GameFi
Unlike NFT marketplaces that cover Web3’s broad spectrum, Aqua.xyz is for gamers only. Aqua doesn’t try to be like Open sea not at all: the marketplace is designed for people who actually play games – not swordsmen or big traders – and so is the startup working with Polygon Labs to offer games like Mojo melee simple Web3 ramps.
Aqua CEO Sean Ryan and head of marketing Alay Joglekar said Decrypt in an interview about their approach to Web3 gaming economies, embedded marketplace designs for clients like Undead blocks And Gods unleashedand where the industry will go after the meteoric rise and massive collapse of play-to-earn games Axie Infinity in 2021-22.
Ryan said Aqua’s NFT marketplace — which powers Ethereum and scaling networks Immutable X and Polygon — focuses less on the financial element of it all and more on the qualities of the assets, which he believes gamers care about first and foremost.
“We think gaming is a big enough category that will be the largest of the Web3 categories,” said Ryan, who previously worked at Facebook and Sega. Decrypt. “Historically, gamers want to date other gamers. And they want to have a site or service that appeals to them in a way that isn’t just about price.”
Embedded economies
In addition to the overall gaming-focused platform, Aqua also creates embedded marketplaces for Web3 game developers, working hand-in-hand with game studios to determine the best approach and ultimately produce a functional in-game NFT store.
“In Web3, the [game projects] have to build the marketplaces themselves, and they’re just not good at that,” Ryan said. “It’s not their expertise.”
“What we’ve found over the past six to nine months, when we talked to 50 to 75 developers, is that they’d like someone to run the marketplace for them,” added Aqua’s CEO. “They would like someone to do it in an embedded way, within Unreal [Engine] or Unity which is much more seamless than you see in Web2.”
Any third-party marketplace — where gamers have to leave their game or otherwise minimize the application to make a purchase — leads to players dropping out, Joglekar explains.
“The fact that you’re actually pushing people outside of the game client is probably the biggest rule break in terms of game studios,” Joglekar said. “The main thing you want is retention.”
We make games! Meet AQUA Studios 🕹️
Studios, a new division of our ecosystem, develops casual games to integrate the masses into web3 with fun game modes and cross-game utility-based NFTs.
3 titles at launch, and closed beta signups start today! https://t.co/wsSuvUnZEJ pic.twitter.com/q1WKzHeMgU
— AQUA.xyz (@aquadotxyz) Mar 17, 2023
But how does a third-party platform like Aqua, which has also started developing and releasing its own games, create in-game marketplaces that feel organic to the games themselves?
The answer is actually quite simple: Aqua’s team plays its customers’ games.
“What gamers care about most is progression, right? We play games to have fun, not to make money,” said Joglekar, who previously worked at major League of Legends publisher Riot Games.
“What we have to show them is that if you buy this asset, you can progress and get better,” Joglekar said of Aqua’s approach to Web3 gaming. “Our whole belief is that if you act smarter, you play better.”
The future of games
But is Web3 gaming all about trading? It depends on the game, but developer sentiment has changed dramatically since Axie Infinity’s economy collapsed in early 2022 after a boom that spawned billions of dollars in NFT transactions. And then Axie’s Ronin side chain was massively exploited $622 million hacked in March 2022, which added insult to injury.
Axie Infinity popularized the idea of gaming to earn and earning token rewards through gameplay, but the game’s economics weren’t strong enough to hold interest. Ryan believes those days of openly funded game designs are over and such models won’t be popular again anytime soon.
“The early parts of Web3 gaming were, frankly, people not even playing the game – they were just buying assets and selling assets. They were swordsmen,” Ryan said. “That wasn’t very interesting, and those games collapsed, like Axie Infinity.”
“Our belief is that the games will get better first,” he added, “because the first games weren’t very good.”
