How Web3 gaming is changing this cycle

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

---

At this point, it feels like the SEC is checking its list and dismissing investigations into crypto companies daily. 

In some regards, it feels like the industry is finally free but the catch is that there’s yet nothing concrete for founders and projects to fall back on when it comes to rules and regulations. 

Though, as Avalon’s Sean Pinnock told me in an X Spaces Wednesday, founders and devs based in the US can still breathe a sigh of relief.

Speaking of that Spaces: Yesterday, The Drop’s Kate Irwin and I hosted our first collaborative chat focused on, well, gaming. If you’re curious about it and weren’t able to join, you can listen to a recap here. 

Anyway, Real Agency HQ’s Jonah Blake had some thoughts not only about where we stand but where we go from here. Unfortunately for those who equated friendlier regulation with their bags being pumped, that might not be the case. Something which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given how the market’s been acting lately. 

What Blake means specifically is that having a regulator who’s not willing to file lawsuits left and right isn’t automatically going to mean that everyone jumps right back into some of the big narratives from last cycle, like gaming. 

Abstract’s Phin Totten said that his team noticed a rotation of Solana traders playing Onchain Heroes, an idle RPG, but they didn’t enter past that game. For Totten, that’s a sign that we’re still early and the “time investment to return isn’t there” yet. 

Blake compared crypto to a sin economy, like gambling or porn. Before you balk — as I admittedly did — it’s not necessarily a bad thing given the revenue that those types of economies churn out, it’s more about the mindset of those interacting with said economy, and how devs build. 

Now, I want to clarify here that I don’t think all of crypto falls into this category. Especially not these days. 

So let’s center Blake’s point on memecoins, with its gambling mentality, and how that impacts subsectors like gaming. 

“We’ve curated an industry that’s very built around this speed of wealth accrual,” Totten said. “It’s about the path of least resistance to money.” 

This is directly impacting the way that games are being developed right now, given the frustrations around the amount of time it took a lot of Web3 games to launch. For now, it’s likely that we’ll see a lot of those types of games being built around the speed mentality for the sake of optimizing for the audience, Totten continued.

Will this always be the case? The optimist — and avid gamer — in me hopes not. But there’s just no point in trying to trot out a game that might not have an audience… yet. 

And perhaps that’s going to be the key difference this cycle: Folks are building for the audience.

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
• Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
• Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
• 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
• Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
• The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
• Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.