Opinion: Whatever happened to post-CryptoKitties blockchain gaming?

Is the industry a one-hit wonder?

Despite regular complaints that games are slowing the Ethereum network, it’s not a trend that appears to be reflected in data about the wider ecosystem.

Over recent weeks, the top 10 apps on Ethereum app tracker DappRader has reversed from being dominated by games to being dominated by other apps, mainly token exchanges.

Of course, when it comes to games in the top 10 most popular list, CryptoKitties remains the #1 title just as it has since its late 2017 release.

Yet its daily active user count is now under 500. It was over 1,000 in mid-March.

CryptoKitties’ trump card

There are some obvious reasons why this is the case.

Few blockchain games have integrated the sort of deep daily retention loops beloved by F2P mobile games and which drives DAUs numbers.

Aside of CryptoKitties, no other games appear to be generating much audience momentum

In contrast, by the very nature of speculation, cryptocurrency traders are more likely to be logging in on a much higher frequency cycle.

That’s why the likes of IDEX and ForkDelta can generate 6,000 and 2,000 DAUs respectively.

Perhaps what’s more worrying for the nascent blockchain gaming industry, however, is that aside of CryptoKitties, no other games appear to be generating much audience momentum.

Ether Online is currently the only other game with more than 100 DAUs, down from almost 250 in mid-May, while once popular games like Ether Cartel have decline from over 2,200 DAUs to 16 in the space of three weeks.

And this sort of ‘CryptoKitties or bust’ situation is also reflected on third party item marketplaces such as Rare Bits, which has 639,801 CryptoKitties listed, compared to 1,682 CryptoBots and 1.058 CryptoFighters tokens.

Let’s hope more ambitious projects than those prefixed with “Crypto” this or “Ether” that – you can check out some good examples in our Top 10 most anticipated blockchain games list – will encourage the market to develop.

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