Codalabs Web3 Gamer Study Report Reveals Crypto Gamers Love Strategy

Coda Labs published their first "Web3 gamer study" report, a research study aimed at gamers. The study, which was conducted in collaboration with DappRadar, Laguna Games, and the Blockchain Game Alliance, garnered nearly 7,000 responses.  

Admittedly, the crypto gaming market is very bearish right now. However, investment in web3 gaming is expected to reach around $10 billion by the end of 2022, and many new projects are finding it easier to get funding from colossuses like Animoca Brand or Immutable. 

The report classifies the respondents into three groups: gamers, crypto gamers, and crypto non-gamers. All respondents, regardless of their group, have been selected from the US, UK, Japan, Brasil, and South Africa.

“When regular gamers do give web3 games a go, they tend to feel more positively, and this survey reveals that those regular gamers and heavy crypto users aren’t as far apart as we might have thought. They often overlap in their behaviors, motivations, and concerns; and ‘Crypto Gamers’ as we have called them are effectively hardcore gamers who are also early tech adopters. We hope the collective games industry can use these crucial insights to experiment with ways of making gaming more fun and accessible for all types of gamers.”

?ekip Can Gökalp, CEO of Coda Labs

Key Findings from Crypto Gamers and Web2 Users

The report sheds light on many unanswered questions regarding the perspective of typical gamers toward web3 terminology and ideas such as cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and NFTs.

A few golden nuggets: 

• 52% of Gamers aren’t familiar with any web3 gaming term, though one in three has heard of “Play To Earn”. Only 12% of Gamers have tried playing a web3 game and only 15% who haven’t say they are interested in doing so;
  
• Crypto Gamers - who game and use crypto regularly - are hardcore players. They play more competitively and on more platforms than regular Gamers. They are also 62% more likely to spend money in-game;
  
• Brazilians are by far the friendliest towards NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Up to 80% of Brazilian respondents said they have a positive opinion of crypto. They’re also the nationality most likely to know about Bitcoin and Ethereum, with 94% of Brazilians knowing about the top cryptocurrencies;
  
• Mobile is king, and this is true for blockchain games too. 85% of participants play weekly on their mobile devices, while only 47% do so on their PCs, and 44% on their consoles;
  
• 52% of respondents made an in-app purchase at least once. Crypto gamers were by far the highest spenders on average, with 76% of participants admitting to having purchased at least one upgrade or cosmetic item; 
  
• Generally speaking, the respondents made clear their favorite game type is strategy, not MMORPG or TCG - the current leading trends in the metaverse. Only crypto gamers preferred shooters, and still opted for puzzle games on their mobile devices.

The report is full of interesting nuggets like this and shares some great insights into how new projects and companies can work to revolutionize the industry and conquer a piece of the future market.

More than half of the respondents have little to no idea about web3, and up to 60% admit to engaging in play and earn titles for the crypto earnings component alone. 

Together, we can do better to attract traditional gamers to the decentralized gaming space, by providing them great alternatives to games they already like from web2 companies.

The full report is available here.