Web3 games have a shaky track record. It’s easy to see the appeal: There are literally billions of people playing games, and most of them do it for free. They spend countless hours — and often their own cash — to create content that grows the ecosystem, and they get nothing while the gaming companies get everything. Web3 games, in theory, give power to the players.
Long knows about building great games. He’s the former head of Xcloud, a game-streaming service, at Microsoft, the former head of publishing at HBO Interactive, and he’s produced over 32 games in his 26-year career. And now he’s bringing that savvy to Web3. Long opens up about the extra challenges in creating a Web3 game , what gamers can expect from Shrapnel , and why he views Consensus as the most “scholarly” crypto conference.Mark Long is the CEO of NEON, the developer/publisher of Shrapnel.
Let’s talk about Web3 gaming more broadly. Taking Shrapnel out of the equation, why do you think there haven’t yet been any great Web3 games? But here with web3, that has real-world value. Right? So if we fuck up and I delete your $1,000 worth of stuff, I can't claim that I'm World of Warcraft and you never really owned it anyway. That’s a huge problem. So we have to be especially meticulous as we integrate any Web3 component. Then there’s the problem of potential exploits — things that we miss could create a disaster for the economy. It takes longer to integrate the Web3 component.