On the other hand, the absolute advantages of several major public chains have not yet emerged, and users are still scattered in various public chains. For DApp development teams, it is not realistic to develop games on only one public chain, but "all-round developers are scarce", DApp "Migration is difficult."
Funding, users, and technology have gradually become the three stumbling blocks in front of the team. Many projects that were very lively in the second half of last year have failed, and the team had to temporarily withdraw.
Text / 31QU Lin Jun
looking for funds
According to the statistics of DAppReview, during the Spring Festival of 2018, the average daily transaction volume of several major public chains decreased by 60-70% compared with December. After experiencing the madness in the second half of last year, the popularity of DApps dropped by nearly half, and there was no "sudden wealth effect". After that, the funding problem of the DApp entrepreneurial team emerged.
Previously, DApp once popularized the "gift package pre-sale" model, that is, before the game was launched, the "super value gift package" including props, coupons, tokens, etc. was sold in advance, and the team first received a sum of income to support subsequent development. As the popularity of DApps weakens, the attractiveness of this model gradually decreases.
"We also thought about this model, but in the end we found that it was far from what we expected, so we gave up." Nicky told 31QU that for strategy games, the pre-sale model is unfair to players who enter the game later, so this model was not adopted. way.
Fortunately, two developer competitions brought them "startup funds".
"When we participated in the competition, we went with the goal of winning awards." Nicky still couldn't hide his excitement when recalling the original intention and achievements of the competition. At that time, the team was just formed, just in time for NEO to hold the first developer competition. Received a bonus of 500,000 yuan.
At the end of last year, the team participated in the "TRONAccelerator" online DApp developer competition held by Tron, and won another $30,000 bonus.
The other teams participating in the same period did not go so smoothly. “Except for one or two projects that we participated in the NEO Developer Contest that year, most of them have disappeared,” Nicky said. Later, they didn’t see any news about the launch of their games. “I guess they gave up. ".
If it weren’t for the prize money from these two competitions, the follow-up development of BLOCKLORDS might not be so smooth. “We have contacted several investors, but under the current market conditions, the other parties basically hope to see the finished game and user data first, then Decide whether to invest.” Nicky said, but for DApp, the early stage is the stage of urgent need for funds, “How can there be products without money?”
Bai Hao, a developer who entered the game in November last year and is still persisting, told 31QU that since the game went live in December last year and attracted a group of players, "there are not many people playing it now." He Frankly, although "new gameplay will be released every week, the game is no longer the main work of the team."
In their game beta group, active players come out to chat from time to time, letting group friends chat about EOS and the current game, but there are fewer and fewer players talking about EOS and the future of chain games, and the administrator occasionally appears and replies to users When asked many times "whether to launch a new gameplay recently", a sentence will be left: "maintaining cash flow is the most important thing now."
Without sufficient funds, the Shao Xia team, which has shut down the game, has already left the game, and the current state is "wait and see".
They developed a card game last year. Due to the sharp drop in players and the inability to cover expenditures, the popularity only lasted for two weeks, and finally stopped the project in a hurry amidst the astonishment of the players. Now that more than three months have passed, Shao Xia still hasn't seen the right time, so he can only "wait and see".
Where are the incremental users?
In addition to funding, DApp teams also need to solve the problem of customer acquisition.
An investor deeply involved in the development of the EOS side chain told 31 QU that since the beginning of this year, the overall data of EOS DApps has dropped by 20-30% every month, and finding incremental users has become the most urgent thing for the public chain.
Some time ago, a quiz game developed based on TRON topped the TRON DApp daily activity list. The game customer service minibus told 31QU that their users are mainly overseas. He further revealed, "In fact, there are very few domestic users, not many." Only 2 days later, 31QU checked the ranking of the quiz game again, and it has dropped from the first place on the TRON list on Sunday to the fifth place.
Even the attractiveness of gambling and quiz games has weakened. Do other blockchain games still have a chance?
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▲ BLOCKLORDS game interface
According to Nicky, the entire project is currently progressing smoothly. The game has only been online for a week and has not yet been promoted. "The transaction volume is more than 1,000, and the transaction volume is more than 40,000 Tron."
This is already a good result.
According to the 2019Q1 DApp data report recently released by DAppreview, if the daily transaction volume is used as the screening standard and the data is filtered, the conclusion that "the daily active users of each public chain is between 3000 and 6000" can be obtained.
For a long time, the high threshold of use has restricted the scale of DApp to a certain extent. "For example, if a new user wants to play DApp, you need to let him understand the concept of cryptocurrency, wallet, and even EOS account, RAM, etc. For users who are not familiar with the blockchain, this keeps many players out of the game. "Bai Hao told 31QU that there is no good solution to this problem so far.
Before entering the blockchain, Nicky served as the operation director of a well-known domestic game company. At the end of 2017, CrytoKitties detonated the game circle. After discussing with several partners, he decided to enter the circle to do blockchain games. The team consists of 6~7 members, exactly the size of an indie studio.
He told 31QU that BLOCKLORDS is mainly for overseas users at this stage, and there may be some thresholds for domestic users. "The previous work of our team members was to do overseas localization of domestic games, and they have a deep understanding of overseas players."
Nicky introduced, "The difference between overseas players and domestic players is that they pay more attention to the 'funness' of the game."
"From the release of the project to the launch, we have been keeping up with the progress of the players on Twitter. Players from Japan and Peru have left messages one after another, looking forward to the launch of our game." Nicky said that they hope to gather core fans and rely on their word of mouth. Spread the game out, and when they do a good job in overseas markets, they will launch a Chinese version.
DApp Migration Difficulty
In addition to the problem of fund users, chain game development will also encounter talent and unique "cross-chain" problems.
"There are not many powerful developers in China."
A chain game developer analyzed that the problem of chain game screen dregs and operation delay is not only due to the performance limitations of the public chain, but also, “due to the different development languages of different public chains, it is difficult to find Java, All-round programmers in Python, C# and other languages.”
At the end of 2017, Chen Haozhi, a veteran who has nearly 10 years of experience in the game industry, quickly reacted to the fact that a kitten could spark a nationwide discussion. If according to the game cycle theory, a battlefield will be changed in 5 years, it is time to consider opening up a new track.
Therefore, Chen Haozhi and his friends jointly launched the game public chain project Cocos-BCX. Before entering the blockchain, he was working on a game engine. Now that he is turning to the blockchain, what he wants to do is still "old business".
“For independent developers, since different public chains have different development environments, it will cost a lot of money to deploy games on different public chains.” Chen Haozhi said that Cocos-BCX is a platform specially developed for games. The public chain prepared by developers, "provides developers with development tools and a technical environment that supports cross-platforms, allowing developers to easily deploy games to other public chains."
In a simple analogy, Cocos-BCX is like a packaged box. Its function is to provide developers with various calling interfaces, making some complex development processes easier and reducing the difficulty for developers to migrate projects to other public chains.
On March 24 this year, Cocos released and demonstrated Cocos, an engine that supports blockchain game development, at the Blockchain Game Technology Conference hosted by it. Announcing the provision of similar services, there are two other game engine providers, Egret Technology and LayaBox. Among them, in May last year, Egret released the HTML5 blockchain engine to meet the needs of developers.
"Traditional game development requires an engine, and such tools are also needed when developing blockchain games." Nicky said that they are currently using the development tools provided by Cocos open source. It’s possible, but not in the short term.”
“In addition, we have tried to put the battle logic of BLOCKLORDS on the chain and write it into the smart contract, but in the end we found that it is not feasible. On the one hand, the data volume is large, and on the other hand, it will cause relatively high gas costs. Do players need to bear it? That part of the cost is a problem."
The development of smart contracts, the choice of data, functions, and logical on-chain are the unique characteristics of blockchain games. Nicky told 31QU that since the game itself is a product that requires multiple updates and iterations, if the battle formula is on-chain, if you want to update , it is necessary to change the relevant code, and it will affect the whole body. "It is not so easy to change the underlying smart contract. From the perspective of the team, it is not easy to support the cost of this part."
DApps are no longer a crazy, sure money business.
Regardless of whether it is an independent game developer or a major player entering the market from traditional games, at this stage, apart from gambling and guessing games, it is not realistic for other types of games to break through and seek profit.
At least in front of DApp developers, there are several urgent problems such as funds, users, and technology. Among these problems, some projects can be solved, and some can only rely on the iteration of the entire industry.
However, the proposition of blockchain games still has broad prospects. Because according to DappReview data, in the first quarter of this year, the total DApp transaction flow of the three main chains reached 3.6 billion US dollars. year data.
As long as loyal users are still there, more developers enter the market, and the quality of games developed based on the public chain is better, blockchain games will one day be closer to the general public, and even within reach.
