They say everyone needs a community. We all desire like-minded people, as well as places where we and these people can converge and discuss our similar passions. Whether it’s sports or fashion, or tech, communities can be places where people come together, engage, and even share opportunities.
This same desire for communities is what has led many tech companies to especially grow significantly in the past few years. Social media provides a way for you and your friends to engage and connect, messaging apps offer groups that are closed off and which admit only members, and more.
Interestingly, this shift towards community building has also led many to embrace optimal technology. When you see your friends and people around you adopting something, you feel encouraged to do the same, and you want to see what it’s about. In many ways, there’s an argument to be made that community has been one of the largest drivers of new technology adoption in our age.
However, we are currently at an inflection point at the moment. The tech landscape is changing significantly, with the focus now moving to Web3 - an age of the internet where people will have greater control over their data as well as who is able to access it. Web3 is expected to be the next iteration, and it is already taking shape - tech companies are rushing into the space, and there are different subgenres of the current internet infrastructure that are essentially being built to fit into the Web3 structure.
So, how does Web3 benefit from this drive towards community building? Well, this could be an area where gaming comes in. With games, we all have the opportunity to have fun and compete. However, gaming also provides a way to meet people of like minds and bond with them - essentially the same as the traditional tech landscape’s drive toward communities.
We’re already seeing something similar with Elfin Arcade - a Web3 gaming platform that allows developers to create and scale their games while also letting audiences play and learn.
In this interview, we spoke to Juan Ibagon, CEO of Elfin Kingdom, about the future of Web3 gaming and community building. Juan is deeply passionate about the revolutionary potential of web3 in the gaming industry.
What was the vision for Elfin Games and Elfin Arcade?
Ibagon: We have a clear vision to empower gamers and give them a platform to enjoy the innovations of web3 gaming in a decentralized and secure environment.
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Empowering players: Players can claim true ownership of their in-game assets, with the ability to make decisions that affect the overall ecosystem within the platform through our DAO.
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Supporting Builders and Creators to create a more engaging experience: With the power that web3 wields, we create a more immersive and engaging gaming experience for players where they can interact with Builders and Creators.
At the same time, those Builders and Creators have access to tools and rewards that incentivized them to keep building upon the Elfin ecosystem, with fast feedback and more direct interactions.
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Building a strong community: We’re focused on building a social gaming platform where users can interact with each other. We want to form communities within which interests align, resulting in a resilient base layer that incentivizes community growth, competition, and creativity.
How does your platform differ from others in the Web3 gaming space?
Ibagon: The Elfin ecosystem grew fast as a leading game on Binance Smart Chain last year, and we believe that our community is one of our greatest assets. Gamers, creators, and builders all benefit from our platform, and this creates a more exciting, enjoyable, and rewarding experience for everyone involved.
Another key differentiator between Elfin and other web3 games is that we have a significantly lower barrier to entry for players. We have worked hard to make it easier for people to enjoy Elfin Kingdom and other games hosted within our ecosystem, and we endeavor to make creating UGC (user-generated content) as easy and fun as possible to attract web3 creators to our platform.
Initiatives such as our upcoming Elfin Creator Campaign highlight our efforts to bake UGC into our game and brand; users are able to design their own creatures with popular and easily accessible image generation tools; these creatures are then playable in-game as characters.
The end goal is for anyone to be able to play or create games and content on our platform, with the same fair chance to participate and be part of a wider community.
What are the areas of focus that you believe Web3 gaming should focus on going forward?
Ibagon: Web3 and blockchain have the potential to completely revolutionize the gaming industry by providing arguably the most important piece of the puzzle: providing players with more control over their in-game assets.
Traditional gaming is still completely monopolized, and as gamers realize the benefits of decentralization and personal ownership through blockchain technology, they continue to migrate to web3 gaming ecosystems; these ecosystems need to be able to scale in order to successfully adopt the next billion users and beyond.
True in-game asset ownership results in more brand affinity, which also serves to benefit the brands and games themselves ultimately, so it’s in everyone’s interest to make it work!
Other key areas Web3 gaming should focus on in the coming years are:
- Adoption of Web3 technology and the benefits of this technology: The adoption of this technology will become easier for developers to create and distribute web3 games. At the same time, it will improve the interaction between web3 actors.
- The standardization of play-and-earn games: These games are becoming a standard, as they offer players a way to be rewarded while having fun.
- A network of gaming ecosystems: These ecosystems allow players to interact with each other and with the game world in new and innovative ways, such as active participation in games and building or creating User-Generated-Content.
- Community-shaped ecosystems: As a result, developers are increasingly focusing on building strong and vibrant communities around their games, actively listening to their fans, and giving them what they want to continue developing in the right direction.
And what are your visions for the future of your landscape?
Ibagon: Contributing toward a self-sustainable, vibrant web3 gaming landscape has been an amazing experience for me and the Elfin team. In the not-so-distant future, I see areas such as VR continuing to heavily contribute to the growth of web3 gaming, with Graphics engines such as Unreal also continuing to raise the bar for what can be produced with the merging of gaming design and web3.
I hope (and expect) to also see an increase in user-generated content. As mentioned before, it contributes to a happy and inclusive ecosystem and has worked wonders for games such as Minecraft and Roblox; UGC in web3 gaming is set to become an interesting area of the industry, and we plan to be a part of it! Builders, creators, and users all deserve to be rewarded for their contributions.
Conclusion
As the Web3 ecosystem starts to take shape, it is more important than ever to be more deliberate with efforts to draw customers. And, with online communities themselves being as popular as ever, there is an opportunity here to capitalize on the trend and use it to grow platforms’ user bases.