为什么我们（仍然）投资 Web3 游戏

Leah Callon-Butler 和 Nathan Smale 表示，在创新、采用和影响方面，游戏脱颖而出，成为区块链技术的主要用例

Despite a downturn in game tokens, Web3 gaming is still attracting investment due to its potential for innovation, adoption, and impact.

尽管游戏代币低迷，但 Web3 游戏由于其创新、采用和影响的潜力，仍然吸引着投资。

Key Takeaways:

要点：

With game tokens down 37% overall in 2024, some are writing off Web3 gaming, but this is shortsighted.

随着 2024 年游戏代币整体下跌 37%，一些人正在放弃 Web3 游戏，但这是短视的。

Despite the downturn, Emfarsis is still actively angel investing in seed and pre-seed Web3 startups.

尽管经济低迷，Emfarsis 仍然积极对种子和种子前 Web3 初创公司进行天使投资。

This is a great time to invest, as builders are pitching mind-bending new ideas and shipping intriguing MVPs.

这是投资的好时机，因为构建者正在提出令人费解的新想法并推出有趣的 MVP。

Emfarsis is putting its money where its mouth is, guided by the thesis that Web3 gaming will move us further forward in terms of innovation, adoption, and impact than any other use case.

Emfarsis 正在言出必行，其理念是 Web3 游戏将比任何其他用例在创新、采用和影响方面推动我们进一步前进。

Our company Emfarsis is now investing in and advising early stage Web3 projects with a focus on gaming. We originally became interested in blockchain way back in 2016 because we saw the potential for the technology to empower marginalized groups and champion inclusion, redistribute wealth and power more fairly and transparently, and improve the lives of billions of people all around the world. Ultimately, we believed that Web3 could be a force for good.

我们公司 Emfarsis 目前正在投资早期 Web3 项目并为其提供咨询，重点关注游戏领域。早在 2016 年，我们就对区块链产生了兴趣，因为我们看到了该技术在赋予边缘群体权力和倡导包容性、更公平和透明地重新分配财富和权力以及改善全球数十亿人的生活方面的潜力。最终，我们相信 Web3 可以成为一股向善的力量。

It wasn’t until late 2017 when we went all in on Web3, joining a crypto payments startup that sought to level the playing field for business operators that were fighting tooth and nail with the banks for a fair go. We got to go around the world giving talks and running workshops, while I wrote red pill-styled opinion pieces on everything from peer-to-peer (P2P) payments and crypto-asset backed remittance to decentralized identity and reputation.

直到 2017 年底，我们才全力投入 Web3，加入了一家加密支付初创公司，该初创公司致力于为那些与银行竭尽全力争取公平竞争的企业经营者提供公平的竞争环境。我们必须到世界各地进行演讲和举办研讨会，而我则撰写红色药丸风格的观点文章，内容涉及从点对点（P2P）支付和加密资产支持的汇款到去中心化身份和声誉等各个方面。

But, OMG, the education effort was a hard slog. Yes, of course, people would nod emphatically as we told them they could be their own bank, and transact permissionlessly — yada yada yada — but only a small number actually converted. Even then, they were more likely to buy on a local, licensed CEX and HODL, rather than self custody and go off exploring the decentralized ecosystem.

但是，天哪，教育工作是一项艰巨的任务。是的，当然，当我们告诉人们他们可以成为自己的银行，并且无需许可即可进行交易时，人们会用力点头——yada yada yada——但实际上只有一小部分人进行了转换。即便如此，他们更有可能在当地有执照的 CEX 和 HODL 上购买，而不是自行托管并继续探索去中心化生态系统。

We found ourselves asking: what’s the point of world-changing tech if you can’t get people to use it? Not just check the balance on their wallets once in a BTC moon, but really use it? At the time (circa 2018-19), we felt the learning curve was too steep, the UX sucked, and quite frankly, talking about wallets, payments and remittance put people to sleep. Not to mention that most people weren’t overly enthused about investing their savings into “magic beans” that they viewed as volatile, risky, and possibly scammy. Few normies wanted to gamble on that.

我们不禁要问：如果不能让人们使用改变世界的技术，它还有什么意义呢？不仅仅是在比特币满月时查看一次钱包余额，而是真正使用它？当时（大约 2018-19 年），我们觉得学习曲线太陡峭，用户体验很糟糕，而且坦率地说，谈论钱包、支付和汇款会让人们昏昏欲睡。更不用说大多数人并不太热衷于将自己的积蓄投资于“魔豆”，他们认为这些“魔豆”不稳定、有风险，而且可能是骗局。很少有普通人愿意在这上面赌博。

But making money by playing a video game? Now THAT was a different proposition altogether. This was the promise of play-to-earn and we discovered it before most, when “blockchain gaming” was still an oxymoron. When I first wrote about it for CoinDesk in August 2020, Axie had less than 500 DAU, was still on Ethereum, and suffered all of the same UX and on/off ramping issues as the rest of crypto. But that didn’t stop a tidal wave of new users, when word got around about the game that paid you to play — particularly in the Philippines where we’d relocated in 2018 in the belief that the country would see a crypto adoption miracle thanks to its young, digitally-savvy but mostly unbanked population that was highly proficient in English.

但是通过玩视频游戏赚钱？现在这完全是一个不同的提议了。这就是边玩边赚钱的承诺，我们在大多数人之前就发现了它，当时“区块链游戏”仍然是一个矛盾的说法。当我于 2020 年 8 月首次为 CoinDesk 撰写相关文章时，Axie 的 DAU 还不到 500，仍然在以太坊上，并且遇到了与其他加密货币相同的用户体验和开/关斜坡问题。但这并没有阻止新用户的浪潮，当这款付费游戏的消息传开时，尤其是在菲律宾，我们于 2018 年搬迁到菲律宾，因为我们相信该国将看到加密货币采用的奇迹，谢谢面向年轻、精通数字技术但大多没有银行账户且精通英语的人群。

At its peak in July 2021, Axie counted nearly 3 million daily active users (DAU). Largely, they were poor, low-skilled service sector workers hailing from emerging economies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, India and Africa — exactly the kind of people that we’d hoped might one day find personal empowerment in crypto. This community had previously been ignored by crypto marketers due to their lack of disposable cash, and here they were, finally, and legitimately, competing in the global decentralized digital economy as equals. It was the miracle we had predicted; we just never dreamed a video game would be the catalyst.

在 2021 年 7 月的高峰期，Axie 的每日活跃用户 (DAU) 接近 300 万。很大程度上，他们是来自东南亚、拉丁美洲、印度和非洲新兴经济体的贫穷、低技能的服务业工人——正是我们希望有一天能在加密货币中找到个人赋权的那种人。这个社区此前因缺乏可支配现金而被加密货币营销人员忽视，而在这里，他们最终合法地在全球去中心化数字经济中平等竞争。这是我们预料到的奇迹；我们只是从未梦想过电子游戏会成为催化剂。

Read more: Jeff Wilser - What Hamster Kombat Did: How Telegram Built a Web3 Gaming Juggernaut

阅读更多：Jeff Wilser - Hamster Kombat 做了什么：Telegram 如何打造 Web3 游戏巨头

It’s critical to note here that Axie’s developer, Sky Mavis, had achieved this great adoption feat without needing to make blockchain easier to use or understand. It didn’t even lower the cost of participation, as you still had to buy the NFTs you needed to play (at least, you did in the early days — more on that later). Instead, Axie changed the game entirely, by delivering an unapologetically Web3-native experience that was unparalleled. It financialized gaming in such a way that anyone who contributed real value to the game’s virtual economy (not just the developers and the publishers) could reap the benefits. And people wanted it so bad

这里值得注意的是，Axie 的开发者 Sky Mavis 已经实现了这一伟大的采用壮举，而无需让区块链更易于使用或理解。它甚至没有降低参与成本，因为你仍然必须购买玩游戏所需的 NFT（至少，你在早期是这么做的——稍后会详细介绍）。相反，Axie 彻底改变了游戏规则，提供了无与伦比的 Web3 原生体验。它将游戏金融化，任何为游戏虚拟经济贡献实际价值的人（不仅仅是开发商和发行商）都可以从中受益。人们非常想要它