GameFi is deservedly called one of the key crypto trends of recent years. Blockchain games have breathed new life into the gaming industry and made it possible to turn a hobby into a stable income. The play-to-earn concept has found millions of followers worldwide.
Today we will talk with the CEO of LTL Games, Sergey Fominyh. He is an experienced investor in the stock market and has been investing in crypto assets since 2017. Co-founder of the investment club “Invest smartup,” known for its unique analytical software on the stock market and training provided by the world’s best traders. Sergei Fominyh is also the creator of the successful brand agency Deford, which has received three world awards in design. His experience extends to marketing, where he is the founder of the advertising agency Like2look with over ten years of background in the digital industry.
During our interview, he spoke in detail about the phenomenon of GameFi’s popularity and shared his vision for further industry development. We touched upon current problems and possible prospects of GameFi.
Nice to meet you, Sergey! Let’s begin with the GameFi phenomenon and how it intertwines with the gaming industry and cryptocurrencies.
Hello, and nice to meet you too! Well, I believe the gaming industry has been operating as an independent and essential sector of the economy for a long time. In-game economies began to take shape back in the 2000s, representing a significant stage in the evolution of video games. Back in those days, for example, Lineage or World of Warcraft, as well as browser games, had their own internal markets. Players were able to resell items, upgrade characters for later sale, create guilds with a fee for their management, develop unique equipment, and much more. All of these aspects used to work successfully without cryptocurrencies, but in my opinion, cryptocurrencies are having an absolutely revolutionary impact on the gaming industry.
The main difficulty lies in the chain of transactions when game items or characters are sold for real money. This process requires someone’s approval, such as interaction with the marketplace, where users can trade items, transfer money, or whatever they need. That might be difficult for a wide audience to access such marketplaces, especially if the person is not a digital native teenager growing up in this environment and knowing all the details perfectly. Now imagine that once you defeat a monster you immediately get money in your wallet. This feature is ideally implemented through the mechanism of decentralized finance. You get the platform and infrastructure in place that allows you to easily convert in-game tokens into other currencies and coins!
GameFi is one of the crypto trends of recent years. What is the secret of blockchain games’ popularity?
The best way for the industry to gain recognition and quickly attract new users is through games. So far, when it comes to the introduction of ordinary people to crypto technology, nothing works better than GameFi. That is the reason why major players in the cryptocurrency market are extremely interested in the development of the GameFi industry.
Despite all the difficulties and failures of some projects, GameFi continues to draw investors and players. In 2023, investment in Web3 games reached an impressive $600 million, highlighting their growing adoption. As technology advances and improvements are steadily brought to economic models, we expect an influx of successful GameFi projects in the future.
As far as I know, you’re also engaged in this sector, so maybe you could tell us a little more about your brainchild and the process of its creation
LTL Games is our gaming studio where experienced specialists with backgrounds in the world’s leading game production companies, as well as experts in blockchain technologies, work on crafting our brainchild – “GIRAND: IN THE LOST CITY”.
In our team, you could meet former employees of Blizzard, Mail.ru, and 1C, who took part in the development of such large projects in the global gaming industry as Hearthstone, Lost Ark, and King’s Bounty. Over 40 people are working on our project. Our office is headquartered in Dubai with the team spread all over the world. With that all, we definitely have a strong position in the GameFi market.
We plan to release an alpha version of “GIRAND: IN THE LOST CITY” – the first high-budget P&E game based on the Girand universe, with real market economy and incredible 3D visualization, in early 2024. We decided to focus on graphics, unique content, a well-considered real economy, and an engaged and dedicated community.
Despite the hype around GameFi, this industry faces many problems. I mean, monotonous gameplay leads to a decrease in user involvement. How do you solve this problem in your sensational project “GIRAND: IN THE LOST CITY”?
It is extremely important to realize and take into account that existing play-to-earn games currently have pyramidal features. This means that the project’s economy and payments largely depend on the dynamics of the new users’ influx.
A decrease in the pace of attracting new participants typically negatively impacts the earnings of existing players. In such cases, there is a risk that the game’s economy will not hold up and the project may fail. According to statistics, on average 70% of projects lose value in the first year after release.
To solve this problem, in 2021, we at LTL Games decided to create a GameFi project. We refused to copy the current leaders in the industry but focused primarily on the leading players in the video game industry as a whole. Our main goal was to create a game that is interesting to play not for the sake of making money.
Currently, 90% of users of the “P2E”, “M2E” and any other “2E” models play solely for the sake of money-making, while only 10% are looking for an opportunity to spend quality time. When a project ceases to provide significant income to users, it starts to fade and lose users, be it even the most exciting game. Our mission is to reimagine the way games are created within GameFi. We want to ensure that at least half of Girand users are passionate about the gameplay itself. This approach will reduce the volatility of the token during market swings.
However, this does not mean that you can’t make money here; on the contrary, we hired professional economists to create the internal economy for our game. The players’ activity and the specifics of the GLC token determine the structure and stages of the gameplay.
Thanks to the massive universe, we can mint new NFTs without affecting the value of already generated NFTs. The mint of new NFTs occurs due to the creation of new races. The number of NFTs is limited within a race, and the release of a new race does not affect the value of another race within the game.
GLC tokens, game assets, and various types of NFTs are circulating within the system and are actively used for in-game activities. A variety of resources and a multi-level system of development and improvements, as well as various game modes, allow balancing the game economy and at the same time reward players for their in-game achievements.
Wrapping up, we’d like to know about your plans for the next year and find out your vision for the development of the GameFi industry on a global scale.
The GameFi industry will definitely grow, but we should not expect major changes until large game makers with truly high-quality games come to this market. Those will be projects with an established economy, offering stable growth for more than one or two years. And we plan to be among them, pioneering a new GameFi projects generation.
As I said, this year we plan to modify the GameFi sector and attract as many real Web2 users as possible to our project. Of course, these are just thoughts for now, but at the end of 2024, we plan to hold a large-scale tournament with an offline final in the UAE. That’s going to be a large-scale event, we’ll see what comes of it, but something is telling me, it will be simply unforgettable.
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