After refereeing international e-sports events, I became very bullish about game blockchain

Author: msfew

Internet-addicted teenager → e-sports referee

I'm msfew, a severe internet addict. Since elementary school, I have been immersing myself in video games, using a laptop with less than 20 frames per second to play League of Legends with my classmates.

Whether it was during my undergraduate classes, my internship as a programmer at Google, or later when I joined ORA (ora.io, World Intelligent Network) as a member of an AI startup, I never stopped playing games for several hours every day, and I would even sacrifice sleep time to play games.

As I got a deeper understanding of the gaming industry, I realized that I had to take the "e-sports referee certificate" some time ago. After trying to vote in a few events, I used my narrative skills and multilingual advantages in the Crypto industry to obtain the qualification to be the executive referee of the top international event "Overwatch Global Championship".

I officiated in front of players and coaches from European and American teams and tens of millions of online and offline viewers at the Hangzhou Asian Games venue that year, ensuring the fairness and smooth execution of the event. (I am the one looking at the camera in the picture)

(The main purpose of this article is to put game assets on the blockchain. If you are interested in the part about e-sports referees, you can jump to the end to read the relevant content.)

Version abandoned: Blockchaingame

2021 – 2022 年, 是Blockchain游戏的顶峰。 我们仿佛在之后, 就再也没有听到区块链游戏的消息, 也没有听到新的巨头区块链游戏项目, 只是零星听到一些声音, 包括比如全链游戏这样的叙事。

There have been many posts analyzing why GameFi failed (for example,GameplayConsider, fromData indicatorsConsider), the successful narratives and tracks are different, but the reasons for failure are always the same: the narrative/product/new traffic can no longer support the price ("issuing bonds

Capital began to vote with its feet, and less and less money entered the GameFi field, resulting in fewer people entering this field. The quality of projects in the entire track became worse and worse, and projects that had previously raised a lot of money were unable to land according to the original expectations, and the inflated narrative bubble burst, forming a vicious circle.

The direction of games + blockchain?

How can we save blockchain games? I think there are three main ways:

• Tokenization: Give up making those crappy, low-quality games, stop pretending, and directly try to integrate existing games with the blockchain.

• Full-chain game: It is still a full-chain game, but it is not for the purpose of making games. Instead, it forces the development of infrastructure through the demand for making games.

• Adding new technology: For example, adding AI to the game to further make the game more fun.

Tokenization of gaming assets

After this cycle, people in the 100% cryptocurrency circle are no longer averse to assetizing and tokenizing anything. There is no shortage of good narratives in this cycle, so games have been left out.

But in fact, the traditional Web2 games that have real consensus are ignored. They are the real hot spots.

In fact, it is difficult for "games built natively from Web3" to compete with traditional game giants (for example, a few years ago, Riot received huge attention as soon as it released a shooting game) or traditional channels. In other words, these games are unwilling to take the "difficult road". Of course, if a game itself has a crypto-native mechanism, then it is a product that sells coins, and it is understandable to think about tokens as products.

Instead of wondering howCarving on dog shit, it is better to choose high-quality topics from the source.

Good games produce good assets

The assets in popular games are very suitable for tokenization. This is because of the following three advantages:

• Natural Attention:

  • The speed of trend formation + the scarcity and non-replicability of the event itself: Once a good game issues a coin, it is a one-time event. There are only a few good games, and one less is one less.

  • Consensus Range: Most people in the Crypto market are very supportive of high-quality games.

  • The financial strength of the crowd: Gamers and traders are willing to spend a lot of money to invest in the game’s on-chain assets.

  • In addition, the attention mechanism of the game itself is different from that of memes, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. The spread mechanism of memes is fast and fades quickly. It is rare for a meme to survive for several years. However, the spread and attention of games is continuous, more like a stage of rapid initial spread and subsequent obsession.

• Same mental model:

  • Game assets themselves have a mental model similar to that of Crypto assets. Take CSGO as an example, Play-to-earn (box drops) + randomness (buying a gold dog) + accessories series and single items (NFT) are very similar. At the same time, traders also tend to be "gambler-style" and understand that they are speculating. Of course, many gamers do spend a lot of money just to buy props with luxury logic.

• Loser Business:

  • One point that is easily criticized is that if you want to invest in loser businesses in the future, games are a growing loser business. In the future, more fresh blood will enter the system. You can choose not to speculate in cryptocurrencies, but if you don’t play games, you are really a weird person.

Didn’t people know these principles before? Why is it being launched now? I think it’s mainly because things are different now, the infrastructure is ready (the trading platform itself, various “brokers”), and people are increasingly accepting of tokens and on-chain assets.

Having said the advantages, one problem is that the game assets themselves are limited by the game's upper limit (of course, this upper limit is very high), and they cannot be spread infinitely like pure memes (for example, grandpa and grandma will know Trump, but will resist knowing about the game). At the same time, there are of course regulatory and IP restrictions.

Finally, let’s go back to the original point: in the game track, we should try to issue assets to good games/good assets, rather than creating junk assets. This is also the last cycle of AI and games in this cycle.Lessons learned(Everyone builds launchpad, launchpad builds more junk assets, which don’t actually work).

Take CSGO accessories as an example

CSGO accessories are a typical example of game assets because their model is simple enough (much simpler than the most popular Fantasy Westward Journey in the previous GameFi cycle) and they are popular enough.

Previously, off_thetarget, Gink5814as well asIHave published content related to CSGO accessories.

CSGO accessories in a nutshell:

• CSGO is a shooting game with many weapons (AK, M4, pistol, knife, gloves). The game itself is very popular.

• The original skin is ugly (compared to the skin), you can buy the weapon's decorative skin through unboxing or the secondary market.

• Accessories correspond to → weapon type (main weapon? knife? gloves?) → specific model (AK, M4, butterfly knife) → wear and tear and pattern; which just corresponds to the NFT track (PFP? U card?) → specific series (Punks, BAYC) → specific small pictures.

• Players have a very high motivation and demand to buy accessories, and there is even an official Burn mechanism such as game platform account suspension.

I think the risk of CSGO accessories now is that the price is far ahead of the value. The traffic growth of the game itself is likely to decline, but due to the existence of narratives such as "being a landlord" and "moving bricks for accessories", it attracts a lot of pure funds and hype traffic:

• Being a landlord means buying accessories and renting them out. If the accessories continue to appreciate, then it is good (but there is still a risk of default buyout if it appreciates). But if it falls, the rate of return may not even be as good as Yu'e Bao... So whether it rises or falls, there may not be a good return.

• The feeling of arbitrage for accessories is to find dumb money as the exit liquidity of the entire system, so that they can calculate the exchange rate difference and buy cheap US dollar cards. However, the source of these cards and the 7-day lock-up mechanism make people worry whether they will be the last wave in case of a flash crash...

• The spread is too violent, usually in QQ groups or WeChat groups, and at the command of the "teacher", everyone collectively raises the price of the listing...

In general, CSGO is a perfect fit for our narrative of “Popular Web2 Games on the Chain”. We have two directions to combine CSGO accessories with blockchain and achieve “on-chain” game assets: 1) Selling shovels; 2) CSGO on-chain fund.

1. Selling shovels: Using Crypto thinking to make CSGO accessories trading tools

Any area involving transactions is alwaysThose who sell water and shovels can cross the bull and bear markets without riskBloomberg, Uniswap, law firms, auditing companies…are all giants that stand firm and ignore the market.

In Crypto, assets and narratives will change (ICO → VC coin → DeFi → GameFi → pure meme), and trading methods will also change (CEX → AMM → NFT → TG Bot → on-chain scanning terminal), but the demand for better, more complete and faster trading tools will never change.

In terms of technical limitations, Crypto and CSGO accessories have some strange limitations:

• Crypto: The on-chain transactions must basically follow the AMM trading method, and there are regulatory restrictions off-chain.

• CSGO accessories: There is a cooling-off period limit on the trading mechanism, and the trading platform adopts the same order system as NFT.

Although both are limited, they have actually made their own good trading experience. Among them, Crypto trading tools have actually developed faster and have been iterated many times. For example, in order to solve the problem of AMM fragmentation, aggregators such as 1inch have emerged; in order to solve the problem of NFT platform fragmentation, platforms such as Blur have emerged; in order to solve the problem of separation of transactions and wallets, DEX Wallet and TG Bot have emerged...

Currently, the trading of CSGO accessories has the following features that can be improved:

• “Chain sweeping platform”: KOLs andProfessional player positionsanalyze

• “Aggregator”: All-in-one brokerage platform for buying (Check the reserve price of each platform) and sell (analyze all platforms of pending orders of volume and price + avoid overselling + consider exchange rate and lock position) function

• “Exchange”: A trading mechanism similar to AMM (not selling to buyers, but selling to platforms or pools), achieving real buying and selling in seconds

• “Derivatives”: leveraged trading, long and short positions, leasing and lending, and other financial instruments and derivatives

As an industry that originated from and developed through trading, Crypto has extensive experience in providing trading tools under technical limitations, which will be a dimensionality reduction blow to the trading platform of CSGO accessories.

The strong never complain about the environment, If CSGO accessories have a more mature trading platform and experience, everyone's holdings will be more diverse, and the volume and price will inevitably be healthier.

2. New asset: On-chain ETF for CSGO accessories

The narrative of the interconnection between RWA and Crypto stock platforms has become popular again recently. I think the biggest problem with traditional assets on the chain is that these RWAs are not attractive enough and are mid-stream assets that are neither up nor down:

• The yield is not as high as stablecoins, nor is itSafety(Stablecoins and US Treasury RWAs are not counted as RWAs)

• The purchase process is complicated and requires KYC (it does not achieve the ideal RWA's ability to cross geographical restrictions and geographical arbitrage)

• Not as attractive as memes or other assets(There should be few people in the cryptocurrency circle who want to buy funds such as corn and soybeans. These are basicallyJunk assets are packaged on the chain to find exit liquidity)

There is something interesting in CSGO accessories, which is the index of the track, the accessories index, the original skin index, the agent index, etc. They are naturally divided into several clear categories according to the track, and can also be further subdivided into series of specific weapons. CSGO is an excellent asset that is attractive for RWA.

There are many advantages of using CSGO accessories as a fund:

• Advantages of on-chain funds: The general advantages of on-chain funds are well-known, the data and flows are open and transparent, one contract is enough, the operating cost is low, and it can be circulated on the chain without restrictions.

• Capture the index of accessories: No need to take risks to bet on a single item, but capture the benefits of the entire field. At the same time, CSGO accessories have always had an index, but they cannot be traded, so many people can only watch but not participate.

• Introducing game traffic: the logic of mass adoption. Game players may enter Crypto through this index fund, and the out-of-circle effect and ultimate ceiling will be very good.

• Pricing consensus among young audiences: Young people, especially those in the cryptocurrency circle, are not interested in many RWAs and will not take them.Chase the assets you care about, CSGO accessories are an example. Young people play games every day, and naturally have an inexplicable affinity for these things.

How to implement a CSGO accessories fund? A simple idea of a knife skin index fund:

• The knife fund 80% builds positions in knives of various categories, and 20% can be used as a stable currency to earn returns.

• We want to make sure that no one can feel the existence of Crypto. Although it is an on-chain fund, legal currency can still be directly deposited and withdrawn.

• If someone feels that simply capturing profits is not enough (there are many players who buy accessories purely for the logic of luxury), then holding a certain amount of fund shares can borrow the accessories held by the fund for free; in addition, a certain proportion of the accessories holdings can be rented out on the trading platform.

• In case of needing to circumvent regulation, we can use token standards such as ERC-7641 RevShare Token to package it from a fund into a profit-sharing token to share the share value growth and rental income of the assets in the fund.

Other directions

In addition to the major direction of putting assets on the chain, there are two smaller directions: one is full-chain games, and the other is the combination of AI.

For full-chain games, the meaning is not to put games on the chain, but to promote the development of the underlying infrastructure through applications. Just like in the case of GPUs, people simply want to play better and more realistic video games, which has promoted the progress of graphics, and the progress of graphics has driven the development of GPUs. In turn, the new generation of GPUs has promoted the development of cutting-edge technology fields such as AI. Recent examples in Crypto are such as the Crossy Fluffle mini-game made by MegaETH. It is not about the game being the core, but through these application needs, it encourages the underlying Infra to become stronger, and demand forces development.

As for the combination with AI, AI can exist as a neutral agent and perform some tasks completely objectively, so it can perfectly perform the tasks such as the e-sports referee I mentioned at the beginning; at the same time, AI can also be a story generator, a generator of infinite maps, a generator of game assets...

Summary: GG, but no WP

This is why, after having been a referee in international competitions, I am bullish on game assets on the blockchain and games + Crypto.

It’s not because games or assets on the blockchain are so popular now, but because we may have finally figured out how to play.

GameFi has won and lost in that wave, but this time, the Crypto world has reopened, the strategy will be more mature, and the asset model and cognition will be more solid.

Stop being an NPC in the game and become a creator player of a new civilization.

My thoughts as an eSports referee

Here are some additional small contents, not related to the main text, for entertainment only:

• E-sports referees are actually not referees in traditional sports. They basically do not need to make judgments on the winning or losing of the game. What they mainly do is to help players debug equipment or allocate resources.

• The essence of an e-sports referee is actually a liaison officer on the field, communicating internally (with players and coaches) and externally (with the referee and the event director team).

• It is actually very simple to become an e-sports referee or to enter the e-sports circle. It is easier than getting a rank in a game. The difficult part is to fight for individual competition resources. Once you have the first one, it is very easy.

• What is lacking mainly is people who can speak English and Korean. People with translation skills are actually in great demand.

• E-sports competitions must always be held offline, and the players' geographical locations must be unified to ensure relative fairness.

• E-sports, like Web3, are activities that take place in the evening or even late at night, which is more in line with the biological clocks of young people.

• E-sports will replace traditional sports, and the new generation will choose to participate in and watch e-sports rather than traditional sports.

The article comes from the Internet:After refereeing international e-sports events, I became very bullish about game blockchain