That’s a really great question. The simple answer is “scalability”, but let me elaborate a bit (actually, a lot):
Gaming is an absolutely massive industry, with upwards of 300 billion in revenue in 2023 alone, and its expected this will continue to increase year over year.
There is clearly a huge untapped market here with big players starting to get involved, but the blockchain gaming industry as a whole has not yet been able to convert that HUGE traditional gamer population into web3 gamers…which is where we come in.
With respect to that large population of traditional gamers, which is where the most opportunity lies, the primary barrier is going to be the steep learning curve due to the involvement of cryptocurrency and smart contracts. This is the customer base that we ultimately need to cater to, so creating a simple experience is going to be critical.
From a technology perspective, the largest and most common networks on which people are trying to build web3 games are incredibly cost prohibitive. Web3 gaming requires a large number of “microtransactions”, and with each transaction on the Ethereum network, for example, costing anywhere between $4 and $40 each, this simply isn’t sustainable. And although some of the newer networks like Polygon and Solana are getting better, they’re still very slow, have long wait times, low network reliability, and limited scalability. So there’s a lot of room for improvement there.
From a user experience perspective: there isn’t a single platform for gamers to easily jump on and just start playing, which is what they want to do. Instead, it’s typically a very convoluted process of depositing fiat into a centralized exchange, then buying some of the network’s native coin (so again using Ethereum as an example), withdrawing that native coin to a non-custodial wallet, buying the gaming token from a decentralized exchange, then connecting to the game and buying an NFT that is required for play.
In the case of “play to earn” and actually benefitting from that, users then need to sell their gaming token on a decentralized exchange, and then essentially reverse the first few steps…so clearly a very convoluted process and as a result, I’m not at all surprised that this category hasn’t exploded yet and onboarded “non-crypto users”.
And then one unfortunate facts of blockchain that remains to this day: there are still a lot of scams, and a lot of users’ hard earned money lost based on speculation and false promise. There’s unfortunately been a lot of game projects that have collected millions of dollars for development and then they simply never deliver.
So there’s some pretty clear issues, but once you understand the problem, its easier to address it. So what’s the solution? Well…WE ARE!
The OmniaVerse ecosystem solves all of these problems by integrating all the parts and pieces under a single roof. OmniaVerse is really a full technology stack, starting with our Apex network, which is our Layer 1, ZERO transaction fee blockchain.
NOTE: We’re clearly offering our ecosystem on other chains, including TRON, but Apex is sort of our home base.
Our Game Dashboard is then the single interface that gamers need to access games and manage their game assets. This is also how we resolve the “scam” issue…we don’t let just any garbage project integrate into our dashboard or blockchain…we have a due dilligence process we conduct that was discussed a few responses above.
Then of course, there’s the content: we actually started off as our own game studio about 18 months ago, and recognizing all of the problems I just went through, we realized that we needed to be more than just a game developer. Nonetheless, we have upwards of 10 games at this point that we’ve used to demonstrate the value of our ecosystem and it’s been very encouraging to see this proof of concept come together and work.
We also recognized that we can’t do it all and that there’s a ton of great independent game developers out there making some really nice content. And by providing these developers with the infrastructure they need to reach users and to capitalize on the inherent benefits of web3 gaming we’ve started to attract some really great talent.
And really all of this is the foundation on which we are placing user experience above all else.
So while everyone is very excited about the Play TO Earn aspect right now, we recognize that we need to be MORE than that, and we have a strategy to become the “the number one choice for Gamers and Game Developers alike”.
And this is where scalability comes in. We recognize that we can’t just “give give give” and be sustainable. Play to Earn for us is really just the first part…and it’s been very useful for us in developing a community base, and to develop our ecosystem as a sort of proof of concept. But as I mentioned, the future is really “Play AND Earn”, so the long term strategy is in building an integrated, easy to use platform (for EVERYONE…not just crypto users), with QUALITY content and unique game mechanics (which is where blockchain really shines with gaming).
We’ve identified more than 30 unique revenue streams at this point, which we are implementing as we scale. With this scale, we can sustain those play AND earn rewards very easily.
Sorry for the long-winded response! I hope that answers it. But sustainability of play AND earn is so much more than just clever tokenomics and such; it’s in the scale of what we’re building…and to convey all that required a long-winded response