The endless conversation about monetization has become heated in the Web3 world, where many games focus their core mechanics on speculation, artificial scarcity and collecting. At GamesBeat Summit Next, Alun Evans, CEO and co-founder of Freeverse, spoke about the three problems Web3 actually solves – but only if tokens can evolve and change based on what the user does with them.
“We believe that the digital economy should also be much bigger than just collectibles,” Evans said. “There’s a whole iceberg out there waiting to be revealed, and I think we’re doing that with living assets, with dynamic NFTs.”
From speculation, scarcity and collectibles, the focus should shift to utility and earned value, where the value of the token is based on what the user does with it and how the user is involved in the ecosystem, he argued. Collecting and speculating is not sustainable, and boom and bust only hurts the reputation of the blockchain game industry and the wallets of developers.
“There will never be a permanent influx of more new users that will drive the economy, and the impact of that is, why bother about Web3? What problem does it really solve here?” said Evans. “We can reward players for their time by increasing NFTs. That encourages retention. We can allow users to create user-generated content, which can be sold on secondary markets. That not only increases retention, but also increases the income.”
For example, Goal Revolution, on Freeverse’s platform, allows users to train characters to upgrade their stats, essentially generating value on that token. Any profit earned when they sell it is based on their investment, rather than scarcity. Players are also incentivized to maintain the value of their assets for themselves both in and out of the game – a character who loses its skill if not trained consistently, and the asset loses monetary value. And these mechanisms proved successful enough to spark the interest of a global football IP, due to launch next year.
User-generated content, which increases engagement by allowing gamers to customize their experience, shouldn’t be immutable either, Evans argues. If a player has modified something – perhaps even paying the developer money for the raw ingredients – that it can sell on a secondary market, that player will keep in the game ecosystem and also have the game developer charge a commission on that sale.
“It’s also a bit more fair to the gamer,” he added. “If I’m making something, why shouldn’t I be able to monetize it?”
Finally, there is an opportunity to combine the worlds of Web2 and Web3 to build a community and spread a message, which not only increases retention but also boosts player acquisition. During MetaBeat earlier this month in San Francisco, Freeverse launched the free MetaBeat NFT, which was also worthless. To take it to the next level, users were able to interact with social media in several ways: retweet conference hashtags, collect likes on their tweets, proof of ownership at the conference door, and so on.
“Brands interact with their users on social media and reward them for that engagement in the Web3 world with tokens that can be upgraded and unlock rewards, features, prizes and so on, be they virtual or real,” he explains. .
When done correctly, it generates users the opportunity to extract value from the economy, more value to the economy in the long run, which is a very powerful tool to use. So what’s stopping developers from using earned value within the Web3 world?
“NFTs are seen by most people as these immutable collectibles. What we’re trying to do at Freeverse is to continue that discussion,” Evans said. affect properties, and therefore their market value. What that does is change the discussion. We are moving from this passive activity of collecting to an active involvement with the tokens and the underlying game. There lies a huge opportunity for the game industry, the metaverse and brands in general.”
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