According to the statistics of Blockchaingamer, a blockchain game platform service provider, as of November 10, the investment in the field of blockchain games this year was as high as 2.56 billion US dollars. With the support of capital, GameFi has become more and more popular. However, some industry insiders told the "Blockchain Daily" reporter that from the perspective of business model, GameFi is actually still very rudimentary, mainly focusing on users' assets in the game, but this has taken a big step compared to traditional games. . However, there is also a certain bubble behind the crazy influx of capital.
This year's financing has reached 2.56 billion US dollars
According to Blockchaingamer statistics, as of November 10, the total investment in the chain game field this year was 2.56 billion US dollars, and the investment in 2020 was 72 million US dollars. In September, Ethereum’s fantasy football game Sorare announced a $680 million round led by SoftBank. Dapper Labs, the developer of NBA Top Shot, has completed a $250 million financing round led by hedge fund Coatue Management. These are the two projects with the largest financing amount announced recently.
In addition to SoftBank, blockchain venture capital institutions such as Panda Capital, Paradigm, and Delphi Digital, as well as traditional venture funds and game companies such as Sequoia China and Ubisoft Entertainment (French game giant), are actively entering the game.
"GameFi is an outlet for practitioners, but for capital, there is a certain false fire." Da Hongfei, CEO of Distributed Technology, said in an interview with a reporter from "Blockchain Daily" that traditional business fields are subject to various isolation measures, etc. Influence, lack of attractive and large enough investment opportunities, it is understandable for capital to enter the market after paying attention to GameFi's reshaping of the game industry.
In fact, the concept of GameFi has existed in the blockchain industry since CryptoKitties in 2017.
After several years of development, GameFi has begun to emerge in 2020, and some high-quality projects have also entered the project plan stage. Chain game projects based on backgrounds such as ancient myths, comics, novels, and alternate worlds will appear one after another in early 2021, and once caused a boom in the industry.
1000 chain games are still very elementary
According to data from DappRadar, a decentralized application service provider, as of November 10, 2021, there have been 1,070 game Dapps on the entire network. Since July 2021, the data of chain games has grown rapidly. The number of players has increased from 80,000 in early April to 1.33 million in October, with an average monthly increase of 270%; the daily transaction volume has increased from about $500,000 in early April to 10 At the beginning of the month, it was 544 million US dollars, an increase of more than 181 times.
According to the "2021 Global Game Market Report" released by Newzoo, a game market data service provider. In 2021, the total number of global gamers will exceed the 3 billion mark, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. Global gaming revenue in 2021 will total $175.8 billion. With a market size of US$88.2 billion, the Asia-Pacific region has become the region with the highest proportion of global game revenue, while North America, Europe and Latin America have been affected by the epidemic and revenue has declined.
Da Hongfei told the "Blockchain Daily" reporter that now GameFi only accounts for 2.3% of the global game industry's market space. Subsequently, more and more game developers will begin to adopt the GameFi model. "In the past few years, due to the performance of the blockchain and the immaturity of the game development team, chain games were more of a flash in the pan." Da Hongfei further explained that with the maturity of technologies such as side chains and Layer 2 in the past two years, more games The company has begun to enter the blockchain industry, and more and more funds have paid attention to the development of the blockchain industry. GameFi has mature possibilities in three main aspects: technology, talent and capital.
"Behind the huge market volume of the booming game industry, there is a deeper and deeper division." The game entrepreneur Shukai Lai (pseudonym) analyzed to reporters that traditional game giants have become the ecological roles at the top of the industry chain. Monopoly channels, distribution income, etc., have too much control over player accounts, virtual assets do not belong to users, players can only conduct internal transactions, and cannot create value and share income by participating in the game. GameFi can provide rich scenarios and diverse gameplay for the implementation of blockchain technology, and can attract large-scale incremental users to enter the market.
In the future, with the maturity of Web3.0, how GameFi will bring forth new ideas in terms of business model and playability, how to attract more players from outside the circle, and how to erode the traditional game market... These are all worthy of everyone's attention.