Radical Forge, co-developer of titles including Gang Beasts and Sea of Thieves, has announced sandbox farming game Southfield for PC (Steam). A demo will be available during Steam Next Fest in February.
28.12.2023 - 16:45 / venturebeat.com
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It’s been a pretty bad year for cryptocurrency, even if Bitcoin’s price is soaring once again. There were scandals involving FX and Binance that are still playing out and making everyone cautious about avoiding blockchain scams.
Many have written off blockchain games as an overhyped trend that is coming to its end. Billions of dollars have been invested in such games in the past few years, much to the chagrin of traditionalists in game development and among Western gamers in particular. They think it’s a bunch of scams.
But Yat Siu, executive chairman of Animoca Brands, sees this as a “cleanup year,” as he remains one of the biggest believers in blockchain games. In an interview with GamesBeat, Siu said, “We’ve cleaned up a lot of what needed cleaning up this year.” As a result, he sees 2024 as a strong year ahead, with a chance for a phoenix to rise again. Siu has to look on the bright side, as his company has invested in hundreds of blockchain game deals over the years.
Animoca Brands owns some of the companies that have weathered the “Crypto Winter” so far and emerged with hihg-profile projects that are reporting steady progress, like Blowfish Studios, maker of Phantom Galaxies, which has entered early access; nWay, the maker of Wreck League, a mech-focused fighting game for both Web2 and Web3 players; REVV Racing; and The Sandbox, a Lego-like metaverse for brands and user-generated content.
The test for these companies is whether they can get to mass adoption, Siu acknowledged. It’s easier to reach the mass market in Asia. Siu is encouraged that triple-A game companies like Ubisoft, Zynga and Square Enix are still investing in blockchain games.
In a survey of 526 people at blockchain game companies, a significant 19.8% of those surveyed believe that traditional game studios venturing into the realm of Web3 gaming will have the most positive impact this year, according to the Blockchain Game Association. And Siu’s still a fan of the metaverse, which his own company is pursuing with a project dubbed the Mocaverse. To Siu, it’s a matter of literacy; when gamers understand it’s about ownership of their own assets, they will come on board.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: Looking back, what kind of year did we see with blockchain games in 2023?
Yat Siu: The way I would describe the last 12 months is kind of a cleanup year. 2023 was a year in which there was a degree of purging, particularly of bad actors. Because of the way our industry works, it’s very much tied into everything else that’s happened. We were affected by FTX. Everyone’s been caught up in
Radical Forge, co-developer of titles including Gang Beasts and Sea of Thieves, has announced sandbox farming game Southfield for PC (Steam). A demo will be available during Steam Next Fest in February.
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