BFF Buzz: How Axie's App Store Launch Sets a Precedent in Web3 Game Distribution
Angel Pui joins Leah Callon-Butler, Jumanah Shaheen, Megan DeMatteo, Taylor Barnes and Mariam Nusrat to talk about the launch of Superquests and projects succeeding together through collaboration.
BFF is an online educational community dedicated to onboarding women and nonbinary people to web3. Through their recurring Spaces series, BFF Buzz, they strive to inform and provide a high-level overview of specific niches such as community ownership, blockchain gaming and the Metaverse, featuring individuals at the forefront of those areas.
In this Spaces event, YGG Head of Growth Angel Pui shared her thoughts on recent achievements across the industry, including the launch of Superquests as part of YGG’s vision to empower its members to build their web3 knowledge and on-chain reputation. She was joined by Emfarsis Director Leah Callon-Butler, AMGI Studios Executive Producer Jumanah Shaheen, Gala Games Social Media Manager Taylor Barnes, and Breshna Games CEO and founder Mariam Nusrat.
The event was hosted by Megan DeMatteo, an independent journalist, writer and editor who has written for CoinDesk and CNBC and manages editorial for BFF. During the conversation, Angel highlighted the large number of players who prefer to play on mobile. She pointed out the challenge for web3 games to get distribution outside of major marketplaces, and how Axie’s launch on the App Store and Google Play Store paves the way for other web3 games.
The following excerpt features Angel speaking about YGG’s Superquests being fully integrated into Axie’s mobile wallet, which demonstrates the possibilities for a streamlined mobile experience for web3 games. Jumanah also discusses how games like AMGI Studios’ My Pet Hooligan are bridging the gap between web2 and web3 by uncovering opportunities for content creation that are reinforced by initiatives like the Guild Advancement Program (GAP). Listen to the full recording on X.
BFF Buzz: Blockchain Gaming
Megan (27:36): Given that we are so early, I would like to hear from y’all if you can give an overview of any key milestones that you feel we’ve achieved recently in this field specifically. You can think about it like placing us on a timeline, or any big hurdles that the industry recently overcame. What are those for you, and what have we accomplished that has gotten us to this stage so far?
Leah (28:22): From an industry perspective, I think it's been really interesting to see some of the big web2 studios and franchises coming into the space. When we do the Blockchain Game Alliance Member Survey & Report each year, we talk to industry professionals about the state of the industry and what they think will be opportunities and challenges over the coming year. One of the biggest things that was called out was, if we see those big, traditional gaming studios and franchises coming over into web3, that’s going to be a massive indicator of adoption.
And I think it is interesting because we see this push-pull. I’m going back a little bit here, but in March, we saw that things like MapleStory and Eve Online were announcing that they were coming into the space, which was absolutely freaking huge. But then just recently, we saw that Sega rolled back their plans to launch a massive blockchain game with some of their most loved IPs, sort of stating that the space wasn’t fun. So, I think that's interesting. We're certainly not there yet; we see some massive milestones, and then I feel like sometimes you see a sort of step backward, but I think we’re on the right track.
Angel (29:50): One of the toughest things is getting into the App Store because a lot of players play on mobile, and yet blockchain on mobile — you’ve got to get on the App Store to get any distribution. So, I think the biggest win has been Axie finally getting on the App Store and getting approved on Google Play. That is huge. And I think that is a precedent set for a lot of other blockchain games to take that use case and get on the App Store as well. Another one I can think of is a lot of games talk about collaborating, and finally, at Yield Guild Games, we are launching Superquests and it is fully integrated. We actually worked on using APIs through Axie Infinity and YGG as well. So for the first time, their mobile wallet is working — it’s fully integrated, API working, mobile working. I think those are the big milestone achievements in my eyes.
Taylor (31:17): Going off what Angel said, I think the App Store is a huge win in our industry, especially coming from Gala Games’ side that has many mobile titles with external developers like Champions Arena and Eternal Paradox, as well as our own in-game titles that we are developing like Dragon Strike and Meow Match. That has been a huge obstacle that’s been overcome, and then in terms of purely from a Gala side, we recently launched our own Layer 1 blockchain, Gala Chain.
So, we are currently in the process of migrating assets over from Ethereum to our Layer 1, which is going to drastically reduce gas fees and is going to allow us to do certain things within our ecosystem that wasn’t readily available with the tech provided by any of the other chains out there, specifically towards gaming. So I think that is a very exciting development for us. And then what that’s also allowed us to do is bring in external parties to develop their own apps on Gala Chain, which can be seen in our recent partnerships like REP, which is a social media network which is being completely built on our chain.
Mariam (33:58): So I think from our end, from where we are looking at it, I am seeing at least a shift in our work, from not just this idea of passive play but actually game creation. So within games, there’s a lot of game development tools, game maker tools in the traditional video games industry. The Sandbox led that — [from] Roblox to Sandbox, where you were creating open-world environments — but we’re really excited to take that one step forward into the content creation.
This is a generation of content creators and snackable content — think about TikTok, this idea of democratizing the creation of video games while leveraging blockchain technology. I’m really excited about not just passive gameplay but then also active creation of games by empowering a global audience. I think that’s going to be a big one, a shift that I'm very excited about is not just the idea that people can play web3 games but also make them — and not just make them for entertainment purposes but also purposeful gaming.
I think in the traditional gaming sector, purposeful gaming came very late, but in blockchain gaming it has an opportunity to leverage this technology. There is a lot of innovation happening in blockchain, web3 for education, around EdTech (education technology), and I think if there’s an intersection of EdTech, web3 and gaming, that would be really cool, and that is the place we are focusing on. So we are seeing some very exciting innovations around that.
Jumanah (36:08): Going off of what you and Mariam just touched on, what we're seeing is also the content creation aspect of it. This, in a way, for me, has shown almost like a bridge that has gapped a little bit between the web2 and web3 space. I know previously, between web2 and web3, there have been a lot of opinionated people between the two, and I feel like what we are seeing with My Pet Hooligan is bringing that gap a little closer together. So I would say the content creation aspect of it has been really exciting to see the progress on there.
You can listen to the full recording on X.
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