At the Global Blockchain Convention Dubai in May, I had the pleasure of moderating the “Small Payments, Big Fun: Micropayments for Casual Games” panel featuring Tyler Farnsworth, CMO of Built By Gamers (BBG), as one of the speakers.
BBG is a “gaming lifestyle organization,” as described by Farnsworth.
“We have professional teams that compete in major AAA-style titles like Valorant and Halo, as well as a number of content creators that are not necessarily professional players, but they have huge fan groups,” he explained.
“We create this whole ecosystem that we bring fans together for in the world of gaming to celebrate it and just to bring together this whole mix of fashion and film and sport and gaming, it’s this new pop culture that is all unified,” he added.
Current state of revenue models in gaming
Micropayments are set to disrupt the current revenue models in the gaming space, an area within gaming that is in dire need of a rehaul. Farnsworth described the four core revenue models and touched on some of the pitfalls:
Buying the game. This is risky for the gamer because they may not like the game and while it provides a revenue stream for the game developer, it’s only a one-time fee and there is a cap.
Subscription model. A hassle for gamers and the gamer may not get a lot of value from the cost if they are playing infrequently.
In-app purchases. These are skin cells or other upgrades available for purchase that will unlock new levels.
Advertising. The most obnoxious of all the models and a terrible user experience for the gamer.
“There’s this tug and pull to how can we balance a great revenue model for the publisher so they are motivated to keep building and having a good user experience for the player,” Farnsworth explained.
“This is where micropayments offer a new way that previous to this, you really couldn’t get this small. And so you can have all kinds of different transactions for fractions of a cent,” he said.
“It allows for these publishers at scale to make a whole lot of revenue. So [the gamer is] choosing it, you don’t have to go and watch this ad or be interrupted, every time you make any sort of payment. You’re making that choice. And it’s so small that it’s not even causing an issue,” Farnsworth added.
Haste as a partner
Farnsworth is a huge fan of the Haste Arcade team and their utilization of micropayments. As a result, BBG and Haste have been working closely together since April 2021 and with the help of BBG’s fan base, Farnsworth believes the partnership will help bring the Haste vision of mass adoption to life.
“Haste is a great partner. They’ve built a great software development kit for game developers to go in and create these games with their structure, which is their ‘ILP’, their instant leaderboard payout,” he said.
The Haste Arcade games are pay to earn using micropayments—the games are simple, fun and provide instant gratification for those who make the leaderboard. Game developers can also enjoy a new revenue stream as they receive instant micropayments every time players play their games.
“We know that [Haste] needs more users. We need more players in an arcade. And so we’ve recently worked on the campaign with four of our streamers where we ran a tournament on the game of Jump…we drove all kinds of traffic,” Farnsworth revealed.
“Our goal was to hit 10% conversion. We hit 38% conversion. So 38% of the people who clicked over from these Twitch streamers converted to becoming a Haste Arcade user. And it’s not like they just played one game and left. On average, they played 28 times just in that first week,” he said.
“That’s stickiness and that should be exciting for anyone in the BSV community, but also way larger. Blockchain gaming is the next wave of gaming. This is web3 gaming. But this blockchain fueled gaming is massive and we’re frankly just at the starting line,” he added.
Why BSV
Haste Arcade’s ILP system is based on the ability to do instant micropayments and this is only possible with the BSV blockchain. While BBG’s community includes fans of games powered by other blockchains, Farnsworth is a big believer in BSV and its unique ability to scale.
“Right now there’s a ton of choices [of blockchains] and it’s very muddy, there’s a lot of froth in the water. So many people are building games, some of them are complete junk, some of them are complete scams and some of them are really great,” Farnsworth said.
“We needed very low fees because if we are going to record all of these interactions on chain for a game, if a game finished, you want to reboot up a new game or if you died in the game and you want to get a new life, you don’t want to be paying a $50 gas fee on Ethereum each time, that’s untenable,” he said.
“BSV provided all of the parameters that we needed for blockchain gaming or web3 gaming,” he added.
Start building now
Now that we know the BSV blockchain can power a new and improved economy for gaming, its essential to grow and nurture the ecosystem to push it into the mainstream. Partnerships between companies like BBG and Haste are a gigantic step forward, but we still have a long way to go.
“We need more people to build. Developers, partners, influencers, thought leaders. And that’s the only way we are going to move blockchain gaming into the mainstream,” said Farnsworth.
“It’s coming, if you want to be one of the people helping build that and make it happen, jump in. Let’s do it,” he said.
Watch: BSV Global Blockchain Convention panel, Metaverse, NFTs & Blockchain
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