Video games can be incredibly difficult and expensive to develop. This is especially so in the west, where large businesses such as Amazon have an analytical approach to game development. They will throw money at their gaming departments, then scale their games until they have something players find worth their time.
The gaming industry is often artistic and super fickle, and gamers are slow to embrace any new entrants and quick to criticize them as well. As an illustration, before it released New World, Amazon took on duds such as Breakaway in 2018 and Crucible in 2020 and eventually canned them.
Additionally, the multinational technology company also called off the development of the Lord of the Rings game after a dispute with Tencent. While game development outfits in the East in China and South Korea work under tighter budgets, the production of MMORPGs is often out of reach for most indie developers.
As an illustration, Amazon’s video game division has an annual $500 million operating budget. And while it is true that there is a lot of inflation in game development, the MMORPGs and MMO development process is unequivocally expensive.
To illustrate this point, World of Warcraft has approximately 30 hours of composed music, 6 million lines of code, 70k spells, and 2 million art assets. It is no wonder, then, that players also have to fork out lots of cash to access in-game purchases as studios and developers try to recoup their capital.
Fortunately, independent third-party in-game assets marketplaces such as Eldorado.gg lower the barrier of access to cheap in-game currencies, accounts, items, and boosting services. You can purchase cheap New World Coins or Guild Wars 2 items from Eldorado’s safe and secure environment and scale your gameplay faster and more affordably.
Blockchain in crowdfunding
Before blockchain technology, the independent game developer could access development capital from sources such as Kickstarter. But, unfortunately, traditional crowdfunding sites are difficult to manage and run. Three out of four Kickstarter video game funding appeals will often fall on deaf ears.
Blockchain funding has brought crowdfunding to a new era. As an illustration, Sky Mavis, the team behind the ultra-popular blockchain game Axie Infinity has recently raised $152 million in its Series B investment round.
SkyMavis, developed by a band of Asian missionaries, generates capital from its sale of AXS, its governance token. Blockchain technology supports crowdfunding via token sales. As a result, players who believe in a developer’s dream can purchase the game’s token for real-world cash and have some skin in the game exposure to the game’s success.
The Series B token sale makes SkyMavis one of the world’s largest game development companies. Axie Infinity kicked off development with a modest $1.5 million token sale or seed funding round. Its early adopters will receive $60 million worth of AXS for their contribution to early game development needs.