Snail Games, headquartered in Los Angeles, has been a leader in the MMORPG and sandbox survival space, with titles like Age of Wushu and ARK: Survival Evolved. Now Shi Hai, Founder and Chairman, sees growing opportunities in the metaverse and Web3. Hai joined Dean Takahashi, lead writer at VentureBeat, to talk about the fascinating future ahead for companies that take the leap.
Snail Games took that leap some time ago, Hai said, as the earliest company to explore 3D online gaming. As far back as 2002, they regarded themselves as architects of virtual worlds, and now they’ve set their sights on the metaverse.
“Many others, from our perspective, are more concerned about devices, what kind of technology Web3 is using, and how to provide the best user experience around digital assets,” he explained. “As we’re entering the metaverse and Web3 era, what Snail Games and we are concerned the most about is where property rights should belong, or who they should belong to.”
Web3 is an opportunity to build a supportive environment for content creators, in order to attract more creators and users. Content creators are how platform owners thrive — but the content doesn’t belong to those creators. It can vanish at any time.
“As we’ve been developing digital assets for more than 20 years, I deeply resonate with how those content creators would feel, as I personally am a very experienced gamer,” Hai said. “That’s why I would empathize with those content creators when they lose the content that they’ve spent a lot of time and effort on.”
Plus there’s the question of monetizing content, one of the benefits blockchain brings to the Web3 table. In the company’s ARK forum, many users have contributed content, without getting the remuneration they
Read more on venturebeat.com