In the previous market boom, the Play to Earn craze in Web3 gaming attracted an increasing number of gold farming players, becoming one of the major entry points into Web3. However, the good times didn’t last long. The immature Web3 gaming industry declined with the bear market in the crypto sector. Yet, as crypto assets become mainstream in this new market boom and with the push from numerous capital investments, more major companies are venturing into Web3 gaming, bringing new hope to Web3 gold farming. Gamers are eager to dive in again: after all, games are meant to be played, and if continuous gold farming can also bring Web3 dividends, then it’s even better…

From Traditional Games to Web3 Games: The Resurgence of Gold Farming

Games like “World of Warcraft” and “Legend of Mir” first demonstrated the value of virtual assets, captivating players for over 20 years and propelling the global gaming market to exceed trillions in size. Over these two decades, the gaming industry, one of the most lucrative sectors online, has given rise to various forms of gold farming, attracting waves of gold farmers. However, like many industries, it couldn’t escape the “rise and fall” cycle, pushing people to seek new opportunities and benefits.

Challenges in Traditional Gaming:

In recent years, the development of traditional games has clearly hit a bottleneck, and the gold farming industry has entered a “hell mode” for two main reasons:

Stricter Rules by Game Companies:

The fierce competition in the gaming industry has driven developers to tighten rules (e.g., restricting transactions), squeezing the profit margins for gold farmers. Both game companies and gold farmers rely on revenue from paying players, often putting them at odds. With game companies increasingly limiting opportunities, gold farmers find their space shrinking.

Intense Internal Competition:

The gold farming industry itself has become highly competitive. With many gold farming studios reaping early benefits, their numbers surged, leading to heavy investments in gold farming equipment and innovative strategies. This intense competition mirrors Bitcoin mining, making it nearly impossible for average players to enter.

Opportunities in Web3 Gaming:

Despite the bottleneck in traditional gaming, Web3 gaming is just beginning to offer new benefits. Phenomenal Web3 games like Axie Infinity, which gained traction in 2021, have rekindled the hope for gold farming. Web3 games not only introduce new benefits but also offer an open economic system that fosters a win-win situation for both players and developers, enhanced by token incentives that significantly boost user engagement.

Issues Facing Web3 Gaming:

However, Web3 games face several typical challenges that need resolution:

Generally Low Quality:

In the early stages of Web3 game development, startups often lack the strength and resources to compete with traditional game developers. Consequently, the games produced are frequently criticized for low quality and lack of playability, failing to retain players after the initial novelty wears off and certainly not encouraging them to spend money on these games.

Unsustainable “Ponzi” Models:

Many Web3 games lacking in playability resort to “Ponzi” schemes to grow, where new players’ investments are used to pay returns to earlier players. This unsustainable model inevitably leads to decline. Hence, when the cryptocurrency market dips, the benefits disappear, and many Web3 games vanish along with them.

What Have Traditional Game Companies Brought to Web3 Gaming Studios?

With the rise of crypto assets and the development of Web3 infrastructure, more and more startup teams from traditional gaming companies are joining the efforts to explore and improve Web3 gaming. Recently, Blockchain Talk interviewed Crystal Fun Studio, which just completed a $5 million seed round of financing and has a background in traditional gaming companies, to discuss the main challenges in Web3 gaming and their solutions.

1) What is Crystal Fun?

Before delving into the decentralized Web3 gaming ecosystem and studio Crystal Fun, it’s worth noting that in February 2024, they announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of financing. This is a substantial amount for a seed round in the crypto project space. Crystal Fun is actually backed by the overseas subsidiary of gaming giant Century Huatong. Notably, the Korean listed game company Actoz Soft, known for creating the classic online game “Legend,” also participated in the investment. Actoz Soft, a veteran in the traditional gaming industry, successfully launched “Legend” and subsequently engaged in equity transfer agreements and a series of collaborations with Wemade and Shanda, two major gaming companies.

Additionally, Crystal Fun’s core development team members hail from major gaming giants like Ubisoft, Gameloft, Glu, Tencent, Shanda Games, and Actoz. Crystal Fun has outlined four main visions for its decentralized Web3 gaming platform: high-quality games, a sustainable economic system, a multidimensional entertainment platform, and AI empowerment. In simpler terms, they aim to bring high-quality games and sustainable economic systems to Web3 gaming, build a multidimensional decentralized entertainment platform, and enhance game playability and user experience through AI.

Crystal Fun has over ten games in development, including some major IP titles. As of now, four high-quality Web3 games have been completed: “Outer,” “Endless War,” “StarFall,” and “Survivor.” These games will be gradually released after multiple rounds of community testing.

The game progressing most rapidly is the AAA sci-fi open-world MMORPG “Outer.” Players will pilot spaceships to explore unknown galaxies, engage in conflicts or cooperation with other players, and participate in interstellar wars.

“Outer” has shown impressive performance in testing phases. During a 7-day whitelist invitation-only test on the Ethereum network at the end of October last year, with only 200 slots available, the game achieved a retention rate of 98.3%, an average of 7.9 interactions per user, and an average daily online time of 12.5 hours. In subsequent tests on the OKX platform’s Xlayer testnet in March and April this year, there were nearly 10 million interactions, consuming a total of 63,284.5 OKB.

The nearly 10 million interactions in the second test were mainly from three types of high-frequency on-chain activities: “check-ins,” the “Battle Point System achievement system,” and “spin-the-wheel mini-games.” Check-ins and achievement systems provide immediate incentive feedback to users, while engaging mini-games like “spin-the-wheel” not only boost user activity but also serve as a tool for rewarding existing users to invite new users, driving growth and acquisition.

From the data of the first two test phases, it’s clear that “Outer” has outstanding user retention and engagement, indirectly highlighting the high quality and playability of Crystal Fun’s games, meeting the expectations of crypto game players.

Additionally, Crystal Fun’s gaming ecosystem is steadily rolling out new games and features. They will start the elite internal test for “Starfall” in May, and the third test phase for “Outer” in June-July, which will introduce the gold farming model and in-game trading market. Interested users can follow and experience these developments.

2）Why Are Crystal Fun’s Games Worth Paying Attention To?

From the four main visions announced by Crystal Fun, it’s evident that the studio, backed by top-tier traditional gaming resources, is confident in achieving these goals. These visions also address the current main challenges of Web3 games mentioned earlier. Here are the key highlights that make Crystal Fun’s gaming ecosystem worth attention:

a. In-House High-Quality Game Assurance and Traditional Game IP Support

In an interview with Blockchain Talk, Crystal Fun’s producer Jack stated: “As a decentralized game ecosystem platform and studio, we prioritize in-house development and self-operated games. Compared to some Web3 game platforms that feature third-party Web3 games, our quality control is more reliable. Additionally, Crystal Fun has secured exclusive IP authorization from Shanda Games, along with comprehensive support in human resources, development technology, art resources, and global channels.”

Indeed, having access to resources from traditional game companies is the cornerstone of Crystal Fun’s confidence in developing high-quality in-house games. Mature technical solutions, successful operational experiences, and enduring super game IPs from gaming giants are advantages that many native Web3 game teams lack. Traditional AAA games, with over 20 years of development, have reached a high level of playability and quality. This can inject the same kind of revenue potential into Web3 games as seen in traditional games, where players are willing to spend money on playability and the sense of achievement.

Crystal Fun’s approach to leveraging traditional game industry resources ensures a higher quality of game production. This positions them uniquely in the Web3 gaming space, where quality control can be more challenging with third-party developed games. By building on the strong foundations of established IPs and comprehensive support from traditional gaming powerhouses, Crystal Fun aims to elevate the standard of Web3 games, making them more appealing and sustainable for players.

b. Sustainable Economic System Design

Due to the high maturity of the industrial chain, the gold farming model in traditional games is already very mature. Building on the operational experience of traditional game companies like Crystal Fun, there will be Web3 blockchain optimizations.

Jack tells us that advanced players have a strong demand for in-game resources as they progress, which sustains the daily gold farming output from regular players.

To improve the gold farming experience and enhance the sustainability of the platform’s game economy, an in-game marketplace will be integrated. The daily gold farming output can be consistently and stably exchanged directly for USDT through a universal in-game asset (such as OTT in “Outer”). In his words: “We don’t want the game’s economic system to be based on the need for a constant influx of new users to maintain it, thereby truly avoiding the token death spiral effect. We hope that every niche of players in Outer can earn income that matches their contributions in the game, allowing players to make money while enjoying the game, shifting from Play to Earn to Play and Earn.”

As mentioned earlier, Web3 games are an excellent platform for win-win, shared profits between game companies and gold farmers, bringing more and more new gold farming dividends while also enhancing the economic sustainability of the game and the ecosystem platform.

c. Platform-Centric Empowerment of Tokens

According to the information released by Crystal Fun, CFUN is the platform’s sole token. Besides the four major games currently undergoing extensive testing, including “Outer,” all future games will use CFUN as the incentive token across the platform, and the CFUN community will share the platform’s benefits.

The production and distribution of CFUN primarily come from rewards for active players through game or guild leaderboards, the check-in and achievement system (Battle Point System), and additional event rewards for long-term platform users participating in market operations, promotions, and invitation tasks. Early contributors holding the platform’s genesis NFTs (OG players) can also stake them on the blockchain to earn CFUN rewards. Overall, this is a fair distribution model based on the activity and growth contributions to the games and platform.

As a multi-purpose platform token, apart from governance, the launch of new games, special in-game events, etc., require burning CFUN. Players can stake CFUN in-game to receive extra rewards and bonuses in special gameplay modes, and the platform’s ecosystem game revenues are used for buybacks. CFUN follows a deflationary model with a capped total supply, being continuously burned during use.

In summary, Crystal Fun plans to leverage the entire platform’s resources to empower this single token. Future plans may include launching platform-specific applications like Gas, DID, and other new uses to further enhance its value.

Optimized Iteration Based on “Legend 4” Experience

Understanding Crystal Fun’s background reveals similarities with the highly popular game “Legend 4.” This large-scale blockchain-modified game, backed by a major traditional IP, achieved approximately 20 billion Korean Won (equivalent to about 110 million RMB) in sales. Upon its release in South Korea, it reached 3 million participants within two months of pre-registration, causing a sensation. “Legend 4” can be considered one of the most successful breakout examples of Web3 games. However, the success was short-lived, as “Legend 4” reportedly experienced an “economic system collapse,” resulting in the failure of this blockchain modification experiment for the traditional blockbuster game.

Similar to “Legend 4,” Crystal Fun also brings resources and IP from traditional game giants, with a similar blockchain modification approach. However, to avoid the disadvantage of an unsustainable single-game economic system, Crystal Fun has chosen a multi-platform development route. No matter how well a single game is produced and designed, it is difficult to escape the limited “life cycle” problem. With multiple games developing simultaneously and supporting the platform’s economic system, player assets are not locked when one game’s life cycle ends. Instead, they can be transferred to new games to gain new benefits, significantly reducing the churn rate of both new and veteran players.

summary

Both mature traditional games and emerging Web3 games have their own “charms.” Regarding the gold farming bonus, traditional games may be in their twilight years, whereas Web3 games are just beginning.

Based on the successes and failures of “Legend 4,” Crystal Fun has made numerous optimizations and iterations. Soon, we may witness the emergence of high-quality Web3 games that start “explosively” like “Legend 4” and continue to develop sustainably over time.

Perhaps the future of Web3 and the metaverse will not strictly distinguish between traditional games and Web3 games. Instead, they will merge, with most game virtual assets being upgraded to encrypted assets.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [白话区块链]. All copyrights belong to the original author [Bob]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.