Sakaba Game Report: Building a Web3 Gaming Community - Part 1

The Challenges and Opportunities in Establishing a Gamer-Centric Community During the Early Stages of a Game

“We often hear about the significance of communities in Web3 games”. True to that, many projects are vigorously integrating users into their ecosystems. However, we also see many projects that struggle to build a robust user base and establish a thriving community. These projects face difficulties in generating momentum at crucial times, such as the NFT sale or the game’s release. In this article, we aim to explore the optimal strategy for building a Web3 gaming community, focusing particularly on the initial stages.

This article will cover the following topics:

Part 1 (this article)

1. What is a Web3 gaming community?

2. Issues arising in the community, especially during the early stages

Part 2 (the next article)

3. Case studies of successful communities

4. Key factors for building a Web3 gaming community in its early stages

5. Conclusion

We hope you’ll stick with us till the end!

1. What is a Web3 Gaming Community?

Firstly, let’s clarify what a Web3 gaming community is: Web3 games often start building their user base during the early stages (before release or during development) to create a community. This approach likely stems from the culture of the blockchain (crypto) market. Originating from ideas and philosophies embedded in blockchain’s decentralized nature, these communities present intriguing prospects for gaming projects.

Web3 gaming communities’ key traits include decentralized game operations, where we see a dispersion in development, game operations, assets, and revenues.

Diversification of Development and Game Operations

Users frequently participate in game development. The production process is incredibly transparent, often giving users the opportunity to vote on design proposals. Design contests are also popular, where top user-created designs get incorporated into the game. In terms of operations, the management team might propose significant game balance changes based on user feedback after a game’s release. Users then vote on whether these changes should be implemented. This approach naturally narrows the gap between management and users, providing ample opportunities for interaction during AMAs (Ask Me Anything sessions) and on Discord, where the management team can respond to users’ gameplay impressions, feedback, and suggestions.

Asset and Revenue Diversification

If a user’s actions contribute positively to the project, they are rewarded within the project ecosystem. Users often have many opportunities to contribute to the project, with rewards, including NFTs, fungible tokens (FTs), or discount purchases (ALs), given based on their actions. Additionally, non-monetary rewards are also given, such as test play rights, in-game items, roles in Discord, priority purchase rights (AL), etc. Particularly in marketing, rewards are offered for actions such as following the project on Twitter or promoting the project on Twitter or YouTube. This approach effectively distributes the marketing budget to users without involving advertising agencies.

This methodology could usher in a new era of game creation, marketing, game management, and even entertainment. Many Web3 game players express that the “Web3 game community is exciting,” and I believe this indicates its potential.

A Quest System to Measure Contributions

Let’s digress a little and talk about quests. As we discussed earlier about asset and revenue diversification, rewards are offered for contributions. There are two primary ways to decide who receives these rewards: randomly selecting from those who have contributed or allocating points based on the degree of contribution, then rewarding the top earners or those who have achieved a certain cumulative number of points. Here’s an example of how these contribution actions can be quantified:

1 pt for following the project on Twitter

1 pt for liking and retweeting a Tweet that the project wants to promote

2 pts for joining the project’s Discord

5 pts for participating in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session

10 pts for promoting the game on YouTube

20 pts for discovering and reporting bugs during test play

etc.

The community members who earn the most points or who accumulate a certain number of total points will receive the rewards.

These contribution behaviors are referred to as quests (or tasks), and various tools exist that make it easier to set up these quests, evaluate quest achievement, and tally points efficiently. For example,

Zealy

’s function, our

Sakaba

’s function.

In the context of diversifying assets and revenues by measuring contributions, it’s become mainstream to design and prepare quests and rewards as incentives to encourage community participation and activity.

Let’s now return to our main discussion.

2. Problems Occurring in the Community (Especially in the Early Stages)

While the Web3 gaming community offers unique attractions and potential, it also poses considerable challenges during the early stages of user acquisition and launch. The method of gathering users is too strongly influenced by crypto-marketing, which primarily emphasizes quantity over quality. The idea is to accumulate as many people as possible, with hype and financial incentives driving the process, resulting in an initial rush to increase the number of followers on Twitter and Discord, and the volume of comments. However, this kind of community building often fails to attract individuals who would play the game and support the project in the long term.

Crypto-marketing might be effective in some use-cases. For example, a newly released DeFi project may benefit from attracting a large initial user base with the lure of airdrops and showcasing the product’s quality. But this approach may not work well for a gaming community in its early stages. It’s challenging to convert the quantity of the community gathered into quality, such as genuine passion for the game.

For instance, crypto-marketing during the initial community-building phase often leads to the following issues from project content release to AL distribution and first NFT Mint:

Social media follower counts increase rapidly, but few followers are well-informed about the project.There are also many botters.

Projects receive attention due to the reputation of their team or their impressive funding rounds, but understanding of the project among followers remains shallow.

The allure of high-selling NFTs attracts traders rather than genuine gamers.

Discord levels, incentivized by rewards, result in a surge of pointless conversations that drive away gamers.

Influencers who win ALs in giveaways are often airdrop hunters, who introduce the project only as airdrop information, not as a viable game, leading to immediate selling of minted NFTs by their followers.

Minting does not proceed as expected, and most of the minted NFTs are immediately sold off.

Gamers who want to buy from secondary distribution have already moved on to other games.

Most holders of NFTs, which come with beta testing rights, do not actually play the game.

These are just some examples of the issues that can arise. It’s important to note that not all quantity-focused activities necessarily lead to these outcomes. Depending on the execution details and timing, they can have beneficial results. Traders, airdrop hunters, and influencers aren’t inherently harmful to a project. Even they might end up playing the game sometimes, and their actions are understandable from their own perspectives.

However, it’s not uncommon for communities to find themselves in the situations described. If you’ve been involved in various communities, you might recognize many of these events. When we revisit these examples of activities, based on the definition of a Web3 gaming community given earlier, they seem to be quite misaligned.

So, how can good communities be created?

In the second part of this article, we’ll examine examples of gaming communities that have been successfully established and explore this question! So, please stay tuned!

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#Web3gaming

POSTED: 7/12/2023, 10:01:53 AM