Fred EhrsamVerified account

In 2006 I sold my high end World of Warcraft account for $2,500. I spent 3,000 hours playing. That's $0.87 an hour .

Yet we've also come quite far. In 2005 the largest prize pool in a year for a game was $500k (Painkiller). In 2019 it will be $100 million (Fortnite), with the winning team of a single tournament in 2018 taking home $11 million (DOTA 2's The International).

The trajectory is clear: more people are playing games, their economies are getting bigger, the closed economies of these games hurt both trust and extensibility (see https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/general-discussion/cRJfwuYi-the-league-of-legend-economy-is-ludicrous …), and crypto will make these economies open.

The extensibility point is key. Games are built on modding culture. Counter Strike and Team Fortress were mods (aka forks) of Half Life. League of Legends copied DOTA which was a mod of Warcraft 3. Fortnite copied PUBG, a mod of DayZ: Battle Royale, which was a mod of ARMA2.

Crypto supercharges gaming modding culture: the lifeblood of the gaming industry since 1998.

Why? The building blocks are more likely to be open and thus stackable. Want to create the biggest game out there? Create the most attractive one to extend! Perhaps the best future business model for future video games is creating a platform.

Modding is a beautiful thing. It's an incredible outlet for hands on learning and creativity in a world where traditional education is becoming less relevant and young people are increasingly struggling to find purpose.