The GameFi business will unleash its potential within the next six years. According to Absolute Reports, its expected value would increase to $2.8 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.4%.
It is quieter and less controversial than the more special centralised finance (CeFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi) fields, but this has not diminished its strength or potential. Even amid a severe bearish market, GameFi has shown to be the most robust industry.
Nonetheless, there is an issue with the industry: Often, the discrepancy between teaser trailers and final goods is glaring enough to irritate the players who placed their trust in them. With an increasing number of titles, the entire business suffers.
Each time client expectations are not met, and they are unhappy, the ability to achieve widespread adoption recedes further. Instead of overpromising and underdelivering, developers must focus on what they can provide.
This difficulty is not negligible. Gaming doesn’t exist in a vacuum; rather, it is becoming a confluence point where Web2 and Web3 meet and generate novel methods to merge one reality with another. According to Animoca Brands, the gaming business is closer to a metaverse than any other. GameFi might become an onboarding point for the metaverse and expose consumers to digital ownership.
Given that GameFi plays such a crucial part in the emergence of Web3, is it too much to expect it to begin safeguarding its reputation?
The play-to-earn NFT game industry is still in its infancy, and the future of blockchain-based games will be filled with exciting AAA titles. However, all we see are visually stunning, overdone, and inflated teasers that developers cannot seem to build.
Theoretically, it should not be too difficult. Developers at the Murasaki of BCG company have been working on more than 30 mobile game titles, but they always have a general idea of how long and how much it will cost to create each one. It’s hardly rocket science: if Genshin Impact cost $200 million and took over two years to develop, how can you say you’re working on a AAA title with $4 million or $50 million? Will it be available in a few months? It is simply unrealistic.
The normal development and release timelines are the same for everyone:
- Publish a white paper with a detailed outline of the developers’ tasks
- Release a teaser trailer to build anticipation
- Gather development funding by selling NFTs and tokens
- Start developing
Between the trailer’s release and the production period, something occurs in 90% of GameFi projects, making the games appear amateurish and unsatisfying.
Imagine selling the ownership of a building by displaying a 1/100 size model of the building but omitting the amount of time and money it will take to build. Then, when you disclose what you’ve been working on, it’s a shed instead of a skyscraper.
However, how long can this continue until users get disillusioned with the area and abandon it before it reaches its full potential?
If you can’t fulfil what you’ve promised, you should delegate the task to someone else. 99% of developers have continually overpromised and underdelivered; they’re making the rest of us honest and enthusiastic GameFi fans look bad and jeopardising the credibility of our business, and for what?
Such projects should leave the area totally and allow GameFi a chance to rehabilitate itself before customers tire of the ruse. The stakes are too high to enable them to continue gambling with GameFi’s future. Otherwise, our dream of mainstream adoption will continue to recede and never become a reality.
