Metaverse Games Don't Interest Gamers, but Industry Doesn't Care
Giant interest and huge investments don't help. Metaverse games have so far failed to attract casual gamers. However, the industry doesn't seem to need them.
- Metaverse games do not attract players;
- This is supposedly due to the lack of engaging gameplay in such games;
- However, these titles do well even without player engagement.
Metaverse is probably the favorite word of the modern technology industry. One gets the impression that most IT-related companies want their own meta environment where users can be encouraged to use P2E (play-to-earn) services.
However, the interest of giant corporations and huge investments are not enough to convince ordinary gamers to these ideas. So far, the metaverse remains just a curiosity, which is also plagued by numerous problems.
Gamers skeptical of metaverses
As reported by CoinDesk, many of the games based on the metaverse concept not only fail to attract players, but also lose existing users.
Websote's journalist, Sam Reynolds, decided to take a look at three such games, namely Decentraland, Axie Infinity and The Sandbox. Statistics for each of them can be found on DappRadar.
The listed games are part of a clear trend. They record a gradual decline in user activity. In the case of Axie we are talking about a 30% drop over the last 30 days. In the same period of time The Sandbox lost 29% of its players, and Decentraland 15%.
By the way, these are not the only titles that are losing users. The list of metaverse games includes many titles with waning numbers of active players.
Focusing only on these titles, however, would not be fair from a journalistic standpoint. For it is worth noting that DappRadar's rankings includes many titles that enjoy exceptional popularity.
During the last day Splinterlands was played by almost 400 thousand people. Alien Worlds can boast the number of 236 thousand users.
These results suggest real hits, but for some reason ordinary players usually haven't even heard about these titles. Why? Because they are not created for them.
Lack of gameplay in the game
According to a journalist of CoinDesk, only a part of the users of metaverse-based games are gamers. A very large percentage of the community of the aforementioned titles are guild employees, earning money on the game on behalf of their investors.
Ordinary players have nothing to look for in metaverse games. According to the author of the DeFi Vader blog, who uses the example of Axie, they lack gameplay elements that would engage users like classic video games.
If metaverse titles want to attract users from outside the blockchain bubble, they need to start looking like the real entertainment, the kind that dominates consoles and PCs.
According to the blogger, players are not appealed by the promises of investment opportunities and earnings. They also need something that will simply give them fun and a reason to continue playing.
For now, however, the companies responsible for metaverse games have become enamored with the mere option of monetizing user activity. There are no signs that this is about to change, either, as the leading titles in this segment do really well without player participation.
