The concept of the metaverse, a collective virtual shared space created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual reality, has been a topic of much discussion and speculation in recent years. However, despite the hype, the metaverse has not been particularly well received, nor has it matured in a positive way that would influence the industry as investors initially expected. Many projects have retreated into the shadows, and progress has been slow. Yet, despite these challenges, there are still a lot of games that utilize blockchain and strictly attempt to build a metaverse-like platform.
Before we get into the “good news” about the Metaverse, let’s give a quick rundown of how blockchain and the Metaverse is doing. Of course, people probably know of the most popular live games that are attempting to make strides in the areas of blockchain gaming, many of which are striving to be the premiere Metaverse experience. These are games like Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, Horizon Worlds and Decentraland. These “games” have managed to carve out a niche for themselves in the metaverse landscape, attracting, at times, a significant number of players and maintaining a modicum of popularity over time.
It’s clear that we can point to such stark failures across each of these games as well. Notably, the Axie Infinity hack that subsequently cratered Axie Infinity NFT prices, of which, the premiere NFT game by Sky Mavis has never come close to recovering. The massive value loss includes both of their blockchain token prices, AXS and SLP.
Decentraland on the other hand, sold millions of dollars’ worth of virtual land plots, most of which are completely devoid of anything resembling a game, or a virtual world akin to something even the worst MMOs on the market could accomplish. The recent report that, despite over a billion dollars invested, that the average player base is around 38 active players is abysmal to say the least, but more accurately an embarrassment that echoes throughout any verse, especially the meta kind.
Horizone Worlds (which is not built on blockchain), was such a powerful idea, that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gambled the future of the company and renamed it to Meta. The experiences that Horizon Worlds was meant to foster would supersede what Facebook is now. Since its inception Horizon Worlds has slowly become a platform with some games, some social spaces, but overall, a worse version of what VRChat currently is. Because of that, unfortunately, none of Zuckerbergs initial vision has truly panned out, and despite some more active visitors, the Wall Street Journal, citing Meta’s internal documents, stated that most users don’t return after their first experience. Overall, Meta was profiting globally a total of less than $500 dollars for their first year. Some may consider that a slow burn, where revenue will increase over time, but in reality, Meta’s recent 4 billion dollar first quarter loss in their AR and VR projects division isn’t inspiring a lot of confidence that they understand how to launch a trend of this magnitude.
Finally, we come to The Sandbox, which has benefited due to many of its investors and collaborations which include giants like Square Enix and their Dungeon Siege IP, and some silly nostalgic-based IPs like The Smurfs. The voxel-based system is heavily reminiscent of Minecraft or Roblox and it’s clear that there’s far more to do here, but even still, the game system barely touches the surface of a more direct gamified creation system like the blockchain game Blankos Block Party (now on Epic Games Store), which I actually quite like. Despite being one of the fastest growing metaverse platforms, with collaboration events from big name companies like Playboy and personalities and musicians like Snoop Dogg, being the oasis in the desert doesn’t make a great case for regular gamers of social media fiends to visit.
What seems to be peculiar is that, at one point, many development studios were very forward about their investments into blockchain gaming. These days, many have somewhat hidden the blockchain nature of their games. Some of them are so well hidden, that you may find it difficult to find out, at first glance, that they plan on a blockchain approach at all. Games like Ni no Kuni Cross Worlds and A3: Still Alive – both somewhat popular games on mobile still, push their blockchain economy on the backend, requiring even those looking for information related to their blockchain on their official sites to be pushed off to a completely separate site and marketplace entirely.
Some in development games have even opted for the blockchain portions not to be their main selling point anymore. Most notably we’ve seen a drastic shift in response for Ember Sword as they implement a more “game first” mentality, severely limiting the amount of blockchain-based information they provide. Yet, that hasn’t swayed developers from continuing to craft Web3 metaverse and blockchain games. Upcoming blockchain-based games by big publishers, such as WEMADE’s Legend of Ymir, which is a remake of Legend of MIR, built on top of the moderately successful cross platform blockchain game MIR4. Square Enix recently restated its commitment to Web3 and NFT games and even the EPIC powerhouse Fortnite has attempted to capitalize on the trend, albeit, quietly, and not in-game.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the blockchain gaming scene right now is in a sad state. That isn’t to say that it will always be that way. As someone who not only researches and takes part in blockchain gaming, but also believes that a good game or truly novel experience, no matter its monetization choice, can break through to the mainstream, I’m always ready with a hopeful yet skeptic eye for a great blockchain game. That’s why, the recent news that a new formation of alliances between multiple metaverses intrigued me. In a way, the news of a metaverse alliance was a bright spot in so much mediocre metaverse news lately.
To summarize, the metaverse alliance was formed by multiple metaverse platforms, such as The Sandbox, Upland, Alien Worlds and more, to link up and allow blockchain gaming worlds to be cross-accessible. What’s kind of silly is that this is a feature that often gets touted by blockchain developers as a major selling point of NFTs, but there has rarely (if ever) been any indication of a successful implementation of such experiences for the vast majority of metaverse and blockchain games out there. This inherent ability was often shot down by many developers, as they humbly waited for some type of universal standard for creating such a system.
But with the creation of OMA3, it’s truly the first step in the possibility that a metaverse of some type may be formed. While it’s still far away from a reality, and it would really benefit from far more cooperation among some of the more gamer-focused experiences, it’s fair to say that you have to start somewhere.
While the metaverse has faced numerous challenges and setbacks, progress is still being made quietly. Developers are still crafting metaverse and blockchain games, and alliances are being formed to allow for cross-accessibility between different metaverses. Luckily, it feels like the NFT craze has withered and is now kaput, at least for a short time. Without a hyper-focus on the monetary aspects of blockchain gaming, there may actually be something brewing that would warrant a visit to the metaverse. Until then, all we can really do is wait, watch, and for heaven’s sake don’t invest in monkey pictures.
*This editorial of MMONFT does not constitute as business advice. MMONFT is the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the opinions of MMORPG, MOBA or any of their staff aside from the author. Steven owns NFTs from the following games mentioned here, Blankos Block Party, Ember Sword, Ni no Kuni Crossworlds, MIR4*
