Ariana Simpson talks the future of Web3 gaming and the metaverse

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Ariana Simpson is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the top venture capital firms investing in tech, games, and crypto.

From her perch, Simpson has a broad view of the investment landscape, and it has led her to investments in a variety of cryptocurrency and game companies including Irreverent Labs. She believes in the power of decentralization enabled by blockchain technology, and she also believes that will lead us to the metaverse.

A16z, as the firm is known, has both a $600 million dedicated gaming fund as well as a $4.5 billion cryptocurrency fund. Simpson is deploying that money, but we’re also in the midst of a crypto downturn and hardcore gamer resistance to NFTs. That makes this business feel a lot riskier than it was just a few months ago. But Simpson is seasoned in this space. She “fell down the crypto rabbit hole” a decade ago, as she was following the talent in the space. She has been through multiple crypto winters, and in an interview with GamesBeat, she said A16z is prepared to take a long-term view of the market.

I talked with her to get a download on the intersection of crypto and gaming, her view of gamers who are receptive to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), why players should get a share of the proceeds from games, and why A16z founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, saw an opportunity in this space and doubled down with sector-specific funds to invest in the market. That conviction hasn’t changed despite multiple rollercoaster cycles in the market.

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