Gaming is well understood to be the largest entertainment category globally. Across all categories of global spending, gaming constitutes a $317 billion industry. This sizing includes several key segments outside of gaming content and virtual goods purchases: other forms of content and IP sales, sales of any gaming hardware and equipment (including consoles) as well as gaming software such as streaming services (e.g., Twitch), gamer communication (e.g., Discord), game engines (e.g., Unity), and other items.[1]

Market categories, from hardware sales to in-game sales, include:

Several categories are germane to Web 3 economics, ripe for disruption:

Blockchain gaming, a category that is “only” $1.5bn is growing exponentially, at an estimated 100% CAGR. The potential market in 2025 for blockchain could reach $50bn.

However, this blockchain gaming growth estimate could be an understatement. As noted by BITKRAFT in their market research:

“First, it is important to recognize that blockchain gaming is still in its relative infancy. According to DappRadar, there are just over 1,000 games on public blockchains compared to the tens of thousands seen in the early days of Apple’s App Store. As more games are introduced and adoption barriers are lowered for users, the blockchain game market has the potential to grow meaningfully. On the other hand, there is always a possibility that blockchain gaming may enter the “Trough of Disillusionment” phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle, failing to gain traction among gamers and resulting in a pullback of revenues.”

NFTs as an entry point for mainstream players

While blockchain-specific games are seeing success with early adopters, mainstream adopters - highly engaged players that can fuel game adoption and virality - are gravitating towards NFT-powered games and play-to-earn games. These types of games appeal to a consumer-driven 18-35 demographic, looking to invest in virtual identities and curate collections of objects they own, while being rewarded for their time and effort in-game.

In Q3 2021, trading volume for NFTs showed the rise of gaming in the NFT market: in-game collectibles backed by NFTs grew to 22% of overall NFT trading volume, representing $2.3bn in sales.

What sets PLAY apart is that it enables developers to power their games with NFTs and reward players with simple “play-to-earn” components. Features in PLAY appeal to a more consumer, contemporary, social-media inclined demographic. By creating an infrastructure that at its core is mobile-first, developers have the ability to connect their games to a wide audience of players.

Web3 developer adoption

Developers are rapidly exploring Web3 technologies (across gaming and other sectors). According to Electric Capital’s 2021 developer report, they “fingerprinted nearly 500K code repositories and 160 million code commits across Web3” to generate a growth analysis of the Web3 developer ecosystem:

The note of caution regarding wider blockchain gaming, as known as “gameFi” adoption, is a macroeconomic risk and potentially a regulatory (both via government regulation and private platform regulation, such as the Apple App Store). It can be partly de-risked by addressing what PLAY believes to be the key hurdle to wider gameFi adoption- the developer, creator, and player experience in entering blockchain-backed gaming.

This is reflected in a recent survey conducted by the Blockchain Gaming Alliance in 2021. They surveyed game studios, and asked “What are the pain points for blockchain gaming?”

Several of the top “pain points” reported above are resolvable with PLAY’s technical ecosystem:

• Technology limitations.

• Poor user experience.

• Lack of technical experts.

• Difficult to implement.

• Too niche.

• Lack of on/off ramps.

• Lack of interoperability.

PLAY believes that key to broad adoption of blockchain-based gaming, is a simplification of each step in the pipeline. This, in turn, broadens the addressable market for each constituent group. PLAY has largely achieved these aims:

• Developers: A simple SDK (initially in Unity 3D, the dominant mobile game engine) that provides access to an equally simple set of API methods. Real-time dashboards providing the developer with game analytics, and “live operations”, including control of blockchain elements.

• Creators: In-game authoring tools, currently deployed, that allow for the creation of avatar cosmetics, with the ability to trigger a minting process to bind the item to an NFT, all within the mobile experience. The creation modules are available to developers as well, in the SDK.

• Players: The shift from a “wallet” metaphor to a “verified profile.” Profile verification is a cryptographic step, where the profile is bound to an NFT, and inherits functions associated with a wallet. Going forward, this enables transactions to appear inside metaphors like “my inventory” or “my purchases”.

"Crossing the Chasm" from early adopters to the majority

Each of these steps work to move blockchain gaming from a set of “innovators” and “early adopters” to the next tier- the “early majority.” This is known as crossing the chasm:

PLAY is mono-focused, market-making solutions to encourage mainstream market adoption of blockchain gaming. By targeting mobile-first development, widening the player ecosystem, and encouraging more developers and creators to join blockchain, PLAY is penetrating into an untapped market - crossing the chasm to wider adoption.

Investors in the $PLAY token will be joining PLAY in achieving this aim, contributing to the creation of a broad-based distributed, accessible, gaming ecosystem.