Written by: Jaleel Jialiu, BlockBeats

Before meeting me, Ozawa had just met with a client to discuss the sale of a small game source code he developed. Compared with last year, Ozawa's mental outlook this time was completely different. He was no longer depressed, but ambitious, like a teenager returning to adolescence.

Last year, he confided in me about his confusion and helplessness when working on a large-scale blockchain game project. "I have been in the blockchain game for three years and have not achieved anything. This is very different from my ideal when I entered the circle. It may also be a mid-life crisis. I think I am already in my thirties and have not achieved anything. It's a failure."

After more than half a year, he finally found his state and talked to me with a smile throughout the whole process. It is said that many TON chain game production platforms have contacted them recently, wanting to buy their mini-game source code, with the highest bid being $100,000. TON chain is a blockchain project developed by Telegram. Although the Telegram team withdrew from the development of the project midway, the TON Foundation still took over and continued to develop it. Since last year's trading BOT, TON chain has gradually prospered, and it has also provided more opportunities and possibilities for today's mini-game BOT.

Traditional game developers who have experienced two cold winters have stepped on the pit of chain games again

"Jialiu, you may not know that the traditional game industry has already entered winter since 2018, but no one realized it at that time." Ozawa has been engaged in game development for nearly 10 years, and he first worked in a traditional small and medium-sized game company.

Since the game license issuance policy began in 2018, the number of domestic game licenses issued has continued to decline, and the "pause button" has been pressed twice. Game practitioners can be said to have experienced two cold winters.

"At that time, everyone also said that the higher you stand, the harder you fall. At the end of 2018, Tencent's stock fell sharply, and its market value evaporated by more than 80 billion US dollars." Lao Si, a former employee of Tencent, still remembers that time vividly.

"From the third month of the suspension, everyone gradually became pessimistic and negative. The scary thing is that no one knows how long it will last." Ozawa recalled, and showed me his negative circle of friends at that time.

At the beginning of the suspension, no one thought that the period would be as long as 8 months, and no one realized how much impact it would have, but the dominoes have fallen silently.

The suspension of the license in 2018 directly or indirectly caused the game industry to lose at least 1,000 new games, and more than 600 game companies went bankrupt during the year. According to Qichacha data, by the second half of 2021, 14,000 domestic game-related companies had been deregistered.

"This impact lasted for many years. The game company I worked for kept laying off employees, and finally couldn't hold on. That was also the first time I lost my job." In 2021, Ozawa also became one of the thousands of gamers who were laid off.

"That should have been five or six years ago, but I remember it very clearly. It was the lowest point in my life. I thought that I might not be able to make games in the future, and I cried a lot." He said he cried for two whole weeks, "I cried every day for two weeks, I did nothing, I was very anxious, and I didn't know what to do."

Chain games, a "refuge for game refugees"

In the policy winter, game manufacturers began to explore new ways out. At that time, there were only two ways for all game manufacturers, one of which was to make high-quality games.

Faced with restrictions on version numbers and intensified market competition, game companies realized that only by improving product quality and creating high-quality games can they gain a foothold in the market. High-quality games are not only about improving the graphics and gameplay of the game, but also about achieving the ultimate in game design, user experience, content creativity, etc. to meet the high requirements of players.

However, for most small and medium-sized manufacturers, high-quality products are not an easy path. High-quality products mean that more and better resources need to be concentrated on a few games, which also means that the competition in the domestic game market will become more and more fierce.

Therefore, going overseas is the only solution left, and it is also the choice of more manufacturers.

"Maybe it's a chance given to me by God. After being laid off, because of my good English, I was brought to a game company with resources to do overseas markets by my previous leader." Xiaoze can continue to make games again.

"Tencent has also done a lot of overseas business, tending to a large part of the focus and resources, including making overseas versions of games, setting up offices overseas, directly acquiring and investing in overseas game companies, etc." Lao Si analyzed. He believes that because Tencent controls most of the industry resources, Tencent's stock price has returned to a peak in 2021.

During that period, Tencent's M&A transactions set a record. Timi Studios set up offices in Los Angeles, Seattle and Montreal, and owned Riot Games, Funcom and Sharkmob, as well as holdings ranging from 4% to 84% in Remedy, Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Krafton, Supercell, Frontier Developments and other companies.

After three years, the ceiling of blockchain games is still the same as Axie

Unlike "game giants" like Tencent, it is not smooth sailing for small and medium-sized game companies to go overseas. In terms of channels, promotion, and profit sharing, game companies need to invest a lot of resources, and these resources are exactly what small and medium-sized companies lack.

Even so, some small and medium-sized companies still tried to go overseas. But they suffered a lot and hit a lot of walls. Due to the lack of experience and resources in overseas markets, they encountered many obstacles when entering new markets, such as cultural differences, different laws and regulations, difficulties in localized operations, and other difficulties.

It was at this time that "chain games" broke the circle.

This concept, which seemed very unfamiliar at the time, not only attracted the attention of many game giants, but also unexpectedly became a "refuge" for these "homeless" game practitioners.

After two years of accumulation, Axie Infinity, the most popular "chain game" on Ethereum, has exploded since May 2021, and the growth of daily revenue has shown exponential development. By August, the monthly revenue exceeded 334 million US dollars, far exceeding the revenue scale of 231 million US dollars of Honor of Kings in July.

Axie game interface

"In fact, Tencent also had plans to make Web3 games at that time, including many game companies like Zhongqingbao in China that were making metaverse concept games at that time." Lao Si told BlockBeats.

There are many ways to go overseas, but chain games may be the best choice at the time. This emerging form of game has attracted a lot of capital investment and allowed some practitioners to continue to develop in the game field.

"It seems that we chose blockchain games at that time, but in fact, blockchain games chose us." In Ozawa's memory, blockchain games attracted many practitioners who were hit by the traditional game industry and hoped to be reborn through blockchain games.

"However, three years have passed, and nothing has happened. The ceiling of blockchain games is still Axie back then." It seemed to be a choice for rebirth at the time, but now Ozawa's mood is much more complicated. He feels that he has taken a detour for three years.

Most of the players of blockchain games are speculators, with strong goals, mainly for making money, lacking interest in the game itself, and not paying much attention to the long-term development of the game. Therefore, for speculative Web3 players, the initial investment in blockchain games is very high, including time costs and transaction costs. Traditional game players find it difficult to integrate into blockchain games due to the high learning cost.

For these reasons, according to the CoinGecko report, from 2018 to 2023, the average annual failure rate of Web3 games is as high as 80.8%. Such data is not surprising.

Finally, it is the turn of blockchain games to "turn around"

Ozawa hasn't opened his circle of friends for more than half a year, because his classmates, relatives and friends are doing better than him, which makes him feel uncomfortable.

"I was thinking, should I have given up making games when I was laid off?" "Large-scale blockchain games are the second pitfall for game developers, and the first pitfall is becoming a game developer." Ozawa said that when he couldn't hold it back, he would go drink to vent, but every time he finished drinking, these words were in his mind.

When he was laid off five or six years ago, Ozawa was still young, but it's different now. He has a lot to consider as he has a family. The misunderstanding of his family and the "contempt" from his former colleagues have made his game development status besieged on all sides.

Unlike the anxiety and helplessness when he was abandoned by traditional games, Ozawa gained more despair in blockchain games...

It's not just Ozawa who feels desperate. According to Ozawa, most of the people around him have left blockchain games before him, including Tencent, and the rest have left halfway.

At the beginning of 2022, the hope and dream of most blockchain game developers was a world without dominant platforms like Apple or Steam. They envisioned a decentralized world where anonymous community members could influence the development of their favorite games. Of course, this dream was somewhat naive and lacked a solid foundation.

Having the right distribution method is critical to the success of a game. Developing a great game does not guarantee success, you need to find a large number of users who are interested in playing your game and are ultimately willing to pay for it.

In traditional games in the past, platforms such as Steam and Epic were traffic gold mines for distributing PC and console games, and the App Store and Play Store were traffic gold mines for mobile games.

"It's a good thing that there is no centralized audit platform, but from another perspective, blockchain games have never had a suitable platform for users to flock to them." In three years, Ozawa has participated in the construction of five or six blockchain game projects, but they are all different from what he originally imagined. Now, Ozawa has disenchanted blockchain games. He doesn't think that blockchain games can make a game that people play, at least not in the next five years.

Until this year, after visiting Mount Wutai with his family, Ozawa's miserable life finally began to change.

Because at the beginning of this year, Notcoin, a click game on the TON chain, became popular.

Notcoin game interface

You can get tokens by simply clicking. It is simple to operate, easy to get started and spreads quickly, which is very suitable for playing in fragmented time. The gameplay of Notcoin is even simpler than Snake. You just need to keep clicking. This low-threshold game design allows users to quickly get started with almost no learning cost.

Notcoin quickly attracted a large number of users after its launch. According to statistics, the number of daily active users of Notcoin has exceeded 5 million, and the monthly income exceeds 300,000 US dollars. Such achievements have quickly accumulated a large user base in a short period of time, and also allowed Ozawa to see more possibilities.

"It felt like I had been swimming in the sea for a long, long time. Just when I was about to run out of energy to continue swimming, the TON chain pulled me ashore." After meeting some friends who were making games on the TON chain, Ozawa finally discovered that there was a huge business here.

Catizen game interface

Starting from Notcoin, more Tap to Earn games were launched, and the gameplay gradually diversified. For example, Catizen, the most popular blockchain game project at the moment, uses telegram robots to allow players to combine two low-level cats into a higher-level cat, thereby attracting more customers to play with cats to make money.

At the end of June, Catizen announced that its total number of users exceeded 20 million, and the total number of daily active players exceeded 250,000. It has ranked first in The Open League for three consecutive seasons. The monthly income exceeded $500,000. These games are not only simple and easy to understand, but also use fragmented time to operate, which greatly improves user stickiness.

Although everyone knows that the data released by the project itself may be suspected of being watery, it is an indisputable fact that there are more and more players and games on TON.

More importantly, the chain gamers have finally found their own traffic gold mine.Telegram's user base also brings a huge potential user base to the TON chain. Compared with WeChat's 1.1 billion active users, Telegram's 900 million users are slightly less. And because of the globalization and high activity of Telegram, games on the TON chain are easier to spread and promote.

Not only small and medium-sized game developers like Xiaoze, the small game market of the TON chain has also attracted more traditional game companies, turning out the domestic small and medium-sized games that have been hidden in the bottom of the box.

Traditional game manufacturers enter TON

After working on several Web3 projects, Sunny now also focuses on TON games. She has several small game projects under her, including a shooting game.

"I talked to various traditional game companies some time ago, and they are all very interested in the various small game markets on the TON chain, including Shanda Games." Sunny revealed to me.

As we all know, Shanda Games is invested by Tencent. According to Lao Si, one of Shanda's data centers is mainly engaged in mining.

At the same time, Lao Si also indirectly confirmed what Sunny said. Not only Shanda, but also Web2 game manufacturers such as Bingchuan, Weiyou and Sanqi have already started projects in the TON ecosystem. It can be seen that it is actually very easy for these traditional game manufacturers to join the game, because they have been watching and looking for various opportunities on the edge of the currency circle, so it is not surprising that they participate in TON chain games.

"As for Tencent, I think the possibility of directly participating is relatively small. Tencent may at most let its subsidiaries or invested companies do it, such as Shanda." In Lao Si's opinion, Tencent may also devote some resources to support, including the manufacturer resources of those WeChat program mini-games.

"If Tencent really wants to do it, no one can do it better than Tencent. But the problem is that if Tencent does it, wouldn't it just be a wedding dress for Telegram to attract traffic?" Lao Si believes that supporting Shanda to make TON games is already Tencent's biggest compromise.

"They are all trying their best to push small games onto the TON chain. For example, those games that were abandoned before, or those that were developed but could not be listed." Recalling the last cycle, Sunny said that traditional game companies were considering participating in GameFi, but because the cycle of GameFi was too long, they did not invest easily.

“But these small games, a company has hundreds or thousands of them, and everyone wants to rush in.”

Back to what was mentioned at the beginning of the article, the process of getting a license for making games in China is very "grueling", and various review processes take a long time to wait, but the TON chain does not have these restrictions, and backed by Telegram's 900 million active users, it is a huge traffic gold mine.

“The cycle logic of GameFi, a large web3, cannot run in this round, but small games can, and mini apps can.” Like Ozawa, Sunny also believes that large chain games will not have a chance in this cycle. "If we focus on massive adoption, GameFi is a false proposition. The time is not right yet. Let's wait and see in the next round."

"Chain games may be the best choice at the time, but the time for large-scale chain games has not yet come. I don't think it's anyone's fault. This is just the choice of the industry and the market." Lao Si also revealed to BlockBeats that some large-scale chain games that have almost burned through the money they raised are also considering changing the code, first launching a TON mini game to warm up or to generate some data and results, so as to raise the next round for large-scale games.

Make something small, don't think about changing the world yet

As more and more people play games on the TON chain, Ozawa begins to secrete dopamine again and regains his former passion and motivation.

“In the past, everyone wanted to make something big, something great that could change the world, so mini-games were always discriminated against until NOTCOIN became popular on TON.”

Indeed, the mini-game market looks very simple. In essence, it is to go back to the path that PC games and mobile games have taken, making the categories that have been popular once again popular. Web3 mini-games are even simpler. They are to go back to the path that WeChat mini-program games have taken, making the games that have been popular on WeChat mini-program games popular again.

TON games are ridiculed

Although most TON games on the market are still lacking in playability, with more and more developers and big companies joining, I believe that we will soon see the former WeChat best-selling games on TON, such as "Xundao Daxian", "King of Salted Fish", "Yangle Yang", "Happy Xiaoxiaole", "Plants vs. Zombies", "Protect Radish" and even "Arknights".

"When I sold my first small game last month, I immediately started to frantically call my colleagues and friends who used to work on large-scale blockchain games to confirm that my idea of making games on TON was correct. Now, I am very happy, super happy."

Speaking of this, Ozawa received a call from his development colleague who was confirming some code details. Before leaving in a hurry, I said to him: "You are in a completely different state than last year, like you have been reborn again."

Ozawa waved his hand and said: "I just stopped pretending. Whether it is the game industry or the blockchain industry, you don't have to do big things to be awesome. It's good to do some small things first, so just to hell with huge games."

This article thanks all the interviewees who provided information. Due to privacy protection, the information of some interviewees has been blurred.