Formless: Building the GameFi Aggregator in the Easiest Way

Zoie, Head of BD at Formless, Joined Cointelegraph’s Lunar New Year’s Special Live-stream Program to Share Insights on GameFi

At 9:00 pm on February 4th, Zoie, head of BD of Formless, participated in the special program initiated by the Chinese channel of Cointelegraph. The topic of this session is how the foiled GameFi will develop in 2022. Zoie shared her visions with other guests during the live-stream and also highlighted how Formless will evolve to bolster the current GameFi market.

If you missed this live-stream, taking a few minutes to read through this article is highly recommended.

Q: Although GameFi was developing rapidly in the second half of 2021, by the end of last year, the most popular GameFi projects such as Cryptomines, Raca Metamon Island, and more have all lost dynamics and lost their former energy. What is your attitude towards this?

A: It seems that the development of GameFi started to calm down at the end of last year, prices wobbled a lot, and the market was subjected to a sea change, in which quite a few lower-quality speculative games were erased. Top-tier projects like Axie are also facing a slowdown in terms of user growth and the decrease in players’ revenue. This sector is looking for new growth momentum.

The rapid development of games in the past benefited from the entire market environment, and it has remained the same until now. Judging from the current situation, it is still too early to assert that the overall market has entered into the bear market just because the US is about to raise interest rates, and there are still opportunities in the current market.

In addition, I always think that GameFi is a pivotal way to attract non-crypto players into the Crypto field, and GameFi is also the original foothold of the metaverse. Even in a bear market, there are still players who want to have fun and make money, hence, we are quite optimistic about GameFi in the long run.

However, this is also a normal phenomenon in the development of the industry. Formless, being itself the stream of GameFi, plans to cooperate with projects with strong playability and tokenomics in the future so that players can enjoy more high-quality experiences.

Q: Does the game still have a chance to shine again? What are the prerequisites for the long-term success of the GameFi projects?

A: As my answer to the previous question goes, despite the sharp drop in transaction volume, the active users of blockchain games have been fluctuating upwards. It has risen from 470,000 at the end of July last year to 1.53 million at the beginning of January this year, and the number of active users has more than tripled in half a year. It can be discerned that although the transaction volume has declined sharply after the market deceleration, there are still new users participating in GameFi. Although the total number of blockchain game users is small, the growth rate is still astounding compared to that of traditional games.

Secondly, GameFi is a portal to the metaverse. “The best stock of the metaverse” — Roblox defines eight attributes that the metaverse should have according to the characteristics of its platform: Identity, Friend, Immersive, Low Friction, Variety, Anywhere, Economy and Civility. I reckon everyone can have the same feeling that these eight attributes perfectly tally with GameFi. Metaverse should seek its future success in a field with a wide range of users, and GameFi could be an effective path.

Therefore, the development of Metaverse has only just begun, and GameFi is still in the early stages of development. GameFi has nothing to do with whether it has a chance to regain momentum, it absolutely will keep growing. Many projects can be explored, and the capital will continue to inject its funds into this sector, promoting projects to keep creating and innovating, and finally fathom its path to success.

Q: What can define the success of a GameFi project?

A: Specifically, many factors make an impact on the survival of a project. Also, there are different ways to triumph under different conditions. For instance, in the early development stage of blockchain, the performance of the blockchain was not strong enough at that time, and an education simulation game, CryptoKitties, became a big hit. Now, with the development of side-chains, L2 technology, and DeFi-based systems, the capacity and gameplay for users have been incredibly enriched.

The success of Axie lies not only because of its innovative incentive model but also greatly enhanced in terms of gameplay and convenience compared to its predecessors. Of course, there is still a large gap between the current GameFi and the quality of traditional games. I assume that with the improvement of the infrastructure and the innovation of the incentive model, GameFi will continue to improve and strengthen the quality of the game, so that gamers can have a better experience, which is the key to a successful project in the next stage.

Q: The tokenomics design is critical to an excellent GameFi project. What is your opinion on GameFi’s tokenomics?

A: Regarding the tokenomics of GameFi, many projects have made improvements. The high point at present is not enough token incentives, but insufficient consumption in the game. Unlike real-world goods, game items are worthless without demand, because the value of game resources comes from player interaction and in-game consumption. Therefore, GameFi also has the problem of external circulation and internal circulation, and the “dual circulation” must be implemented reasonably. To maintain efficient dual circulation, the in-game upgrades, synthesis, and loss mechanics are all needed to take into consideration.

In addition, one thing I would like to emphasize is that compared with the traditional Internet, or web2, the blockchain world has undergone many changes. The only constant is the user mindset. Not only has it not changed, but it has also become more demanding. Unlike before, users are expecting a diverse and comprehensive PLAY-TO-EARN mechanism. Accordingly, it will continue to expand on its basis to meet more needs of users in the future.

In this regard, Formless has also been working day and night on upgrading the NFT trading experience and expanding SDK accessibility to further lower the threshold for traditional game players to approach blockchain games.

Q: What do you think the relationship between games, NFT, and Metaverse is?

A: GameFi is closely related to NFTs. It can even be said that without the development of NFT, GameFi would not be where it is today. With the power of NFT, the ownership of game virtual assets can be truly returned to players, which can help solve the problem of mutual trust between game manufacturers and players, which is the key to distinguishing GameFi from traditional games. This is subversive. In general, GameFi has changed the fragmentation model of multiple parties in real traditional games, connecting each participant in series. At the same time, based on NFT, the ownership of virtual assets between parties is clarified, and a shared value network is initially built.

As for the metaverse, as mentioned before, the combination of GameFi and NFT has become a promising channel for the metaverse.

In a nutshell, the ultimate objective of Formless is to create an aggregator that can aggregate web3 game projects with the simplest path.

Q: What does GameFi mean for the entire crypto industry?

A: There is a funny saying that goes on the Internet, games, and gambling are always growing the fastest. Because the game user base is extremely wide and the demand is huge, thus the business model is easier to form. The same is true in the crypto industry.

In the long run, the biggest obstacle of the crypto industry is neither the inadequate technical facilities nor the business models, but the demand and the use scenarios that the demand can bring. The significance of games to the crypto industry is not when they will appear, but that they may bring huge demand and use scenarios.

Q: At last, feel free to talk about the GameFi projects that you are currently more optimistic about.

A: Please note that due to the NDA, I am afraid that I can’t name any specific projects here.

Nowadays, more games pay more attention to “earn”, and “play” is placed in a secondary position. Most of the participating users are also crypto enthusiasts, and the quality of the game is uneven. In the long run, I prefer Gamefi with stronger game attributes, that is, projects with better in-game consumption.

As a GameFi aggregator, Formless has a unique rating system. We will cooperate with more innovative projects to launch pre-sale and launchpad shortly. Besides, we will also be partnered with OEC, Polygon, and Heco to facilitate players’ gaming experience.