Key Takeaways
- MapleStory Universe launched on a custom Avalanche blockchain earlier this month.
- More and more established franchises are testing the Web3 waters.
- Recent developments suggest the gaming sector has matured after a period of anti-blockchain sentiment.
The launch of MapleStory Universe this month marked a new chapter for the twenty-three-year-old game franchise as it branches out into the world of Web3.
For MapleStory developer Nexon, the new blockchain ecosystem represents an opportunity to refresh its business model for the modern era.
Nexon Dives Into Blockchain Gaming
Through games like MapleStory and Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, Nexon helped pioneer the MMORPG genre as it is known today and essentially invented the free-to-play online multiplayer format in the mid-nineties.
With such a pedigree, the decision to launch Nexon’s latest platform on a dedicated Avalanche blockchain was less about Web3 hype than it was a means to refresh its brand assets for a changing world.
“Our project didn’t start because we wanted to do something on blockchain. Rather, it started from the fundamental question of our current business model,” Nexon Chief Business Officer Dominic Jang explained to CCN.
During internal discussions, Nexon’s leadership settled on two basic principles they believed would help the firm’s established franchises endure for another 30 years: A finite quantity of in-game items and no “cash shops” (features in which online games allow players to purchase virtual items using real money).
After settling on these principles, “we figured out that people in the Web3 scene were working on very similar things,” Jang observed.
MapleStory Universe is Nexon’s first foray into blockchain. But if the project is successful, the company would consider bringing other titles into the fold and potentially building an extended ecosystem of Web3 game assets, Jang added.
Gaming Giants Mull Web3 Options
While MapleStory’s existing user base are key to Nexon’s Web3 growth strategy, the company doesn’t intend to cannibalize players from established Web2 versions of the game.
Some current players will almost certainly be drawn to the new platform, Jang noted. But he added that there is an even greater potential market of “people who know MapleStory, but stopped playing the existing MapleStory.”
This appeal to nostalgia is now a familiar strategy for games whose player base spans generations. And other titles that can also trace their roots back to the nineties and early noughties are also considering Web3 options.
In 2023, Neopets Meta launched as an NFT collection based on the iconic virtual pet game.
More recently, Pokémon partnered with blockchain developer Parasol Technologies, driving speculation that one of the world’s most recognizable game brands could make its own foray into Web3.
For these established game brands, community is the key to their enduring appeal. Advancing player-ownership through blockchain technology helps ensure those communities have a more material stake in the games they know and love.
Beyond Tokenomics
If more established game franchises are going to embrace blockchain, they must overcome some of the baggage that comes with Web3 gaming.
Thanks to Axie Infinity and the wider bursting of the play-to-earn bubble, some gamers have a negative view of the space.
Minecraft famously banned blockchain integrations in 2022.
Reflecting a view held by many who object to the financialization of gaming, the platform’s developers argued that “speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game.”
In 2023, anti-blockchain sentiment even forced the eSports platform eFuse to abandon its partnership with NEAR following a fan backlash.
However, the latest generation of blockchain games has shed some of the negative associations that plagued the movement in the past.
“A couple of years ago, gaming on chain was very different,” observed Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer in an interview with CCN.
Back then, “the games were all about tokens and people shuffling tokens, etc. Now, it’s all about gameplay,” he stressed.
Pointing to Gunzilla Games’ Off The Grid as an example, Gün Sirer observed that some of the most popular blockchain games today have abstracted the crypto element away entirely.
“In Off The Grid, tokens are not involved at all,” he noted. Yet still, “every time you kill someone, there’s an NFT transaction. Every time you pick up loot from the ground is an NFT transaction. So it’s all happening in the background, without the users being exposed to that.”
James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
