Discord is DEAD, right?
Gamified Episode #40 breakdown
A note from Sam
Episode #40 was an absolute thrill - 450+ comments, 2.8k listens and thousands of dollars in prizes given away.
The purpose of Gamified has been, and always will be, to educate, entertain, and reward the community, all at the same time.
I think we're closer to that than we've ever been before, and that gets me unbelievably excited!!
See you next week for #41
Re listen to Episode #40 here!
In Today’s Newsletter
State of the Market
Gaming & Discord; a complicated thing
Glossary time - what do the acronyms mean?
Should games lean into meme culture?
Is Shitcoin Season back?
In Case You Missed IT (ICYMI)
State of the Market
BTC up 21.4%
ETH up 14.9%
SOL up 62.4%
All metrics shown represent a 14 day change as of November 2nd, 2023.
Another week of very solid gains for 3 of the top market cap coins… are we back? Well, maybe?
Crypto cycles are often tied to some external narrative; “it’s about the art”, “crypto can change the global economy” etc.
The narrative today?
It feels like Gaming is starting to gain some traction. Where are you placing your bets?
Check out Rumble #10 for more context!
Gamers, Developers and Degens love Discord. Right?
If you’re reading this you probably:
Play games at least twice a week
Want to learn more about the gaming industry
Have exposure to web3 assets
A few easy assumptions right?
Let’s make another; you probably have Discord open right now on one of your devices.
Am I right? …
For most of the last decade PC gamers have used Discord as a hub for content, community and communication. It’s a place where we all sign in (usually daily) and play games with our friends.
Then why is Discord such a hard thing for developers to understand? Why do so many web3 Games have Discords that are total ghost towns?
Let’s dive in:
Gnoc stresses that plenty of teams view Discord as “dead” because they either just don’t put in the effort or don’t have a proper plan (You can’t just ‘wing it’ as a social strategy. It might work initially but motivation is fleeting, you NEED systems).
Tony and Kohji back Gnoc’s point up, mentioning how much work it is to maintain a Discord. Yes it can be a great tool for adding to the overall game experience (Games should ALWAYS be first) but it requires a real team effort; Quality and consistent moderation is needed, engaging announcements are a must, founders should give some facetime to the community etc.
One of the more general concerns from across the entire panel was security. Discord’s get hacked all the time. There wasn’t really a consensus on how to properly protect yourself except for the basics; verify your users, use trusted discord bots (but limit their permissions), and post some safety tips for users. (I’d suggest doing a little reading on Discord security, it’s a tricky thing to figure out but well worth the effort).
Paul makes a joke about how all Discords are dead because everyone is in Wildcard’s discord. I mean, just look at this graph… +70k users??
Discord, like any community facing media channel, is a difficult beast to master. Most teams in web3 (gaming and otherwise) have had some version of this approach:
Spin up a Discord server
Direct users to that server through some top of funnel source (in both web3 and gaming more broadly, this is usually Twitter).
Post some announcements at varying intervals - usually 1 per day… then 1 per week… then 1 per month… then… well…
Complain when engagement dies
Abandon the Discord
Profit??
So how do teams like Wildcard find such insane growth?
Take it from Paul directly - they were very intentional with their Discord server. They viewed Discord as a way to incentivize “playtest driven development”. Discord wasn’t just some additional piece of social media (this is an all too common belief that plagues teams), it was core to their actual development process.
Wildcard invested time, money, and a variety of other resources to:
Foster a community and make the team available to that community
Make Discord a rewarding place for collectors through their swag drops (side note - this shit is SO cool)
Encourage users to submit feedback about the game they care so much about (Wildcard)
From the outside, teams like Wildcard seem to have this moment of “overnight” growth. In reality these teams REALLY understand Discord. They have plans, they execute well and they iterate on things that do not work.
Discord has a superpower; It dominates gamer mindshare. We’re all here, all the time. Meet us where we’re at and build a server worth our time - we’re eager to give it to you.
You don’t just freestyle develop a game, why are you freestyling your social media strategy? Put in the effort, build a plan and create value for your users.
Growth will come.
Slowly, then all at once.
DAU, UAW - What does it all mean?
Star Atlas, for one reason or another has dominated headlines on Solana for the better part of 2 years.
They had some scares with FTX, they’ve sold millions of dollars in NFTs (technically they were SFT or Semi fungible tokens, but that's a topic for another time) and their token has, generally speaking, done okay.
So what’s the news today?
Somehow - they’ve flown under the radar when it comes to on chain activity.
I was shocked to hear that many panelists didn’t know about many transactions their ecosystem was doing. Here’s a sketchy screenshot to give us some context (I can’t find the article.. please forgive me).
Panelists debated:
Fresco and others mention that 2,000 DAU might be impressive for Web3 but it’s literally nothing to talk about when it comes to Web2 Game player counts. We’d need to see a 5-10x minimum before this is exciting.
Paul points out that total transaction numbers seem off - 2,000 DAU but 2M transactions per day would mean each user is on average, completing 1,000 transactions a day? It feels like that would be a terrible user experience. (I’m actively digging into this - it’s one piece of this screenshot that doesn’t make sense to me. I will update on X if I get answers)
A few panelists bring up the fact that the total number of transactions doesn’t necessarily mean anything - there is missing info. What are these transactions? Do they represent trades? Games played? Something else? To some the total number of transactions might look impressive, but panelists showed some concern.
To me - the conversation was missing some important context.
I generally agree that DAU and transaction counts don’t always mean what people think they do. There’s a great book, How to lie with statistics that dives into some of the nuance here but the basic TLDR is people can get crafty with data reporting and interpretation. DAU for example, is a metric that is often reported differently from game to game.
Concerns there are valid. What I’m more interested in however is the irrefutable fact that Star Atlas has a SIGNIFICANT number of UAW.
If you filter by: ALL -> ETH + SOL on dappradar you’ll see that in just about any time period, Star Atlas ranks behind only Marketplaces and Exchanges in UAW. This, to me, is MAJOR - there are a ridiculous number of wallets (relative to the current active wallet pool) connecting to the Star Atlas ecosystem.
Filter by SOL only, and Star Atlas looks even better from a UAW perspective.
I don’t really have a clean conclusion here but I’ll leave you with this: It’s really easy to get lost in the sauce of metrics and acronyms. I feel it’s important to identify what makes the most sense to you, and to dig into the context of any reporting you see.
I believe that for a true web3 game, one of the north star metrics should be UAW.
In that regard - I believe that Star Atlas is still crushing it.
For those who are totally lost in the acronyms above… some housekeeping:
DAU - Daily active users; the total number of users who interact with an app (or game in this case) on a day to day basis.UAW - Unique Active Wallets; a count of the total number of crypto wallets to connect to a given smart contract, daily.
What do you meme? Should games lean into meme culture?
Everyone Loves a good meme, right?
Oh, you don’t understand it?
Herein lies the issues with memes in games - they’re highly specific and only make sense to certain groups of people. (This is a Runescape meme and it makes me laugh wayyyyy too hard)
There is no one size fits all meme. (If you’re willing to challenge this statement, send me your memes!)
So what do game devs have to say about the matter? So many games lean into meme culture, but should they?
Kohji loves memes, he’s even incorporated some into the Parallel universe but he stresses the risk of dating your game if you include current pop culture memes. It might be funny today, but is this something that will make sense to your players a decade from now? Probably not.
An added risk, say Lemz and Kohji, is if you include too many memes you run the risk of diluting your own IP. Am I here to play your game or to scroll through memes on 9gag? (Speaking about dating yourself..)
Tony brings up an interesting point - some memes are cyclical. Chibi characters are popular again, as they were in 2021 and 2019 and 2017 and well you get it. Shrapnel has chosen to lean into Chibis for a couple of reasons; the team believes they’re more accessible than their more hardcore “operators” and they’re generally speaking, pretty evergreen.
Paul highlighted the challenge of creating an entire product based on memes and the unpredictability associated with it. He emphasizes the importance of integrating pop culture, current events, and memes into the lore of a game subtly, drawing inspiration from Pixar's approach. (Subtly being the operative word)
Memes are powerful. If done right they’re a unifier, something we can all laugh about while playing our favorite games.
But…
They’re VERY hard to do well. The best memes are born within the game - they’re living, breathing things that mean something to your playerbase. These memes are immortal because they can’t be dated, they’re tied to the game itself.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite examples of this. Australian streamer Muselk attempts to save a player who’s stuck below the build limit in a Fortnite Game (Build limit refers to the vertical range in which a player can place a player built item such as a wall).
As you can see, rescue attempt goes poorly and Muselk accidentally sends the player FLYING off the map and to his untimely death.
So how does Epic Games react? They immortalize the incident by placing a gravestone at the location for the fallen player.
A meme done well.
Shitcoin Season™ or something more?
Gaming tokens are PUMPING again but what’s going on here?
Is this the same old short sighted thinking that caused so much pain in the last bull cycle or is this something different? Are teams becoming more sophisticated?
Well, it’s complicated:
Kohji expressed some skepticism. SOME teams (IMO, like Shrapnel and Parallel) might deliver something that makes sense - they might be able to integrate tokens wisely but the overwhelming majority of teams will deliver very polished Shitcoins.
Bryan believe that unlike the 2020-2021 cycle, the current token trend includes significantly more substance, with quality teams beginning to integrate tokens into their game. (My thinking here boils down to shitty teams launch tokens well before they should in order to extract liquidity while quality teams wait until they have a well thought out vision for token integration)
Shrapnel and Spike emphasize the importance of providing real, tangible value and utility with tokens. In Shrapnel’s case this includes integrating their token into a number of different ecosystem - it goes beyond utility within Shrapnel alone, with Tony hinting at crossover events between different web3 IP (Like Alchemy)
Sinjin once again chimes in with my favorite comment of the week. Creating a sustainable token economy is not just hard, it’s mo**** f***ing hard. You CANNOT iterate on an open economy - once it’s out there it’s out there and it’s up to individual teams to get creative about fixes. He doubts there are many who are equipped to do so.
So, back to the original question:
Is this the same old short sighted thinking that caused so much pain in the last bull cycle or is this something different? Are teams becoming more sophisticated?
The answer, evidently is … yes?
Crypto is and will probably always be extractive by nature - people want to make a quick buck and that’s OK.
There are however, way more qualified teams shipping games than ever before. As such, it’s not a stretch to think that there will be more will planned and will integrated gaming tokens being delivered in 2024 and beyong.
The trick is figuring out which ones those will be - and If I had the answers, well I’d be rich (queue Toronto band Barenaked Ladies).
As always - this is NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.
Be smart, and take bets on teams you like - NOT teams some influencer tells you too.
In Case You Missed It - A spotlight on our favorite content from the week.
Apix delivers another amazing summary thread - this time on Gamified Episode #40
SparkC & Apix breakdown how to stop getting baited by “Game Utility”
OwnedGG Mercs are now FREE to mint - Game League starts soon.
A note from Gnoc
There was one more topic discussed this week that is not covered here in this summary. I felt it overlapped pretty heavily with the East vs West topic we covered last week - go back and read it!
I did want to just mention one thing here when it comes to tackling the cultural differences between Eastern and Western markets. Riot games did something I find incredibly smart.
CS:GO never really took off in the East and part of that is due to the overwhelmingly violent nature of that game.
Valorant however is thriving and part of that comes down to a couple of relatively small changes.
Instead of Terrorists and Counter terrorists, Valorant has attackers and defenders
Instead of planting a “bomb” Valorant players plant the “spike”
There is no blood in valorant
Small changes can open the door to massive opportunity.
Here from sam steffanina space ❤️