Lightspeed Newsletter: Solana’s lack of playable games

18.07.2024

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Howdy!

Last night, I attended my first ever New York Liberty game, and goodness me, were we ever up in the nosebleeds.

But even from my perch in the rafters, it was clear that Sabrina Ionescu is a bucket. Caitlin Clark who? Anyways:

In search of Solana games

I tried ginning up some newsletter content by becoming a Solana gamer. Unfortunately, my journey was stalled by a lack of, well, games.

As crypto settles into a collective spirit of grumpiness about having too much infrastructure for too few widely used apps, Web3 gaming is likely to face increased scrutiny. There is currently a mismatch between the funding interest in games and the returns on those investments.

I opened up solana.com’s project discovery tool — on which gaming has the third-most listings of any category — and began my exploration. This netted me some interesting finds: I played Seekers of Tokane, a gorgeous “Japanese role-playing game” centered around hatching eggs and taking them to new maps to battle with them. This is all facilitated via Solana-based NFTs and a native token. Granted, Seekers felt a bit derivative of the numerous other games with the breed-creatures-and-battle trope, but I’m grading a bit on a curve here because the game is playable, and the graphics look great.

Photo Finish Live doesn’t have impressive graphics, but the Solana-based horse racing game has a lot of strategic depth. And Backwoods is a fun, easy to play “roguelite game” that reminds me of something I might have found on Miniclip back in the day.

Around these bright spots though, I found some dead husks of games, some projects doing a lot of promotion for a game that’s not yet playable, and many trying to stretch the definition of “game” entirely.

“The best referral systems feel like a game,” one project insisted.

Blockchains have long seemed like they’d have a natural synergy with crypto. Mt Gox — of “the reason why bitcoin is dumping” fame — was initially envisioned as a Magic the Gathering card exchange, after all. Solana, with its high-throughput focus, also seems like it could be a good fit for having gaming transactions happen on the blockchain.

But while no one in Web3 can claim to have solved gaming, Solana doesn’t appear to be a leader — especially as competitors like Arbitrum plow major funding into the sector.

“Solana is not a gaming-first ecosystem, and when choosing between the chains, game developers are looking first and foremost for distribution,” Ross Krasner, the co-founder of game publishing-focused Ryu Games, told me.

As far as distribution goes, the current chain to beat might be TON, which is drawing major usership with a slate of Telegram-based tap-to-earn games — to the point that a member of Iran’s military brass classified one as being part of the West’s “soft war” against the Iranian regime. To be fair, these games involve tapping your phone screen over and over partly in hopes of receiving an airdrop, and color me a skeptic on whether this particular strategy has legs. I think the end state of Web3 gaming is yet to be discovered.

One analyst I spoke with was a touch more optimistic on Solana’s future for gaming.

“On Solana specifically, truthfully, I think it gets better from here,” pseudonymous Blockworks Research analyst Boccaccio said. “Solana had liveness issues and reputational issues last year. Games on Solana were not particularly innovative/good or they never launched (Star Atlas). There are a few cool infrastructure projects building on there now (Magic Blocks is one). We’ll see how well it catches on.”

— Jack Kubinec

Zero In

5%

That’s the percentage of games built partly or completely on Solana among the 994 tracked by the Big Blockchain Game List.

In its Q2 report, the anonymous effort to catalog the vast number of blockchain-based games found that the current leaders in game deployments are Immutable, Polygon and Ethereum — with 13%, 12% and 11% of the total, respectively.

Solana ranked in fifth, trailing BNB Chain.

— Jack Kubinec

The Pulse

A new Solana commercial dropped last week.

It’s the age-old story of two characters from opposite sides of the tracks: A slacker degen archetype, who mumbles his name at one point but it just sounds like he says “Bleghhh,” and a business professional sort named Steve (who is… also a degen? Come on.)

We see each of their morning routines. Blegh jumps out of bed in his boxers, chugs an energy drink, and demands that his Alexa play the 15 year old smash hit single “I Gotta Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas as he rummages around his messy room for his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Solana branded board shorts.

Meanwhile, Steve also wakes up in his 3% nicer apartment and puts on a dress shirt and a tie. According to the only clock appearing in the commercial, the time is 3:20 PM.

Blegh — now in a matching Solana t-shirt — steps into the midday sun, donning a VR headset before jumping on his bike… as one does.

Juxtaposed is Steve, who wears pink sunglasses and autopilots a Tesla Cybertruck while drinking coffee from a kitchen mug instead of a to-go cup.

Blegh and Steve both check Solana news instead of paying attention to the road. After watching Blegh ride his bike for about 30 seconds too long, the two super geniuses collide.

Blegh is fine, unfortunately, but his VR headset and bike are “busted.” Steve notices Blegh’s Solana shirt and sends him a cool $200 USDC for his troubles. He didn’t send him any SOL, of course, as that would make too much sense in a Solana commercial.

Blegh and Steve are now best friends. The tagline — Solana is for everyone.

Responses have… happened.

Some loved it. Like really, really loved it. While others, less so. @PlutusPool lamented “This can’t be a real commercial..” while @usernameisjim commented “I can’t spend my money if a car nearly kills me and I’m riding around with internal bleeding in a stranger’s CyberTruck.” Other ripostes included “I wish I never watched this” and “make it stop” and “wish he was driving faster.” @theroninmethod expressed surprise, noting “They missed the part where [the] transaction failed 3 or 4 times.” @SeverMM pointed out the specific demographic targeting of the commercial saying “Heterosexual white males in very relatable situations. Solana is for people like this.”

To be fair, the measure of a good ad is not always in its artistic merits, but rather how much of a conversation it starts. By that metric, this seems like the mission was successful.

— Jeffrey Albus