When blockchain gaming had its big investment spurt in 2021, many believed that colonising mainstream gaming would be just a matter of time and marketing. Through 2022-23, that belief was challenged and then exploded as it became clear mainstream gamers were not just indifferent: most actively disliked blockchain games. Despite many millions spent on developing games and hiring influencers, the situation hasn’t improved. Most gamers hate play-to-earn, they hate NFTs, they regard crypto-anything as tainted. They are an opinionated, obstreperous mob, and they are not changing their minds any tim ..read more

For the past two weeks there has been intense speculation within the Xbox community that Microsoft was about to pull the rug from under the console. That speculation culminated today in a video podcast with three Microsoft executives, which on the surface was something of an anticlimax. Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced that four games were losing Xbox exclusivity, but didn’t identify them beyond saying they weren’t Starfield or the new Indiana Jones game. Other sources say the four games are Sea of Thieves, Hi-fi Rush, Pentiment and Grounded. To sign up to this newsletter, enter your email, ti ..read more

Big news this week is the resignation of Grant Warwick, one of the co-founders of Illuvium and the project’s art director. While the official Illuvium announcement said Grant was “pursuing personal projects”, Grant followed up with a Discord post that said this was “absolute dog shit”. The co-founder mentioned “a personal tragedy” while also saying he had stepped back from hands-on work over two years, leading to his brother and co-founder Kieran questioning his contribution and apparently pushing for his resignation. “I always justified my decision [to do less work] by stressing how much I di ..read more

This year is going to be the decider for blockchain gaming. If, when December rolls around, there is no significant game launched and no serious movement of gamers towards BG, then I think we can say the experiment has failed. The idea of gamers actually owning game assets is a good one, and will continue to build steam regardless, but for “blockchain gaming” as a collective, 2024 must be the year that promise becomes reality. Why? Because talk is cheap, and effectively, talk is all we have had for three years. That’s a university degree in hot air. That has been ok until now, because good gam ..read more

Infamous YouTuber-turned-WWE fighter Logan Paul has kicked off the NFT buy-back for his failed game CryptoZoo. Those impacted can submit refund claims online until February 8, and Paul said he was “personally committing” $2.3 million to the scheme. But there’s a catch: if you accept a refund, you waive your right to sue Paul down the track, TechCrunch reported.  Most investors originally bought the NFTs and cryptocurrency for use in the CryptoZoo game, a Pokemon-style creature collector title that Paul announced three years ago, but which was never actually released.  The popular inf ..read more

I’ve written around 50,000 words in this newsletter this year, most of it about blockchain gaming. Through that word count I’ve been on a journey, just as BG has been on a journey, through the testing phases of market downturn, game collapse, cynicism, and hope. Polemos’ turn to mainstream games in order to attract an audience parallels the pivot that web3 developers have made in order to find meaningful markets for their games. As the year progressed, it became clear that there are simply not very many blockchain gamers. This hit home to me in an interview in March with Apeiron’s Frank Cheng ..read more

Sometimes, crypto just doesn’t have a lot of class. Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) is probably the most-anticipated game of all time. Its predecessor GTA 5 sold 190m copies, second only to Minecraft, and Rockstar have been working on the game for more than a decade. So the mere announcement of a trailer for GTA 6 was a big deal, with a release date and speculative flurry about what it would contain. When the trailer was leaked on X more than 12 hours ahead of the official release, that was big news too. The leaker’s X account was quickly shut down and Rockstar sent the full trailer live a few hou ..read more

Last week I wrote about how good the Illuvium PvP beta is in terms of engagement for hardcore and existing fans. This week, we have a reminder that building scale audiences in gaming requires moving beyond community enthusiasm and that blockchain gaming (BG) is constrained by the same factors working in general gaming. Having a great game is a necessary but not sufficient condition for big gaming success – gamers need to know your game exists, and when they do they must be enticed to download and play it. Illuvium is a card-based autobattler with an open world component. The project is being l ..read more

SINGAPORE, December 6 2023 – Polemos, the player-facing game platform specializing in blockchain games, and Crypto Mindset, a leading crypto training community brought to you by Cultivate Crypto and Dollar Cost Crypto, are excited to announce their new partnership. This collaboration marks a significant step forward in integrating the worlds of gaming and cryptocurrency. Through this partnership, Crypto Mindset members will gain exclusive insights into emerging blockchain games and trends, harnessing Polemos’s expertise in the gaming industry. This collaboration aims to educate and inform the ..read more

SINGAPORE, 6 December 2023 – Today, it is announced that Polemos, a leading ​Gaming Infrastructure Platform, has been chosen as the official lending technology provider for Illuvium, the groundbreaking open-world fantasy battle game built on the ​Ethereum blockchain and Immutable. Polemos and their technology partner Guardian Labs will implement their current lending product, the Armory, for Illuvium as part of this agreement. This strategic partnership between Polemos and Illuvium marks a significant milestone in the growing intersection of gaming and decentralised finance (DeFi). Polemo ..read more