As we’re at the dawn of a new year, we’ve been asking some of the key members of the blockchain gaming sector what they thought about what happened in 2023, and what they expect in 2024. You can check out all our interviews in this series here.
Won Il Suh is the EVP of Wemade, the developer of web3 gaming platform and ecosystem Wemix.
What was the most significant news of 2023?
For me, it wasn’t one single event or news. It was the winter. But I mean this in a positive way. During this period, we saw a lot of bad projects go away and good projects learning how to get better (differentiating between the weed and the crop).
The lack of crazy and unjustified hype made things more real. If your game, project, company, wasn’t going to add any value, then it was going to get weeded. All in all, it was something that we in the industry needed.
How did the focus of your business change this year?
The focus remained unchanged: to build a blockchain-based mega ecosystem. If anything, we doubled down on that commitment in 2023 by taking steps to expand the relevance, reach and impact of the Wemix3.0 ecosystem. WEMIX is not only the top-weighted gaming sector token in Sygnum Bank’s Crypto Sector Indices, and the second most popular crypto in the Philippines, it also rose into the top 10 on CoinMarketCap’s list of Largest Blockchains in Crypto Ranked by TVL. Much of this is driven by blockchain innovations like the unique NEITH Station NFTFi, and the unagi initiative, an omnichain protocol that offers an unbound blockchain experience with instant connections to 8 blockchains. Unagi is expected to bring to life on the Wemix Play platform, the most sustainable blockchain game economy currently attainable, and make blockchain interoperability a reality.
Just as importantly we expanded Wemade’s global partner community through collaborations with leading companies like Chainlink Labs and Etherscan, and onboarded more game developers from around the world onto Wemix Play and our ecosystem this year, who are going to create amazing web3 games and experiences. The Wemix ecosystem also expanded to new platforms in 2023, including the launch of select Wemix Play games on over 200 million LG screens worldwide for the first time.
What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2024?
On an overarching scale, I think it will be various industry regulatory movements. The SEC, MICA, various government bodies around the world are realizing (or are coming to the realization) that blockchain is here to stay, so they are wanting to create some regulatory frameworks. Many teams/foundations/companies think this will hinder our growth, and in some respects it will. However, on a higher level, it will better define how blockchain can be used, who will be accountable, etc. so that it will bring more transparency, which will ultimately lead to more mass adoption.
What was your favourite blockchain game of the year?
I play a fair amount of games, as I try to at least play a bit of all the games that we onboard. My go to game this year was Navy Crypto Field (Navy themed MMORTS) but recently, I’ve spent a lot of time playing Summoner’s League (match 3 strategy).
However, instead of what I liked the most, if someone were to ask me what I would have liked to play the most, I would say, without a doubt, the web3 version of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft. I was once a big fan of WoW and remember playing with my guild, for many many nights. Meeting up Ogrimmar, traversing different parts of Azeroth, completing quests and raiding dungeons, were highlights of my entire day back then (don’t tell my wife). Now, if there was a web3 version of WoW, and I could have minted my Tauren Warrior and kept it as an NFT, I wouldn’t need to reminisce about the experience, I could just pop back in to WoW with my NFT and relive my past glory (even if I decided to not pop back in to WoW, I could still show off my NFT). However, I’m pretty sure that my character has been wiped clean from Blizzard’s DB, and there is no way I can prove to my three sons that their dad was a badass
Horde.
When I talk about this, some people say that I could have sold my NFT to other interested gamers, and yes, I guess I could have made a couple of grand back then, but knowing what I know now, I would have just kept my character NFT as my badge of honor. I know I would get some serious street-cred from my sons and their friends.
What’s your New Year’s resolution and what resolution would you enforce on the industry?
Making things easier for the consumer. The things that we are used to in our industry, such as wallets, liquidity pools, seed phrases, gas fees, etc. are all not very user friendly. We still have so many hurdles that we need to help consumers overcome.
When the first MP3 players were out there, players needed to go to Napster, connect to a P2P server, illegally download music files, then connect their MP3 players to their PC, manually copy the files over, etc. to listen to digital music. Then the iPod came along and made it so much easier to listen to music. We need similar improvements in our industry with wallets, user onboarding, on/off ramping, etc. No doubt these improvements will happen as the tech has already advanced a lot, I just want the easier and more comfortable UX to happen sooner.
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