As new gaming technologies emerge with fanfare and excitement, studios and developers often find themselves swept up in waves of short-term trends, at the same time detaching themselves from reality. From VR headsets to early blockchain-based gaming, we’ve seen numerous attempts to reshape the gaming landscape over the last few years. Yet, history repeatedly shows that chasing new technology without listening to player needs can lead to financial disappointments and the erosion of gamers trust. This week’s article dives into how tech-driven trends like VR gaming and early blockchain games have failed by chasing wrong trends, and contrasts these with the successful outcomes of socially driven gaming innovations.
Lessons from a Shrinking Market
Virtual reality was once quoted as the “next big thing” in gaming. Following years of speculation, the technology burst into mainstream gaming with devices like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR, promising immersive experiences and a new world of interactive possibilities. Enthusiasts envisioned VR games taking over the mainstream gaming industry as devices became more accessible to the average end user. Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 and Sony’s PSVR were particularly popular, allowing players to experience virtual worlds at home without the need for high-powered PCs, but for a number of reasons, by 2023, VR gaming has yet to achieve the revolutionary change that was initially predicted.
Despite new product releases, VR headset sales have continued to disappoint, shrinking by 8.3% in 2023 alone. While some of this decline is attributed to macroeconomic pressures, the heart of the issue is, in fact, VR's limited player retention and still relatively high entry costs with limited game libraries. Meta’s recently released Quest 3 and Sony’s PSVR 2 aimed to revitalize interest, but while they provide an improved experience, they’ve done little to overcome VR’s fundamental challenge: delivering a compelling reason for players to enter the new gaming world and stick around. As a result, VR technology has remained niche, largely restricted to affluent gamers or enterprise-level applications where immersive tech has specialized uses
More fundamentally, VR gaming’s struggles with a challenge endemic to all tech-driven trends in not only gaming, but entertainment as a whole: while new technology can attract initial hype, it often fails to sustain engagement when the first wave of novelty interest finally wears off. Without the social integration and gameplay depth that mainstream gamers crave, technology alone falls short of building a sustainable audience.
How Play-to-Earn Chased the Wrong Trend
The gaming industry’s fascination with blockchain first took off in 2021, when titles like Axie Infinity and DeFi Kingdoms popularized the Play-to-Earn (P2E) model. These games rode a wave of hype, promising players the opportunity to earn real-world currency through gameplay in this way or another. For a time, blockchain-based gaming saw meteoric growth as players and investors alike flocked to the new model. Yet, much like VR, blockchain games ultimately faced issues that prevented them from cementing long-term player bases.
With blockchain gaming, the challenge wasn’t the hardware cost VR struggled with, but rather the gaming experience itself. Many blockchain games built their appeal around tokenomics rather than gameplay quality, relying on financial incentives to keep players engaged. In the short term, this strategy led to a boom in user engagement, especially in countries with limited access to traditional gaming setups. However, as the initial hype died down and financial incentives began to falter, so did the player engagement. By late 2022, the P2E model faced a harsh reality: players who were initially drawn in by financial incentives began to realize the gameplay itself was substandard and all the time invested lost and never to be recovered.
Not only did players drift away, but the flood of speculative capital led to instability of in-game economies, ultimately devaluing tokens and reducing incentives for both new and already onboarded users. This lack of genuine engagement illustrated how unsustainable it can be for games to chase tech-driven trends rather than building their foundation on meaningful user engagement and quality gameplay that players seek despite external incentives.
Capturing Lasting Attention
In stark contrast to the rise and fall of tech-centric trends, gaming models based on social engagement and community dynamics have demonstrated long-term success a number of times. Over the last two decades, various studios have thrived by listening to their communities and adapting to changing social trends rather than technological advancements alone.
Numerous forms of competitive gaming and esports provide a prime example of this trend. Titles like League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive owe their popularity to deeply social gameplay experiences, where players face off against others in skill-based matches where the victory and reputation is the reward in itself. Going a step further, by allowing players to compete, form teams, and build communities around games, competitive games fostered long-lasting engagement that became the solid foundation of everything else that has since been built on top of it. A great example of which may be the fact that some games cultivated global fanbases, setting the stage for large tournaments and prize pools that rival those in traditional sports. The success of these titles proves that gaming doesn’t need revolutionary tech to attract players; it needs compelling social structures that keep players invested over time.
The Battle Royale genre further showcases how social trends can drive engagement. When PUBG and Fortnite followed the path of the Battle Royale format, their success stemmed from providing high-stakes, player-versus-player experiences that felt fresh and communal. By 2018, Fortnite had become a social phenomenon, with players drawn to the game’s mix of casual fun, high-skill competition, and social experiences. Beyond the gameplay, Fortnite doubled down on engagement by offering in-game events and cross-media collaborations with popular franchises and artists, turning each session into a highly anticipated social event. By centering on social interaction and competition, studios have been able to create games that evolve alongside player interests - a key differentiator from games that rely on new technology for the initial appeal that quickly fades away.
Adopting Player-Friendly Strategy
Interestingly, the modern web3 gaming space seems to be taking note of these patterns, choosing the path of adopting strategies that prioritize social engagement over pure tech hype. With the failure of early blockchain games fresh in mind, studios are now working to rebuild web3 gaming around player communities, fair competition, and sustainable player economies. Rather than leaning solely on blockchain technology as a gimmick, these new web3 games are exploring ways to create long-lasting ecosystems that cater to the social dynamics of gaming communities and while blockchain is a part of the equation - although not always, the focal point is the meaningful competition itself.
For example, developers are now exploring game models that use blockchain’s strengths - such as decentralized ownership and player-controlled economies, without letting tokenomics overshadow the gameplay itself. New web3 titles aim to build the gaming experience, provide meaningful rewards even in the form of real money prizes, and enable players to form social networks around digital entertainment that is the source of their engagement and reputation. By grounding these games in social trends and community needs, web3 developers are working to avoid the pitfalls of the P2E model and create games that are as fun as they are financially sustainable and above all, games that will last despite downturns in blockchain-related economies.
Social Connection is the Real Endgame
The rise and fall of tech-driven trends like VR gaming and early blockchain games serves as a cautionary tale for the industry. While new technology may create a surge of interest, sustainable success comes from crafting experiences that meet player needs and foster a sense of honest social engagement leading to the formation of communities centered around given titles. VR and blockchain games both illustrate the dangers of putting technology before user engagement. In contrast, the success of competitive gaming branches such as esports and Battle Royale highlight how studios can build and cultivate a lasting fanbase by focusing on social driven trends.
As studios move forward, the message is clear: chasing short-lived tech-driven trends is rarely enough to sustain player interest. Instead, the focus should be placed on building gaming experiences that resonate with players’ social instincts and competitive spirit.
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