As the year comes to an end, we’re asking some of the key members of the blockchain gaming sector what they thought about what happened in 2023, and what they expect to happen in 2024.
Amitt Mahajan is the CEO of US developer Proof of Play, which is working on live onchain game Pirate Nation, which runs on the Arbitrum Nova blockchain.
You can check out all our interviews in this series here.
What was the most significant news of 2023?
Amitt Mahajan: 2023 has been a monumental year for blockchain gaming. Perhaps most notably, we have now surpassed 1,000 games in active development that are integrating blockchain technology and web3 elements across their game design, in-game economies, ownership structures, and community engagement models.
How did the focus of your business change this year?
One of the most pivotal shifts for Proof of Play in 2023 has been successfully transitioning our flagship fully onchain game, Pirate Nation, into an accessible and sustainable free-to-play (F2P) model that removes the friction of upfront costs for new players.
By launching an invite-based F2P system in September, where players can mint a soulbound Pirate NFT and jump into the game for free, we’ve grown our active player base 10x in just a few months, and are now seeing all-time highs in active daily and weekly players.
What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2024?
There are a few things that will play out in 2024:
1/ Player acquisition at scale: many games and teams have worked in 2023 to tackle the distribution question, and have been successful in adding their game to large mainstream game launchers and into the app store. In 2024 we’ll see many web3-powered games significantly ramp up their active player bases. This will be helped by continued optimization of the onboarding experience, making it easier and more frictionless than ever before for gamers to play blockchain games.
2/ UGC: in 2024 we’ll see the rise of UGC, with community members, artists, developers and others building and contributing towards game content in all forms: from events to mods to clients. We’ll see more case studies where the flywheel of UGC improves a game and enriches the community around it, which in turn attracts more UGC.
3/ More fully onchain games: tremendous progress has been made in the FOCG/autonomous worlds ecosystem this year. We’ll see this continue in 2024 with improved performance and scale, more games, and more mainstream game developers starting to evaluate the merits of building fully onchain.
What was your favourite blockchain game of the year?
We’re fans of and have partnered with many teams, games and communities being built in the blockchain ecosystem, across genres, chains, and approaches.
To name some favorites among our team – Parallel, FRWC, Pixels, The Beacon, Wolf Game, NFL Rivals, Primodium, Sky Strife – and many others.
What’s your New Year’s resolution and what resolution would you enforce on the industry?
Our New Year’s resolution is to stay hyper-focused on building a fun game hand-in-hand with our community.
A resolution for the blockchain gaming industry going into 2024 is to continually raise the bar, so that we collectively become known for producing great games, rather than “great blockchain games”.
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