I can say with confidence that the killer game for Web 3 adoption will be an MMORPG — a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Some of the earliest games to feature in-game digital currencies and real money trade from outside the game economy were MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Runescape.
Real money trade or RMT is the exchange of in-game assets like digital currency or digital items for fiat currency like Dollars or Euros.
This was an unsanctioned feature of early MMORPGs that allowed gamers in poorer parts of the world to farm digital currency in a game like World of Warcraft and sell that currency to western gamers who would be willing to buy WoW gold in exchange for fiat.
The RMT mechanism gave rise to the Chinese gold farming phenomenon that saw gamers in China selling digital currency to western gamers via illicit means.
Real money trade was not sanctioned for a reason. While RMT led to serious issues in the game economy like rampant inflation in the value of WoW gold, it enabled one of the earliest methods for people to make money while playing video games. This was happening in Asia long before the rise of professional gaming in the west.
Blockchain integration in gaming has many promises but in its simplest form, the appeal of Web 3 gaming is that it allows people to own their digital assets and for people to make money while playing video games.
As opposed to being an unsanctioned exploit, in many ways, blockchain games today are being built around the mechanism of real money trade.
This is why MMORPGs have tremendous potential in Web3. This genre of games has built-in digital currencies, game economies, token generation, and token sinks as a basic feature of gameplay.
Most Web 3 games struggle to figure out good economic design in order to balance token generation and token sinks. Some games simply don’t need blockchain integration and often tokenization is forced into the game to the detriment of the overall experience.
A Web 3 MMORPG has tremendous potential because the fundamental premise of play and earn is not a forced feature but rather a natural adaptation that has its evolutionary roots in RMT dating back to the earliest games in the genre.
I am very optimistic about the potential for a killer game to emerge in the blockchain gaming space that will change the hearts and minds of even the most stalwart critics of Web 3 games.
I am confident that game will be an MMORPG.
As always thank you for reading.
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