Hugo Furneaux, CEO of PlayEmber, explains the reasons behind the studios’ shift from hyper-casual game development to enabling the creation of Web3 gaming experiences for mobile devices.
Blockchain gaming certainly has some bad press in the gaming community – you’re probably used to reading words like “Ponzinomics” or hearing about “Degens” and many “LFGs”. As an industry, there has been much debate about the concept of asset ownership, what you actually own and the benefits blockchain technology can bring to gaming. Not to mention that the crypto industry is now in a bear market.
So this is clearly a great time to build a blockchain gamefi startup, right?
The first 50 million
PlayEmber started our journey a few years ago developing hypercasual games, collaborating with leading publishers and successfully releasing six games with Kwalee, Lion Studios and Voodoo. Then about a year ago we went into a joint venture with Boombit to create PlayEmber and in the first year we had over 50 million downloads of our mobile games in Hypercasual, Idle Arcade and Idle. In fact, we just released our first Nintendo Switch title.
…in the first year we had over 50 million downloads of our mobile games…Hugo Furneaux
While we focused on mobile game development, we also started doing our blockchain gaming and GameFi 1.0 homework to understand the landscape – and also where the biggest pain points were. We had questions:
- Who made a real game? Most games were web GL builds to allow for gamified staking mechanics and yield farming with crazy APYs
- Distribution and user acquisition (UA) were highly decentralized and fragmented. Primarily via gaming guilds and/or direct community building, running CPA campaigns on Facebook/Twitter to get people to subscribe to your discord in hopes of whitelisting and that these People then use your NFT “MINT” to develop initial liquidity in the game.
- User onboarding – unless you’re a crypto native, you’ll need a PhD to figure out some of the wallet logins, let alone token exchanges and chain bridging. This is not practical for “normies” (non-crypto natives).
- Paywalls (NFTs) creating huge barriers for mass-market players – $50, $100, $500, $1000 fees to purchase an NFT to gain access to a game (hence the rise of gaming guilds to sell assets to scholars for rent)
Many blockchain games started looking at mobile games and developing “companion games” for their existing NFT holders to play with and create additional sinks for their tokens – but what about onboarding non-native crypto players into their ecosystem ?
No ad revenue or limited free-to-play (F2P) mode – unlike mobile games with a multi-billion dollar advertising industry to balance cost per install (CPI) and lifetime value (LTV) – Web3 gaming revenue is currently at NFT tied sales (and its secondary market) and some form of token event (initial DEX or coin offerings, aka IDO/ICO). All of this makes forecasting sales and project sustainability a major challenge.
As a mobile games studio, we understand the challenges and obstacles of blockchain game development… Hugo Furneaux
new technologies
As a mobile games studio, we understand the challenges and barriers of blockchain game development with new programming languages, smart contracts, security considerations and requirements. As well as financial and compliance barriers to setting up a new entity to handle cryptocurrency and tokens.
Other than Web2 publishing deals, where did the upfront money to pay for these Web3 projects come from – to build a community, hire a team, or navigate the complexities of Web3 games?
After much research, what puzzled us the most is why no one has tried to bring the benefits of blockchain technology to mobile games. According to Newzoo, there will be 3.7 billion mobile gamers by 2023. So why are we trying to get mobile gamers to switch platforms and leave the games they love to play?
At least give them a better mobile gaming experience than what they’re playing right now!
So about six months ago we put together our business plan and set out to solve a complex problem: how can we seamlessly integrate web2/mobile players into web3, all within mobile games?
We wanted to build the gamefi middleware layer for web3 to onboard billions of mobile gamers by creating an open, decentralized advertising platform for gamers, developers, mobile game studios, brands and blockchain games.
After much research, what puzzled us the most is why no one has tried to bring the benefits of blockchain technology to mobile games.Hugo Furneaux
Make the meta game
We’ve leveraged our years of experience converting ad-based players to In-App Purchases (IAP) based players and built on proven Web2 monetization techniques to increase player retention and re-retention (rewards, competitions, etc.) in the meta-game , which lives in existing mobile games.
It’s integrated with a Unity-based SDK with an integrated Web3 wallet to seamlessly turn Web2 players into Web3 players. The SDK is currently in closed beta testing with our partners and our goal in phase one is to create one million new wallets. Along with understanding the main motivation for F2P gaming to engage with web3 – play and own? Play and reward? Play and compete?
Or just play?
For mobile game studios we take care of all smart contract pages, tokens, NFTs, marketplace etc. And in return bring new monetization channels and revenue through our meta game and increase retention of their existing players. As well as provide a platform for player acquisition. The more games a studio onboards, the more we will reward with our governance token for them to join our Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), vote on key decisions and govern the future development of our platform.
New rewards
And for players? Just play the game you play and love, but unlock a new gamified rewards and competition metagame now, accessible and broadcastable to hundreds of games on the app stores. Also, you can save and sell your progress via your own custom avatar (NFT) through our marketplace if you wish. Plus, update your own personal avatar via custom skins and cosmetics.
For blockchain games, gaming guilds and profile picture collections (PFP) looking to extend their IP to mobile gamers and attract new players, we offer access to mobile gamers with existing Web3 wallets to introduce them to your game via our innovative new ad formats.
Think of our platform like Coinbase’s Learning Rewards – our platform introduces mobile gamers to web3 and guides them through a funnel, teaching them about NFTs, tokens, wallets, etc. in a fun way.
To power our platform, we evaluated different blockchains to determine the best suitability for our project and selected the NEAR protocol.
Why? We loved their wallet experience, it was designed for “normies” – non-crypto natives. A simple email signup and you’re good to go. And of course we liked the vision and technical core of the team.
Having presented our vision, we are proud to announce a significant grant from the NEAR Foundation to begin our exciting new chapter.
Ripe for disruption
Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation said: “PlayEmber is an amazing startup that we are proud to support as it fits our mission of bringing the best of Web3 to a global audience. We’re particularly interested in supporting initiatives that spread joy and bring communities together – and gaming does just that.
“This sector is ripe for disruption – and through our technology, we can be instrumental in helping decide what the future of gaming entertainment will be like – by supporting the creators who have the vision to shape it.”
At the moment we are in the closing stages of our pre-seed funding and can’t wait to share some of the exciting investors, ecosystem partners, game studios and new team members joining us on our journey. And for those of you at NEARCON, see you next week in Lisbon!
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