Metaversity Scoop: What It Takes to Successfully Create Multiple Experiences Around a Single IP
Kicking off YGG Pilipinas’ Metaversity Scoop series, Gabby joins Sedano to delve into the importance of establishing core gaming IPs before creating different game titles.
Produced by YGG Pilipinas, the Metaversity Scoop series features community leads, developers, and founders within the YGG ecosystem to learn about the web3 gaming industry through real-life stories and amazing conversations. On the pilot episode, YGG's Community Marketing Manager, John Sedano, and co-founder, Gabby Dizon, talk about how creatives can break into the game development industry by finding avenues to apply and monetize their skills before seeking full-time employment.
The following excerpt features Gabby and Sedano discussing how games like Big Time and Ragnarok Landverse are taking unique approaches to iterate upon the Axie Infinity economy model while making it scalable. Gabby also shares how companies like Riot are able to leverage their IP across different forms of media, from games to Netflix series, to provide players with a more comprehensive experience. Additionally, they discuss how browser-based games in web3 can iterate on their features more quickly without needing to go through the App Store or Google Play Store.
Watch the full recording on YouTube.
Cracking the Code: Success and Growth in the Web3 and Gaming Industry
Sedano (28:13): So maybe my main question here, Gabby, is, what are your thoughts on trying to build the next model using blockchain versus trying to fix what was broken? So there are games like Big Time that are trying to come up with their own V2 or an improved version of the current Axie Infinity model, right? How do we improve that but make it more sustainable, versus games like Ragnarok Landverse where they partner up with a web3 studio and try to fix the problems that that game had, why it wasn't sustainable. So what are your thoughts there?
Gabby (28:57): Well, right now, I don't think anyone has found the proper formula for getting things to work and to scale. And so we're seeing a lot of different experiments. I do think that there will be at least one, probably more studios, that can find a sustainable and scalable model. So those two things are important. You need a sustainable economy, and you need to be able to scale the game towards millions of users.
We're seeing a lot of games launch within the next year — a lot of them we’re partnered with, whether it's Axie Origins and Homeland or the other games in its ecosystem, or the other games that we're starting to work with, whether it's Big Time or Parallel. It's nice to see a lot of different approaches that are being taken. The more approaches that people try, the more answers we will find to this sooner rather than later. So yeah, I'm really happy to see the innovation that the industry is taking. And while we don't have the answer yet, I think we're going to see it soon, within the next year.
Sedano (30:10): Yeah, for sure. It's actually really exciting. Even the community itself, you've noticed them jumping into these different closed betas. And even if the game gets wiped after a week, you have a very loyal set of players actually trying to find that next game that they will settle in, so they don't mind all their items being reset, their levels being reset — what matters is they get to discover the games and try to learn how this economy actually works when it's already running with a community, right?
Maybe I would want to bridge here for our conversation — what do you think about game IPs? Because we've seen a few trends from games like Star Atlas and Illuvium, where they aren't just focused on one game, they are building games for different platforms and at the same time are focusing on the lore or the IP itself.
And from what I see, what they're trying to do here is that they want to target different sets of gamers but still use that same IP and also leverage different game economies with different models per game. And having that interoperable and tight with each other. Let’s say your web browser game. This is where you get your mine or your ores, wood, lumber. But that ore or lumber is actually needed in the MMO game for you to progress there. But when you go into your dashboard, when you log into your wallet, everything is consolidated. So what are your thoughts on IPs and multiple game strategies from these studios?
Gabby (32:00): Well, I think it's a very smart strategy if your games end up becoming big. If you look at the last few years, whether it's Blizzard titles, from Warcraft to Diablo, to the titles of Riot Games, League of Legends and Valorant, you see that the IP is very strong, and can surpass different titles. And you can see IPs entering different forms of media, like Arcane, for example, with League of Legends, which became a series on Netflix. So I think it's very smart. At the same time, for this to work, I think your IP needs to work very well as a hit game first.
It's useless to make two or three games if none of them become a hit. So the first job is still to create a hit game that you can put in the hands of millions of users. And then you should have invested in the lore and the IP of that game. So maybe even 5% of the IP can be seen in the first game, but you can create different parallel experiences so that the players who enjoy the game can experience the IP in full.
Sedano (33:16): Interesting. How about games that are accessible through streaming? So there are more and more games that are coming out, especially if they're using Unreal Engine, which is really heavy.
What trends do you see for these games to be distributed to more people, even though they don't have access to devices that they can afford?
Gabby (33:45): I've seen the development of game streaming, and a lot of it has not been successful, because you need to have consistently good internet everywhere in the world for game streaming to really take off. However, I'm very hopeful when it comes to the rise of web-based games.
Web-based games have never really taken off, despite the technology being there. But now, with web3, and the ability to easily have a crypto wallet in your browser, I think we're going to see more and more web3 games that can experiment more quickly, without necessarily being tied to big platforms like Apple's App Store or Google Play Store. They can experiment with the web first and move very nimbly, and when they're ready for greater scale, they can use the app stores. But I'm very hopeful overall about web3 games.
You can watch the full recording on YouTube.
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