It has been a tough few weeks in the crypto space. Those new around these parts might feel as if the four horsemen have ridden into their house and are staring them down. Those of us who have been through a few crashes are a little more jaded, though this downturn has been difficult to swallow.
Nevertheless, in times of crypto adversity, there are beacons of hope that warm me. Firstly, there are the swathes of web2 and prior pioneers that have moved into building web3. Secondly, there is my belief in the underlying technology and what it can bring to the games industry. Finally, there is the amount of investment being made in the space, which when you take a step back, is rather surprising.
$3b Invested in Metaverse and Blockchain Gaming in the Last Month
I’m going to start with my big stat: In 2020, venture capitalists invested a total of $80 million in blockchain gaming. In the last month, over $3 billion has been invested. The pace of growth in blockchain gaming and metaverse projects is staggering and it’s easy to forget. We will easily see 11-figures worth of investment in our space in 2022, which I struggle to get my head around. I’ve seen a quote a few times in crypto but it’s relevant here: when in doubt, zoom out.
There are a few key players that bump these stats up, of course. You have Animoca Brands who are everywhere, then Forte has also invested a lot, then there are a host of VCs and funds that appear to be involved in every funding round. One of which is Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z. They have just launched a $600 million Games Fund One dedicated to the advancement of the gaming industry.
I don’t usually lift huge block quotes from press releases or announcements, but this is a particularly interesting paragraph from the above-linked Games Fund One blog post.
GAMES FUND ONE is founded on the belief that games will play a pivotal role in defining how we socialize, play, and work over the next century. Over the past decade, games have undergone a radical transformation, from simply being packaged entertainment, to becoming online services that more closely resemble social networks and scale like consumer technology companies. The most successful games today, such as Fortnite, League of Legends, and Minecraft, are communities that retain loyal, long-term users and generate billions of dollars in annual revenue. Furthermore, games are also driving innovation across the entire consumer ecosystem, pioneering best-in-class mechanisms for user engagement, retention, and monetization, such as microtransactions, battle passes, and web3 tokens. And long term, we believe games infrastructure and technologies will be key building blocks of the Metaverse, an opportunity that dwarfs the current $300 billion game industry itself.
a16z.com
So, next time you drag your thumb down to refresh your portfolio for the eighth time that day, watching it go from green to red and back to green faster than traffic lights, think of investment in blockchain gaming. It is a space growing like none other. The night is dark and full of terror, but blockchain gaming is the wrinkly red woman, bringing light and unabashedly furthering the plot.
