New research has found that worries over scams are a big barrier to crypto gaming.
Coda Labs, a developer of mobile Web3 games, surveyed 7,000 respondents from the UK, US, Brazil, Japan and South Africa in partnership with the Blockchain Game Alliance, DappRadar and Laguna Games for the study.
It found that 41% of gamers were concerned with scams, while 41% were unsure as to how Web3 gaming would work. The financial costs of getting involved was a barrier to a third of respondents.
Investment in web3 gaming is expected to reach around $10 billion by the end of 2022 despite the ongoing crypto winter and an often highly critical response to Web3 from gamers and game developers.
“Unsurprisingly, [the study] did find that many gamers don’t perceive any benefits to Web3 gaming, and even those with Web3 knowledge are wary of financial costs and scams,” said Şekip Can Gökalp, CEO of Coda Labs.
“Barriers to web3 going mainstream are plenty, although gamers’ concerns about its environmental impact are less pronounced than is often stated.
“When regular gamers do give Web3 games a go, they tend to feel more positively, and this survey reveals that those regular gamers and heavy crypto users aren’t as far apart as we might have thought.
“They often overlap in their behaviours, motivations, and concerns; ‘Crypto Gamers’, as we have called them, are effectively hardcore gamers who are also early tech adopters.
“We hope the collective games industry can use these crucial insights to experiment with ways of making gaming more fun and accessible for all types of gamer.”
The study found that gamers are aware of cryptocurrency and NFTs, but generally don’t like them: 89% have heard of Bitcoin, and half (51%) have heard of NFTs, but NFT ownership is just 3%. And they rated their feelings towards crypto (4.5/10) and NFTs (4.3/10) negatively.
Sebastien Borget, president of the Blockchain Game Alliance, added: “The Global Web3 Gamer Study proves with data that the blockchain gaming industry is still a nascent industry that needs more guidance in general both for gamers and developers.
“The first attempts at creating Web3 games have raised awareness but not defined the business model that will be the next industry standard yet.
“Our role as the Blockchain Game Alliance is to keep educating actors on the possibilities offered by the technology so they can innovate and experiment more with it.”