The rise of mobile gaming has a lot in common with crypto gaming

Mobile gaming had a lot of skeptics in its early days, but today it dominates 60% of the gaming market. Crypto games follow a similar path.

Over the past decade, mobile games have become an important pillar of the interactive entertainment market. Thanks to the access to smartphones, users around the world have been brought into the sphere of hardcore gamers. Today, the emergence of blockchain technology is creating a paradigm shift, providing players with the ability to both truly own the assets they earn or purchase in-game and the ability to generate tangible value from their time spent playing.

This new model offers many opportunities, but today most of the projects available are simply not up to par with their legacy counterparts. This has led many to doubt that this new generation of games can penetrate mainstream interest. However, this may be short-sighted. Indeed, this isn't the first time a new technology has been dismissed based on its early examples.

Web3 games integrate decentralized blockchain elements, including smart contracts and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), to create virtual assets that can be verifiably owned and traded by players without the intervention of a third. This innovation restores a high degree of power to players. That said, the crypto gaming space is still nascent, and many early offerings have been described as too simplistic and derivative without offering new or compelling gaming experiences.

As a result, many self-proclaimed gamers want nothing to do with NFT games due to a perceived lack of depth and an overemphasis on financial gain. Dubbed “play-to-earn” or P2E, these products offer players the chance to earn real value in the form of cryptocurrency and NFTs, which can then be sold for fiat currency. One of the most prominent examples of a P2E game is Axie...