BYOP: Bring your own Platform

From the Editor

GM.

The answer to last week’s puzzle is ‘The Voyager Golden Record ’.

The Puzzle: I am a message in a bottle, in hope of a recipient. In all likelihood, I’ll never be found. Who am I?

Sadly, no one got it right although there were some fun answers and some that were plain mean. Knowing that I’m an Arsenal fan, someone thought it’d be wise to write back ‘Champions League Trophy’. I can assure you I shed no tears.

But there might be a few folks who might be after?Minecraft took the decision that they don’t want anything to do with NFTs .

Minecraft: No country for NFTs

Here’s a statement indicative of how they’ll determine if games are in violation of their terms:

Blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods.

As to why they aren’t keen on NFTs, here are their key reasons:

NFTs are not inclusive of all our community and create a scenario of the haves and the have-nots. The speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we think is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players.

We are also concerned that some third-party NFTs may not be reliable and may end up costing players who buy them. There have also been instances where NFTs were sold at artificially or fraudulently inflated prices.

If You Live by the Platform, You Die by the Platform

While Decentraland, The Sandbox, and other well-capitalized metaverse players have built their platforms from ground-up, games like NFT Worlds and The Uplift World, built a blockchain layer on top of Minecraft.

Until Minecraft’s recent move, this seems like a fairly good strategy that doesn’t require one to build a large development team immediately; it also helps go to market quickly with an ecosystem that is already proven - Minecraft has 100M players!

Over the years, platforms have wielded immense power by virtue of being gatekeepers. When Facebook decided to end their agreement with Zynga, this went south for the game developer. A quote from an?article by Venture Beat ?sums it up..

Zynga rode Facebook to the top and the two grew dependent on one another. Then when the timing was right — when Facebook didn’t need Zynga or any other gaming company to prove it could make money — Facebook cut the cord.

Often, platforms start off with very friendly terms that attract developers who take on the legwork of building out richer experiences; these experiences attract an audience that stays for the platform’s core offering. When the platform is confident that its users are sticky and that churn will be minimal were it to curb those experiences and/or developers, they’ll bring down the axe.

If you live by the platform, you die by the platform.

Facebook went on to wage battle against brands, publishers, and individuals alike, by tweaking their algorithms to reduce organic reach and maximize ad revenue. Apple and Google hold the keys to their respective app stores.

When Apple wasn’t happy with Epic, they didn’t hesitate to take them off the App Store. Epic is by no means a pushover, but such is the power of platforms.

To be the master of your own destiny,?BUILD YOUR OWN PLATFORM.

The Case for Decentralization

But not every product can be a platform, or build one. This make the case for decentralized platforms that can ensure one doesn’t get de-platformed based on the decisions of an individual, company, or government. Easier said than done.

While there is movement toward bringing more decentralization into the world, we haven’t yet seen anything reach mass adoption. DeFi has shown some promise, but with undertones of Ponzi mechanics, fraud, hacks, and bad actors rampant, it’s losing a bit of its sheen.

For that matter, a lot of critics have pointed out that Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies aren’t truly decentralized either; they too have the problem of consolidation in network validators that gives a sense of some centralization.

Recently, a bunch of companies that are trying to build their own metaverses came together to form the?Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 . They hope to create standards that allow for interoperability. While their intentions are probably good, might it be that these folks could band together to prevent new entrants into the competitive sphere?

Is it human tendency to move toward centralization? I’d like to end this week’s editorial with a piece of wisdom from Che Guevara:

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.?

From Tegro HQ

Twitter Spaces with The Uplift World

We had the chance to speak with Corey, founder of The Uplift World - a Minecraft-based game with a blockchain layer. This happened to be just under 24 hours after Minecraft announced the ban; a highly relevant conversation if you’re interested in diving deeper into this saga.

A bit of glitch resulted in us having to restart the space which is split into two parts.

Tiger on the Loose, Tegro in the News

My terrible attempt at poetry aside, Tegro had a pretty decent week at the pressers. We go?featured in YourStory ?and Siddharth had an interesting conversation with Shashwant of Altcoin Buzz.

Game Nights

How about you hang out with us Wednesday nights? Last Wednesday, our gamer-in-residence Karan Chhabra walked our community through CyBall.

Fresh from the Tegro Blog

If you haven’t noticed, we kind of have some interesting views on Web3 gaming. Also, we like writing about it :).

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve started putting out summaries from our Twitter Spaces, reviews of game assets, get started guides for GameFi, and content for Web3 game developers. Here’s a selection of reads:

• CyBall: Football P2E Game Economy Overview
• On the Metaverse and Digital Real Estate

A slightly older, yet highly relevant read -?Problems that Plague Web3 Games and How to Fix It

News

• Neopets, a virtual pet ownership game, has?suffered a data breach . The extent of it is unknown as of now. On the subject of virtual pets,?Gap partners with DOGAMI to release pet-themed NFTs .
• To keep the metaverses of the future interoperable, some of the prominent players in the Web3 space have formed the?Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3 ). Organized as a DAO operating like a consortium, the founding members include Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, The Sandbox, Decentraland, among others.
• Auction house,?Christie’s, has launched a venture fund ?- Christie’s Ventures - to invest in emerging companies with technology enabling “seamless consumption of art”.
• Dubai wants to reinforce their future-friendly credentials by?unveiling its Metaverse Strategy ; it doesn’t really seem much as of now, but there might be details in the works.
• Square Enix, makers of Final Fantasy game series, has decided to dip its toes into the frothy lake that is NFTs. It’s partnering with Enjin to launch this. The NFT is bundled with a physical action figure. I’ll leave you to figure out what to make of it; here are some takes from?The Verge ?and?Kotaku .
• NFT authentication company Optic raised $11M in a seed round led by Kleiner Perkins and Pantera Capital. Copymints are an ongoing problem in the NFT space and they are hoping to put a dent in the knock-offs business.
• While Mark Zuckerberg’s serious need for a fashion update might not be a key driver for the partnership,?Meta and DressX are getting together to launch virtual clothes .
• This isn’t really newsworthy but I do like trashing on stupid constructs on an early Monday morning. After Play-to-Earn, and Move-to-Earn, we now have?‘Social-To-Earn’ with MetaU .

Thought for Food

The Metacast hosts Raph Koster

Over the weekend, I was catching up with an episode of The Metacast by Naavik with guest Raph Koster. He’s quite the luminary in the gaming space and I found the conversation to be rather fascinating as they touched upon multiple aspects of metaverses and playable virtual worlds.

Roblox Developer Unit Economics

An internal leak has lead to some interesting insights in Roblox’s developer unit economics;?the folks at Naavik have put together some interesting stuff ?that I plan on going through in detail later today.

Adopt Me! makes $77M with a team of 50 people. Not too bad!

Conclusion

No puzzle for this week. Instead, write to me with anything worth reading or your opinions on Web3 gaming (and allied topics such as economics, user behaviour etc) and I’ll give you a shout in next week’s newsletter.

Ciao!

This newsletter was?originally published on the Tegro blog .

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.