Mobile gaming company Coda Labs recently carried out a user study focusing on the Web3 gaming industry. The study was led by WALR, a leading data creation firm and a member organization of the Market Research Society.
The survey was carried out in five countries, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa, and Japan. A total of 6,921 respondents were surveyed. The U.S. recorded the most responses, while South Africa accounted for the least.
Findings of the study
The participants were initially divided into three groups based on their gaming activity and interests. 81% of the respondents qualified as gamers (general), meaning that they played video games at least twice a month.
The next category is crypto non-gamers. These were people who use crypto regularly but their gaming activity is negligible compared to general gamers.
Their crypto activity includes more than just buying and selling tokens. This category is active on decentralized exchanges and buys NFTs on a monthly basis.
The final category, labeled crypto gamers, included those who met the requirements of the previous two categories. So that means people who played games at least twice a month and interacted with DEXs and NFTs regularly.
Japan recorded the highest number of gamers with 90% of respondents qualifying for this category. Interestingly, just 2% identified as crypto non-gamers.
South Africa accounted for the least amount of gamers with 71% of total respondents but had the highest percentage of crypto gamers at 24%.
The study concluded that Web3 gaming is not a “mass market” yet. 52% of gamers are not familiar with any kind of web3 gaming term.
Only 12% of the respondents from this category have even tried a web3 game. The ones who haven’t tried, aren’t looking forward to it anytime soon.
In contrast to this, 65% of the crypto non-gamers have tried their hands on a web3 game, indicating that the target crowd for this sector lies within the industry.
Gamers as a group aren’t really fond of crypto, be it NFTs or trading/investment. Crypto gamers, however, have a positive sentiment toward crypto.
Respondents across the board are incentivized to play web3 games due to the potential crypto earnings. This motivation was identified, even among the general gamers.
General gamers who weren’t getting involved with Web3 games cited a lack of knowledge about their work as the reason.
However, those familiar with crypto were more concerned with the setup costs of getting into Web3 games, and the risk of scams and exploits.
Investments pouring in
In the first six months of 2022, the blockchain gaming industry received investments totaling $5 billion.
NFT scaling platform Immutable made headlines earlier this year when it announced a $500 million venture fund solely focused on web3 gaming, along with NFTs.
A report published by DappRadar last month showed that projects focused on web3 gaming and metaverse had raised a whopping $750 million in investment since 1 August 2022.
In more recent news, blockchain game developer Horizon raised $40M in its Series A funding round led by Morgan Creek Digital and Brevan Howard Digital
