Are Web3 games the future of PH gaming?
In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, a game called Axie Infinity took over Philippine mobile gaming. The promise of earning money while playing a game is too enticing to pass, especially in a time when joblessness was high and the uncertainty of the pandemic loomed over the heads of everyone.
It is basically a blockchain game where gamers can earn cryptocurrency. Many gamers earned a lot of crypto through the in-game economy and the game attracted millions of players in the Philippines and other parts of the world.
However, in 2022, hackers stole more than $600 million worth of assets from its developer and players. Because of the losses and tagging the game “worthless”, Filipino gamers ditched the mobile game.
Despite this incident, these types of games are slowly making their way back into Filipino phones, PCs, and consoles. These play-to-earn games are called Web3 games, which are also blockchain games.
“Web3 games are still relatively new. It started with Axie in 2020 and 2021, and now there are a lot of different games that people can play that have some kind of crypto, NFT earning components. Most of these games have been under development for the last few years so there weren't as many games to show, now, as you can see in the expo there are a lot of different types of games that people can enjoy,” explained Yield Guild Games (YGG) co-founder Gabby Dizon in an interview with GMA Lifestyle during the YGG Play Summit 2024. .
YGG held its YGG Play Summit in November last year which attracted game developers, guilds, and gamers. It was well attended and featured talks from the local and international gaming communities. It hosted esport competitions, cosplay events, and an exhibition of various Web3 games.
“With YGG, we work with different game communities in the Philippines and around the world and then we present them with opportunities to play these games. So we work with different game developers around the world so they can showcase their games to Filipino gamers and guilds,” Gabby said.
The Pixels booth at YGG Play Summit 2024 (Source: Angelo Garcia)
While the popularity of Axie dropped significantly during the hacking incident, many games have replaced it with the same play-to-earn platform. According to Gabby, one of the current popular games is Pixels, a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) where users can earn rewards while building their “own world”.
According to its website, players can earn rewards that are backed on the blockchain. Investopedia explains that blockchain is a distributed database or ledger used in cryptocurrency or digital currency.
Other games Gabby mentioned, which also had booths during the summit, were Parallel, a trading card game; and Sipher, a mobile shooter game.
He said that most of these games are free to play but have in-game purchases.
“Some of the games are free to play, you download it for free and you can play and then if you want to access earning components maybe you can buy an asset. But most of these (games) you don't need to pay to play the game,” he said.
Is Web3 the future of gaming in the Philippines? Gabby thinks this is the case since these games give users more opportunities than regular games. He said that this will spread in the mobile, PC, and web platforms.
“It will only become bigger, especially with these games where you can earn money and own your own assets. It's not only kids who would be playing these games, adults would be playing them as well,” Gabby said.
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