Why this Blizzard vet thinks the next killer web3 game will come from China

techcrunch.com:

This year, around 3.2 billion people — or about 40% of the world’s population — will play games, with total spending nearing $200 billion, estimates industry researcher Newzoo. The purveyors of web3 want a slice of this gargantuan market. Criticisms of the first generation of crypto games, dominated by the play-to-earn model, have already been well documented, so the question for developers now is what decentralized games should look like.

Back in July, I wrote that veterans from the gaming industry overwhelminglyagree blockchain games should be fun to play and offer a sustainable financial model, both of which are missing in play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity. When it comes to genres, many of them believe massively multiplayer online (MMO) games have the chance to onboard the masses into web3. The genre, which has given rise to epic titles with flourishing virtual economies like World of Warcraft and EVE Online, could benefit from having in-game assets as blockchain-based tokens to enable true user ownership, they say.

And one country, in particular, has the potential to drive this transition.

“China has the best MMO teams in the world,” argues Jerome Wu, who worked on World of Warcraft’s China localization during his seven years with Blizzard, followed by stints at nWay, 360 Games, and Baidu Games.

Like many of his industry peers, Wu jumped on the web3 bandwagon. Over the past year, he’s been working on a space-themed MMO title called Space Nation, which is aiming to be a AAA blockchain game with co-founders including veteran game director Tony Tang and film director Roland Emmerich, who’s known for high-budget catastrophe movies. The game has a total budget of $4 million.

The team is spread across multiple countries