Infinite Metaverse Land: A New Paradigm
Gaming interest in the “metaverse” has been overwhelmingly driven by two things — explosive play-to-earn boom-and-bust cycles, and eye-watering land sales for digital plots of arbitrarily restricted virtual space. But this is the virtual world, not the physical one, and land isn’t necessarily limited or geographically confined.
What if digital land was infinite? Arguably, it should be, and we might all be better off for it.
This topic was further discussed in the context of Nifty Island’s approach to metaverse land with their Co-Founder, Charles Smith — watch here.
Before I even get started, I want to highlight that there are a myriad set of game types, and no singular rule of thumb can arbitrarily apply to all of them. There are certain moments that restricting the amount of land available to players makes sense, and there are certain moments that freely issuing that land also makes sense. Here, I outline my case for flipping the script on the “default” thinking — meaning, going forward, we should strive to start by asking ourselves “what if this game had infinite land,” instead of starting from the assumption of “all games have limited land and we sell it for big cash.”
This is in no way a moratorium on land sales, it’s simply a plea to reason and for builders to consider a more expansive toolbox than their recent peers.
The Status Quo: Fat Stacks and No Tax
Today, most web3 gaming projects approach roadmaps with a baked-in assumption that regardless of the shape of their world, the style of user gameplay, or even the long-term viability of the game, they should unquestionably draw a map grid, dice it into little squares, and auction them off to the highest bidder years before they’re even playable.
There’s a serious chance that, in performing these crazily marked up land presales, projects have actually hamstrung their ability to deliver on their objectives. But, how can that be possible if they’ve raised millions of dollars in doing so?
Look at it from the player’s perspective, and continually ask yourself “is an arbitrary user’s actions helping or hindering growth of the ecosystem?”
A Tale of Two: Alice and Bob
Consider a tale of two players— we’ll call one Alice and one Bob. Alice has tons of cash, and she recently bought one piece of land out of 10,000 total in a new game called Metaludus.¹ Bob, on the other hand, does not have tons of cash, but he thinks Metaludus is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and can’t wait to play.
Let’s say that Metaludus won’t actually be playable for another year. During this time, Metaludus spends most of its time pushing art updates, showing off new gameplay mechanics, and generally building a spectacular project that will flip the entire gaming world on its head.
Alice is stoked, because her investment is doing super well. Bob is still pretty happy & excited at this point too, because gameplay looks great. He might be a bit salty that he’s not getting rich like Alice, but he’ll survive.
Next, let’s say that Metaludus pushes an update that says land will be necessary for harvesting certain progression-related components, and, to reach the endgame, you’re going to need some of the materials that can only be obtained from land plots. In response, land prices skyrocket. Alice becomes increasingly elated, but Bob is getting worried he’s about to be priced out of a game that he was about to be a massive advocate for.
Launch date comes around, and the Metaludus devs open the portal for players to join the servers. Thousands join on Day 1 and the experience is just as fantastic as everyone had hoped.
The Endgame
Fast-forward three months deep, and players have reached the endgame. They’re totally sold on the mission, they love the gameplay experience, and they adore the devs. A real hit. But, now, the land components come into play — Alice keeps leveling up, but Bob hits a wall. He doesn’t have the wallet or the connections to get the resources off of lands that he needs to reach the highest levels of the endgame. He becomes dejected, logs off, and uninstalls the game.
We lost one player; that sucks. But, he wasn’t paying us cash anyway, so who cares, right? Alice keeps playing, and, since she bought that land for thousands of dollars, it must be a win-win. But Alice, like all players, eventually also gets tired. She stops using her land, but reckons she’ll hang onto it because she still believes in the game’s mission. This prevents someone else from buying that land and reaching the endgame, and further reduces the population who are actually playing the game to experience everything it has to offer.
If we scale the analogy further and assume that there are hundreds of Alices and hundreds of Bobs, the end-state of this system is that individuals at both ends of the spectrum may end up disheartened. Poorer players won’t be able to purchase the land to engage with endgame mechanisms. Richer players will hold the land with some expectation of future value, only to find that the social fabric of the game has fallen away because there isn’t a consistent drip of new (mostly poorer) player advocates joining to weave that social fabric together.
There are counterarguments to this. Maybe land is earnable from in-game play that free-to-play players can engage with. Maybe Alice does sell her land. Maybe Bob doesn’t want to play the endgame. But these cases aren’t the norm, and they aren’t the direction that I see the vast majority of projects building in.
The core feedback loop here is not positive. Alice’s actions do not induce more Bobs to join the game. And, because Bob will be at a default disadvantage, he’s extremely unlikely to altruistically support a feedback loop against his own best interest.
We need to be a bit more creative.
Unbridled Creativity, and Limitless Land
Let’s consider a radical alternative universe, where Metaludus instead gave every player a free land NFT. Let’s also say that players were free to develop the land as they wished, and could optionally sell it at any time. Let’s also say that Metaludus then planned to take a transaction fee on the marketplace sales of the land itself.
Taking our original characters of Alice, the wealthy connoisseur, and Bob, the excitable everyman, let’s evaluate the new situation.
You Get a Land, and You Get a Land, and You Get a Land…
On Day 1, Alice is curious about the outcome of the Metaludus game, but probably won’t be purchasing any assets, because it isn’t quite clear where the value might be going yet. She’ll probably play a bit, mention it as an oddity to her friends, and log off.
Bob, on the other hand, will be positively stoked to have the chance for once to actually shape the world around him. He’ll claim his free land, pour endless hours into carefully developing it into something beautiful, and ultimately surprise his friends with his magnificent creation (or supremely overpowered stats). He’ll then come to a natural fatigue, and he’ll be presented with two options — sell the land he carefully built, or save it and hope it grows in price later.
Because there are thousands of Bobs (assuming that Bob each represents a cash-poor but time-rich player), let’s assume that a reasonable portion of them choose to sell their lands. Sometimes they even use the cash to buy a different Bob’s land. And, sometimes, Alice from the beginning of the story swoops in and snipes a chunk of land or two for some speculative trading.
Now we’ve got a market! Metaludus is happy because trading fees are rolling in. Despite giving out the land for free, some natural variation in player ability, creativity, and gameplay mechanics have driven a gradient of land value and speculative characteristics, all of which combine into a neat melting pot of uncertainty and steady market volumes.
Network Effects, Always
Even more importantly, we haven’t shut anyone out. Alice’s actions have not prevented more Bobs from joining the game, and, on the contrary, Alice’s actions have probably just incentivized more Bobs to start over from scratch and develop their land again. Bob is ecstatic and telling all of his friends about the opportunity, and helping drive player numbers up and up.
Assuming that either 1) land experiences are unique enough that their value will naturally rise and fall over time, or 2) gameplay changes will encourage increasingly high levels of development on land, this system is more long-run robust than the status quo of “sell big land for big cash in super early presales.”
This proposed infinite model is the one taken by Roblox, Minecraft, and arguably most other user-generated content-heavy multi-billion dollar enterprises to date. Players hate pre-orders, “early-early access” bets, and general pure financial simulators. On the other hand, players love genuine user-created gameplay, endless replayability, and the feeling like they’re always being rewarded for their hard work.
Death and Taxes
As in life, it’s possible that the metaverse should assure players of only two things: death and taxes. Appalling as those may be, applying simple land value tax² systems and rotations may be sufficient to allow the status quo “limited land systems” to survive.
If Alice’s speculative land had a land value tax that only kicked in when the land was unused, perhaps that would be enough to force Alice to either actually play the game (or hire someone to play the game), or otherwise sell the land to someone who will play the game. These taxes don’t have to be overt cash disincentives, and we should be creative about what kinds of gameplay or social penalties could potentially also be leveraged to the same effect.³
In Short, Builders Have Optionality
Again, this is not a moratorium on finite land sales. In certain scenarios, restricting land makes sense. There’s only one⁴ Stormwind in World of Warcraft, and only one Grand Exchange in Runescape. Users walk by those routinely, and it makes sense to limit the amount of land available. Builders who prefer finite land systems could consider some tax mechanism or other disincentive against rote rent-seeking and non-interactive behavior that limits the game’s growth.
But do start to look outside the box and push the boundaries of the status quo. We’ve got decades of gaming knowledge to look back on, and we’d be wrong to ignore the blatant success of free-build models like Roblox from a monetization perspective. Let’s take the best of web2 into web3, and build a playground the generations after us can be proud of.
¹If this game exists, I apologize, this was supposed to be generic.
²Kudos to Lars Doucet for repeatedly banging the table on land value tax, he’s written extensively about the methods he would employ (in both web2 and in web3) to bring the method into the fold.
³I’ll write in-depth later about one system that we’re deploying that I’m extremely fond of. Keep an eye out!
⁴Assuming only one of each of these landmarks exists per server, before someone points that out.
Sam is the CEO of Playground Labs, a web3 protocol dev organization,
Sam is the CEO of Playground Labs, a web3 protocol dev organization, and Partner & Head of Interactive at Hivemind Capital, a crypto-focused multi-strategy fund. Follow him on Twitter.
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