Hi,
As I am flying back home from the ICP.Lab, wanted to bring some cool points that I feel got confirmed throughout the event.
An important disclosure, the opinions here are my own, and others can perhaps add up if they want.
Two highlights I would like to share:
- Gaming is a really huge industry. More than numbers, just try to think who plays mobile/console/desktop (not physical game) around you. It’s not everyone, but it’s not far. Being successful on this vertical alone, would increase usage to unimaginably numbers.
- The current experience for Web 2.5/3.0 games, that are not leveraging any part of the IC, is impressively cumbersome. Both for the developers and for the gamers. The experience is so hard/unsustainable that most “models” just died off. In the VCs talk, one was mentioning that there is money, but past performance has been close to terrible (for them).
Despite this, have made a simple research on games volume in DappRadar and its already generating enough money that even the 100th game is generating more money than any ICP dApp (it’s sad, but it’s true).
So despite the lack of “success”, would it be different by using the IC?
The IC allows for:
- much faster deployment (Boom DAO already has 1 click actions to deployment, to NFT management, etc.)
- seamless experience for player (user doesn’t even notice)
- http/api connections (that can confirm a payment was done, eth/btc address was topped up, etc.)
- frontend is provided by the blockchain, with minimum costs and anyone can top it up (in contrary to an AWS game that the billing can stop at any time)
- it allows for more openeness/verification as the wasm versions can be verified etc.
So I firmly believe, that the technology is clearly there. What is not there is the application/infrastructure 
As one of the VCs strongly emphasized, games weren’t successful, because they lacked distribution. And I think the same will happen to the ICP games, if they don’t have powerful distributor/platforms + infrastructure, then they stand no chance.
Many games don’t want to develop “game native” payment rails, so they are stuck with NFT sales. Games don’t have an native ads system, so they need to configure it on their own, and the earnings from the Ads can’t be “decentralized” and shared. Games want to listen to their players, but there is no native UI/platform for this. I can go on and on.
I live in passion with the potential, so I really believe this is the right direction to go. This is worth investing for.
So concluding, as a gamer, Obsidian Tears core member, Boom DAO founding partner, I am so interested in fixing these problems that will dedicate at least half of my time on trying to solve these problems, independently of how the SNS swap goes.
Unfortunately, the swap at this point in time, is still short of 50k ICP (~150k$) from the minimum, despite the strong interest of almost 550 small investors.
We still have 1 day to reach the goal, so if anyone is reading this, and has some ability to contribute or know someone that could, we would love to get your support.
Thank you for your time, and let’s build 