What's It Like to Work in Blockchain Games

Obviously I can’t speak for everyone in this industry...

Here is my light-hearted perspective for those who are curious. If you are working on blockchain games like me and still believe in the potential of the tech itself, respect and see you in 3 years.

1. It won’t take you long to realize your game design knowledge over the past 10 - 20 years are either extremely useful or completely irrelevant, often in ways you’ve never expected. Game design difficulty scales with how decentralized your game is, because stuff is unchangeable like retro cartridges yet freely tradable with monetary value. But if a game is still keeping 99% of their stuff off-chain, why bother building a blockchain game in the first place? Yes yes I know the answer…

2. Player metrics are quite different, for example average revenue per user (ARPU) isn’t as meaningful as in traditional live service games, since direct sales or payments isn’t the only revenue stream.

3. But when it comes to development and operation, there really isn’t much difference between a blockchain game and any other off-chain games. Same Unity or Unreal, same Blender, same live events and social media posting.

4. There are some limitations on digital ads due to the sensitivity of blockchain / NFTs etc., but not very significant. The hardest part is guiding users through the hurdles of blockchain itself - wallets, transactions, gas and so on. Targeting the same crypto native audience again would be easier but the game community could be much more speculation driven.

5. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t check the token and NFT prices of you game daily. Price fluctuations of blockchain game assets are still heavily co-related to the crypto market, often there isn’t much to do with the game’s general quality. Plus, you are the insider, you know the gears are still turning so why not spend that time on making stuff better?

6. Of course people will be mad whenever prices go down and they would blame “devs not working” for this. You wanted to scream “bro BTC is down 20% today everything is down” at them, but you have to stay professional right?

7. Strictly speaking, you shouldn’t comment on price actions of your project at all, since it could affect people’s financial decisions. While you still abide by this rule and people often mistaken this as lack of confidence, god knows how many out there don’t care or don’t even realize it…

8. If you are someone who deals with players directly (e.g. customer support / community management) and you have shown signs that you are female, expect frequent sexual harassment like verbal attacks or unsolicited d-pic in DMs. If your display name is a feminine one, you are likely getting those every one or two weeks, doubles if you are using your real photo as avatar too, then doubles again or even triples when the market is going down or simply your token isn’t pumping as much as the market leaders. This might not sound too many when compared to traditional gaming, but consider that there are probably only hundreds of active players in your game, the percentage is pretty high. Salute to girls who choose to show themselves (and not just for influencer reasons), it should be them learning how to respect others.

9. You know that a game takes years to make. Your boss knows that (thankfully), your team knows that too, but not all of your players. For the whole history of video games, you haven’t seen players asking for game updates so frequently. Some NFT projects often release lots of minor or fake updates to keep holders engaged, some investors demand those for speculative reasons or take that as a sign of active team. Combining these two is the wrong expectation that games can deliver massive visible updates every week.

10. Then you heard that AAA studio you’ve always wanted a job there has released some news on NFTs yada yada. Just as expected, they are being bashed on Twitter. Now they said they are taking it back, but you know they haven’t stopped at all. They are the expert in making games and have much better resources, just that their knowledge on blockchain seem worse than some high school kids on Twitter. By the time they’ve figured it out and catches up, you will be very done. Should you be thankful that those bullies might have delayed the AAAs for a little bit?

11. You started to question yourself, maybe you are indeed too slow on delivering something if first mover advantage matters so much. There are only around 2000 blockchain games ever announced and probably some of them will never deliver. Comparing to hundreds of thousands mobile games pushed out every quarter, it seems that you are still very early. Until you talked to someone on LinkedIn, checked out their game and can’t stop thinking - this might be a 0.5% tiny pond now, but is the competition 500% fiercer when some of the brightest game developers are already here preparing for the mass adoption moment?

12. Speaking of LinkedIn, everyone is like “Talks about #crypto #web3 #NFT #metaverse #and #a #bunch #of #other #hashtags #I #have #absolutely #no #idea #about”. Including that ex-colleague, now self-proclaimed blockchain gaming expert, who still has no idea what blockchain is last time you checked (6 months ago).

13. Game news websites you used to check out daily won’t stop dunking on anything related to blockchain, with the most emotional languages you wouldn’t usually expect from news sites. You can’t stop wondering is it that hard for journalists to get the facts correct, like most of the blockchains where games are running on aren’t forest burners at all and even the ETHvilest of them all is a power saver now. Or is this the way to keep that angry gamer traffic coming in? The only thing you can always agree on is Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” is a joke.

14. Seriously, Mark didn’t invent the metaverse, next-gen internet simply can’t be built by one giga tech corp…

15. Then you look at all those ads and sponsored posts of p2w mobile games all over the website. Per your past experience on mobile games, you know how whales would usually pay several thousands USD to be top 0.1%, even several hundred thousands to get everything maxed out in some Chinese games. Now you remember how the same media has dunked on mobile games and the p2w model 10-ish years ago too. Since when did they stopped talking about it?

16. It’s night and time to check Discord. Everyone’s hyped about this new “metaverse” project, so you took a look. They can’t see that “demo” is using a third party free gallery service? And of course they can’t tell the difference between pre-rendered videos and live game footages? (more: Why most "metaverse" projects are likely undeliverable?)

17. But exposing them usually won’t get you anywhere. Probably less than 5% of them are equipped with the knowledge to tell what is fake. How many of them care about the truth? They are here for the narrative, they hold a bag so they are incentivized to dismiss bad news aka FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

18. Anonymously, you started to defend “slow” blockchain game projects that you think are legit when people started to troll them. Because you are in the exact same position. You know that some 200 - 500k isn’t much to sustain a full-time team to build something at indie scale at all, but who cares except those who actually make games?

19. You still enjoy “traditional” games and not for one second thinking blockchain games are here to replace them all, just like mobile games didn’t kill console games.