Delphi's bold predictions for the future of gaming in 2025
GC ALPHA 27
Disclaimer: None of this information should be taken as financial advice. DYOR + I will hold some of the assets that are spoken of in this newsletter.
(P2A) EVENTS & SOCIALFI
FLASH EVENTS
This week doesn’t have many major events to talk about in-depth, so here’s an expanded list of what's currently happening and what's coming up:
Pixels’ Guild Wars Season 2: Spore Sport is launching on Dec 10
The season will last from Dec 10 - March 4, 2025, with $4M in PIXELS in prizes
Vibes (Pudgy TCG) released its open Alpha for PC
In ~2 weeks it will start PvP gameplay and ranked S0
Sovrun released the Plunder Quest, a new game mode built on Pirate Nation
During the tournament, you play a timed Scavenger Hunt and collect materials as fast as you can
Cozyverse released a new game called Fishin Friends, an idle fishing game
Note: as of now it doesn’t seem there’s a P2A campaign attached to the game
EVE Frontier is launching permanent pre-launch access with Founder Access on Dec 10
MARKET TALK
DELPHI: “GAMING YEAR AHEAD 2025”
Recently, Delphi released its “Gaming Year Ahead 2025” report, reflecting on 2024 and looking forward to what 2025 will bring
If you’re not a (paid) subscriber of Delphi, you can still listen to all the insights through the podcast with Piers, JACL, Freaz, and Hunter
Here are some of the highlights of the report (it’s a bit long, but insightful):
Positive surprises:
Mobile: How mobile games are positioned to do well, specifically Fableborne, and the splash it made this year
Entertainment-driven players: how studios like Riftstorm, Bornless, Age of Dino, and King of Destiny have shown early signs of being able to attract some player base (outside Web3)
Funding dynamics:
Fundraising is down compared to 2022 and is just below $1B for the year. Yet, this remains to be a strong funding number (20-30% of the entire gaming industry)
Players such as Soneium, Ubisoft, the founder of Tarkov, and Off the Grid, experimenting in Web3 indicate continued interest in the space from Web2 giants
New fundraising approaches: like an ICO model and DEX launches
Offering the community more attractive entries, and changing vesting terms (increasing float, milestone-based unlocks, etc.)
Off the Grid Analysis:
Learnings: if you want to target the core Web2 players (the ones with the largest Web3 objections), you need to abstract away all blockchain frictions
Pockets of Growth:
Areas of interest include mobile and high-stakes on-chain games (convergence of trading and gaming) on new ecosystems such as Abstract, Monad, and Bera Chain
Tapping into larger gaming audiences outside of SEA that are untapped such as India and Brazil
Blending Web2 and Web3:
Mobile: the use of PWAs to monetize users outside of the app stores
TON: gaming on TON - Stars is the biggest value add for monetization
Creating simplicity and cutting out the middleman (to cut out fees)
Vanilla and Speculative:
Speculative capital flows to more passive opportunities, that don’t require constant attention (e.g. Onchain Heroes)
Putting games in 2 different buckets:
The vanilla approach: deeper ownership with NFTs and potential revenue share
The speculative side: design loops that monetize well, but have the opportunity to make players significant amounts of money
FOCG:
Looking at Citadel and ETH Frontier
We still don’t know what the TAM is - Pirate Nation is the most successful, but it continues to run into obstacles
Infrastructure and Ecosystem Analysis:
Killer games will drive killer networks - looking at killer apps that through the commoditization of infra can become killer networks down the line (e.g. Parallel and the Prime chain)
Every chain needs a killer app now, or they will become irrelevant
Chains:
Ronin commands mindshare when it comes to Web3
Paying attention to, whether they can direct attention to more mid-core or hardcore content (Fableborne will show)
Whether their userbase is interested in games that don’t provide above-average ROI for their playtime
How Ronin’s Pump Fun will close in the interaction of gaming and DeFi
AVAX closing big deals this year
Arbitrum Orbit showing one of the more proven chains (spinning up L3s)
Solana has yet to show gaming strength, but we have yet to see if the bear will lead to more interest in utility-based projects
Base: social casinos or more speculative might see more success there
Avalon + B3 will be good examples to gauge gaming interest
Platform success:
Mobile has the biggest chance of success (TAM, accessibility, lower costs, agility, etc.)
PC > console. But very positive to see Off the Grid launch on the console
Exchange landscape:
Portal was the standout campaign when it comes to SocialFi
The transition of SocialFi to on chain metrics for listing requirements
On chain metrics losing their meaning because of a lack of significance, and a potential shift toward actual gaming numbers (revenue, DAU, etc.)
AI impact on gaming:
Categorize its impact in 3 buckets:
AI-based development tools: leverage tools to be more efficient - smaller teams being able to do more
AI-powered features: adaptive difficulties, personalized NPCs, AI-powered bots, and adaptive LiveOps - to increase player engagement
Still waiting for some major improvements
AI-dependant games: AI is at the focal point of the experience (e.g. fully autonomous simulations such as Colony)
2025 Predictions:
Seeing 4-5x studios with 100s of thousands of sustainable player numbers
Mobile will be the first mover (many devs inching closer to launch)
UGC-focus (e.g. MapleStory, Avalon, and Hytopia)
MapleStory can have a large ripple effect over what happens in the next 5 years
Web2 success (hopefully) becoming a leading signal for token buyers
On chain high stakes gaming on the new ecosystems
The intersection of AI and gaming (e.g. AI-NPC-driven spectator esports)
Expecting cool innovations here
Hot take: 2025 won’t be a cycle for gaming
Bull case: teams devising net-new game loops that leverage the proven PMF of speculation into a F2P mobile environment
RECENT TOKEN LAUNCHES
I analyzed recent token launches from 13 Nov to 9 Dec:
~15 token launches (12 tracked)
Average performance: +386%*
Note: the median of -29% is more accurate here due to OL being an outlier
Best performer: Open Loot (OL) +3877%
OL has an incredibly high FDV of $2B+ at 5%< float, therefore, I don’t see it last
Worst performers: NIGHT, MFT, and E4C
Highest market cap: OL $97.2M
Average market cap: ~$19.7M
Median market cap: ~$2.8M
Trends:
Web3 gaming projects adopting memecoin-style launches: LUNA, TRIP, FLF
Increase in DEX-first launches: CHAMPS, AVRK
Growing focus on community-centric terms: NOOB
If you’re curious about the numbers for the period before (Aug 5 - Nov 4), you can find them here
ON THE RISE
Neo Olympus is a new on-chain strategy game by the devs of Crypto Unicorns
GOAT Gaming released V2.0 of its whitepaper
Quite interesting, considering they got a $2M grant from the Singaporean government for their AI tech