Right now my X -Feed is full of people giving up web3 gaming. I’ll get it. Over $ 12 billion venture capital financing has gone into it since 2020, and they haven’t seen the kind of breakout success that many expected. Even the best games have not reached anything close to the mainstream scale. Token prices are down. Studios shuts down. And everyone is exhausted.

But measuring web3 games from token prices alone is like calling the Internet a failure due to the Dot-Com crash-it ignores how far the technology has come and where it is on its way. It lacks the right story.

In its core, web3 gaming is about giving the players really ownership-not only of the items they buy and servant, but also their identities and results. In traditional games, players invest time, effort and money in digital assets that ultimately belong to the publisher. Web3 changes it. By putting assets on the chain, players can really own it, they earn-what is either marketable objects such as weapons or land or non-transferable badges of reputation, guild history or verifiable skill. It’s not just about buying and selling things – it’s about agency, persistence and getting proper recognition for what you’ve built and what’s really yours in the ecosystem.

The concept is not new. Players have wanted more control over their assets in the game for years. Look at the massive markets for CS: GO Skins or World of Warcraft Gold. But so far, these economies have been fragmented, limited or at risk of being closed if a centralized publisher decides to shut it down or change the rules. Web3 makes these economies open, interoperable, player -owned and player -driven.

Ownership has always been the basis of web3 gaming, and Play-to-Earn was an experimental model that showed the potential for open and permitted virtual economies on Blockchain. Now the industry is developing with a stronger focus on sustainable economies and better tokenomics, deeper gameplay and long -term player engagement.

But if you compare web3 gaming with web2 gaming you will be disappointed. Traditional games have had decades to fine-tune game design, build massive player bases and develop business models that work, while web3 games are still in its experimental phase. Of course, billions of dollars investment can speed up things, but throwing money into a whole new category does not magically buy it a track record or instantly create new games that people love.

I have been making games for over 20 years and I have seen every major shift be dismissed before it took over. No one thought mobile games could compete with PCs or consoles before it got bigger than both. Free-to-game was called a scam until it made more money and reached more players than ever before. Esports was a joke until stadiums sold out and prize pools hit millions. Digital skins were “worthless” before becoming a multi -billion dollars market.

And now web3 gaming is at the same bending point.

When I first heard about Blockchain in 2018, everyone I knew in Fintech talked about it. So of course I thought it was boring and I ignored it. It was only before I learned about cryptokities that I actually noticed. When I saw people collecting, shopping and actually owning these cute on-chain cats, it was when I was excited because I knew they were not like other assets in the game. Cryptokitties were digital things that no one could remove from you. As a person who has spent their lives grinding into play, and their careers convince others to grind the same – without really getting anything – that idea of ​​digital ownership gave me a whole new way of thinking.

So I went all on blockchain games. But 2018 and 2019 were really difficult times. Virtually no one else was interested back then. There was no support, no real funding, no clear idea of ​​what these games could be beyond speculation, and (outside a handful of believers) there was very little conviction. The market was in a deep bear cycle, and many teams gave up either or ran out of money before they could launch. Still, some of us continued to build. We became lean, experimented and learned everything the hard way. It feels similar to bad now, but not as bad as it was then. When I look back, I’m so glad we didn’t wrap it in when success was just around the corner.

When Axie Infinity broke through in 2021, everything changed. Web3 -founders such as Jeffrey “Jihoz” Zirlin from Sky Mavis, Yat Siu from Animoca Brands, Sebastien Borget from the Sandbox and Me crazy to visionary overnight. Suddenly we talked on the main scene at conferences where we used to see in the audience. We made news headlines and “most influential” lists. Investors who ignored our E emails asked how much they could put in. My E -Mail -Inbox filled with fundraising -tires that threw the next YGG.

Then in 2022 the market crashed, and just as soon we went back to being crazy. But it never really bothered me because crazy people are the ones who make big things happen.

Now everyone asks: When is the next Big Web3 game? The answer is this: Good games take time. And if you look past the red candles to note what already exists today, you will see how much progress we have made since our industry was poded in 2018:

• By 2020, Axie Infinity had fewer than 500 daily players. Today, Ronin – the blockchain, the built – millions of active users, with 17 new games launched, and 134% growth in NFT trading volume in 2024 compared to 2023. Some of the biggest innovations in games such as Modding, Free-to-Games and Esports came from unexpected places. By lowering the access barrier, a permissionless Ronin invites the kind of experimentation that can lead to the next Axie-scale success.

• Pixels, an agricultural game on Ronin, hit a highlight of 1.3 million daily active users (Daus) and now holds around 250,000 douses, even with its token down 96%. Players use more than they pay out, buy land, upgrade assets and actually put money back into the game, which is burning the economy instead of extracting from it. This is how virtual economies should work with real demand and strong detention. The most important thing is that it is an indication that the play-to-EARN model can work if done right.

• Parallel, a Trading Card Game (TCG) at Ethereum, just hosted a Las Vegas World Cup at the HyperX Arena venue that has hosted some of the biggest eSports competitions from “League of Legends All-Stars” to “Street Fighter V’s Capcom Cup.” This was a prestigious event that saw some of the world’s best TCG players crossover from traditional titles like Hearthstone to become some of the first web3 sports legends.

These are just a few examples, but they show the kind of traction we see: better infrastructure, growing societies, more sustainable virtual economies, digital ownership.

Those who fud web3 gaming today don’t understand it. They missed Cryptokitties in 2018, Axie in 2020, Ygg in 2021, and they will also miss the next wave because they measure the wrong measurements. Web3 grows and innovates faster than any other gaming sector. It’s not time to quit. It’s time to double. Let them call us what they want: crazy, lost. Visionary, groundbreaking. It doesn’t change what we do. We’ve been here before. Become the path.