A16z's new fund of 600 million US dollars All in Metaverse game, how will the future of Gamefi go?

On the evening of May 18th, Beijing time, Silicon Valley's top VC a16z announced the launch of a $600 million Metaverse Game Fund, dedicated to investing in the best founders in the game industry. In order to match the launch of this fund, the avatar and banner of a16z's official Twitter account have been replaced with images of game elements, which seems to tell everyone that they are ready for All in.

In the context of the coming capital winter, a16z has launched such a blockbuster fund that focuses on a certain field, which has explained many problems.

In the official announcement, a16z mentioned:

“Games are also driving innovation across the consumer ecosystem, pioneering best-in-class user engagement, retention and monetization mechanisms such as microtransactions, battle passes and web3 tokens. In the long run, we believe in the fundamentals of gaming Facilities and technology will be key components of the Metaverse, an opportunity that dwarfs the current $300 billion gaming industry itself."

Up to now, a16z Games has deployed metaverse game projects including more than 30 teams such as Forte, Dapper Labs, Yuga Labs, Improbable, Sky Mavis, bonfirestudios, altavr, etc., and all of them are presented in the official video of 1 minute and 15 seconds out.

A16z's metaverse game investment theory

Regarding the investment direction of metaverse games, A16z wrote in his investment theory :

"Over the past decade, gaming has radically transformed from packaged entertainment into a social network-like online service at a scale similar to a consumer technology company. Today's gaming is also driving the entire consumer ecosystem through new approaches to engagement, retention and monetization Innovation in systems. We believe games will play a key role in defining how we socialize, play and work in the next century. ”

It can be seen that the games defined by a16z are not limited to the games we understand in the traditional sense, but also include the two metaverse application scenarios of "social" and "work". In this article, we focus on The focus is on the game itself.

The 6 Essential Elements of a Metaverse Game

In my opinion, there are many conditions that a metaverse game needs to meet for long-term success, and the following are some of them:

1. Do you have experience in developing large-scale games?

Before the game is developed, investors and players can only judge the quality of the game based on the pictures or trailers given by the project party, but it is not enough for us to rely on "PPT". If a team does not have relevant talents To carry out game development, then this game may always be in the state of talking on paper.

And some chain game teams with developers from large game companies such as Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic Games, and Riot Games are more likely to produce an attractive Metaverse game.

In this regard, we can judge the development strength of a team by investigating the LinkedIn profile.

2. Supported investment institutions and game guild DAO

Compared with other Web3 projects, games may rely more on the support of investment institutions, so metaverse game projects with top VC support are more likely to succeed.

As of now, leading metaverse game investment institutions include A16z, Paradigm, Three Arrows Capital, Binance Labs, FTX (Alameda Research), Animoca Brands, Sequoia Capital, Framework Ventures, etc.

In addition, "Game Guild DAO" can also bring great help to a game. At present, YGG, which became popular because of Axie Infinity, is widely regarded as the most influential game guild DAO in this field. In addition, there are various game guild DAOs like MainDAO, PathDAO, GuildFi, Merit Circle, Avocado Guild, Good Games Guild, BlockchainSpace, GameFi Guild, paragonsdao, ReadyPlayerDao, etc.

In the author's opinion, the competition of game guild DAO has just begun, because there will be a large number of metaverse games in the future, and there will be a very close mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between these game guild DAOs and the games they choose to support .

3. Game playability and balance

When a game enters the playable stage, players will judge the chance of success of this game by experience.

Here are some of the important factors:

1. Game screen (good game screen can bring visual impact to people, so it is easier to become a good game)
2. Balance (whether it's a shooter, strategy or RPG game, balance is critical to the sustainable development of the game)
3. Innovation (a successful game must continue to innovate in order to bring players a fresh experience. In addition to conventional gameplay, new technology experiences such as AR and VR can also be introduced)

4. Can the underlying blockchain infrastructure of the game support large-scale applications?

As the underlying infrastructure of metaverse games, the blockchain (whether it is L1, L2 or L3) must be scalable, because when we find a fun game, it will naturally attract a large number of players to interact at the same time, and if The underlying blockchain is not scalable, so this game cannot be applied on a large scale.

For now, game project parties will have options to develop Ethereum side chains, Avalanche subnets, Cosmos Hub, Polkadot parallel chains, etc., or migrate to Ethereum L2 or L3, Solana, Flow and other public chain infrastructures .

As far as the situation of Axie Infinity is concerned, I am not optimistic about the development of the underlying infrastructure by the game project party. Although this helps to improve the narrative, it may be very unwise to disperse the team's energy to areas that they are not good at.

5. Game economy design (including token economy)

For encrypted players who are familiar with Gamefi, game economic design is naturally also a very important part, which involves the design of various components such as game equipment, land, rare resources, and currency (token).

For now, things like land and tokens are usually designed as resources with a limited total amount, and they are also the most common hype targets in the game field.

In general, a good game economic design is also very important for the sustainability of the game.

6. Is there a Free To Play mechanism?

At present, most chain games need to be experienced by holding NFT, which is helpful to promote the price growth of NFT in the short term. However, this also raises a problem, that is, the potential player group is very limited ( Because very few people can afford the initial investment of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in the game).

And if the project party introduces a Free To Play mechanism, that is, players who do not hold NFT can also experience the game for free, but do not give them token rewards, or only give very few token rewards, then the group of this game can The scalability is greatly increased, and it is easier to succeed.

How to Watch Metaverse Games

Regarding the question of how to view metaverse games, if someone who plays games around you tells you:

"It's not interesting, I don't want to play".

Then you should understand that this is the opportunity and we're at a very early stage.