Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu: The big picture view of blockchain games

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Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, believes that blockchain and decentralization will revolutionize gaming. But the mainstream gamers who are supposed to benefit from it haven’t been very receptive so far. I talked with Siu about this problem in a fireside chat at our GamesBeat Summit 2022 event.

Gaming has a love-hate relationship with blockchain games and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). We’ve seen conflict among hardcore games and some traditional game devs on one side, and crypto enthusiasts and blockchain game pioneers on the other side.

And that conversation is only going to get louder. In the first quarter, we saw 128 blockchain game companies raise $1.2 billion at lofty valuations, and we heard some game entrepreneurs complain that it was hard to get funding for other kinds of games. As those companies and the ones that got funding last year bring their games out, we will find out if the critics are right or the true believers will see success.

While Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity was an early NFT success, it has a lot of critics. Ubisoft, Discord, Team 17, Troy Baker, esports teams, and GSC Game World have walked back plans related to NFTs. Animoca Brands lost its F1 brand license and shut down one of its blockchain racing games.

But blockchain games have received a more enthusiastic reception from crypto fans, Asians, mobile gamers, and those who embrace experimentation.

Siu pointed back to the early days of free-to-play games more than a decade ago, when critics said such games were scams and bad for gamers. But now the game audience is 10 times bigger and free-to-play is the dominant business model.

Siu