Traditional ideas about gaming, coming from both the firms developing the games and the players themselves, could slow down adoption of Web3 games, according to WAX co-founder and CEO William Quigley. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph at a Web Summit panel in Portugal on Nov. 3, Quigley said “trying to build a video game using a blockchain is a pain in the ass,” clarifying that many of the products on the market are based on browsers but utilize in-game digital assets on the blockchain. The WAX CEO added that , or NFTs, had given independent developers an edge in gaming, allowing them to conduct presales and raise needed funds.

“For the most part, the people who are building [blockchain-based games] today are independent game developers,” said Quigley. “Big, triple-A title video game companies haven’t yet embraced it, and probably for good reason — they’re not sure what the revenue model’s going to be; they’re not sure how it’s going to change their game.”

He added:

“I actually think the first big games that have multimillion persistent users daily — those will come from new startup studios. I doubt they will come from the traditional video game market.”

Also on the Web Summit panel, Gamee co-founder and CEO Bozena Rezab said NFT pre-sales may offer some benefits, but held the potential to “trap” developers by putting them in a binding relationship with gamers looking for a certain product. Quigley said that many traditional gamers “cannot stand NFTs” for “pollut[ing] the game play” — something that could slow down companies looking to adopt blockchain-based games.

“The biggest sort of new thing on the horizon that could allow blockchain-based games to take off would be augmented reality, virtual reality,” said Quigley. “When that happens I suspect the principal revenue model for AR, VR games is going to be something like a tradeable item, an NFT or whatever we’ll call it. That, I think, will be the next big bump up in users.”

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As the crypto and blockchain space , ​​so too have the number of options available to users interested in having the technology integrated into their favorite games. SupraOracles the market capitalization of the 5 most used in-game tokens was roughly $25 billion in February, with the total gaming market to reach more than $583 billion by 2030.