League of Legends vs Counterstrike the pillars for web3 gaming?

League Of Legends

League of Legends (LoL), commonly referred to as League, is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by Defense of the Ancients, a custom map for Warcraft III, Riot's founders sought to develop a stand-alone game in the same genre. Since its release in October 2009, League has been free-to-play and is monetized through purchasable character customization. The game is available for Microsoft Windows and macOS.

Two teams of five players battle in player-versus-player combat in the game, each occupying and defending their half of the map. Each of the ten players controls a character, known as a “champion,” with unique abilities and differing play styles. During a match, champions become more powerful by collecting experience points, earning gold, and purchasing items to defeat the opposing team. In League's main mode, Summoner's Rift, a team wins by pushing through to the enemy base and destroying their “Nexus,” a large structure located within.

Counterstrike

Counter-Strike (CS) is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination). At the same time, counter-terrorists try to prevent it (bomb defuse, hostage rescue, escort mission). The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike. It was initially released as a modification (“mod”) for Half-Life that was designed by Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jess “Cliffe” Cliffe before the rights to the mod's intellectual property were acquired by Valve, the developers of Half-Life, who then turned Counter-Strike into a retail product released in 2000.

The original Counter-Strike was followed by Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, developed by Turtle Rock Studios and released in March 2004. A previous version of Condition Zero that Ritual Entertainment developed was released alongside it as Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes. Eight months later, Valve released Counter-Strike: Source, a remake of the original Counter-Strike and the first in the series to run on Valve's newly created Source engine.[4] The fourth game in the main series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, was released by Valve in 2012 for Windows, OS X, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Hidden Path Entertainment, who worked on Counter-Strike: Source post-release, helped to develop the game alongside Valve.

The ecosystem:

Now, League of Legends is a free-to-play game, and they earn money by selling digital assets. These items do not give you any advantage in the game itself and only have the purpose of creating unique items connected to events and rewards. The only problem in this game is you don’t own this item, and if you would stop playing this game, your items stay locked in your account forever.

This is where Counterstrike is exceptionally diverse; they have a marketplace where you can buy skins for your guns. You own these items in the steam shop, and you can also sell them on one of the online platforms like skinbaron.com.

How does this fit into web3 gaming?

These games are one of the biggest and most played of all time, so you have to look at their concept. Many web3 projects are looking into building a game around its digital assets. However, League or Counterstrike is not made around the digital item concept; this only came into place much later. Instead, they worked on the competitive scene and game first to have the basics right and create an excellent, long-lasting experience for any player that you can also make a long-time career out of. This is the same concept you see in soccer or basketball, create a competitive environment with great tournaments and role models that young people look up to so they already dream about a future in your game.

The current web3 game environment has a perfectly correct concept with a decentralized system to give back to its players and even move your digital items from one game to another. Lots of them also mention esports or even collaborate with a bigger esports team to get the concept right, but you have to have a good foundation of the web2 games to convince a bigger audience.

The amount of money being made in both games for digital items is really high.

League of Legends ≥ $1.75 billion in revenue in 2020

Counterstrike ≥ $2 billion according to the skin market statistics in 2020

How Much Money Does Steam Make From CS:GO Skins?

An item in the community marketplace has been sold and has had medium value for the past day as part of the Steam transaction fee, which is 5% for steam and 10% for CMO.

Web2 vs. Web3:

The internet has come a long way since the “read-only” version, born in the late eighties. Web2, or the internet as we now know it, allows us to read, write, create, and communicate with anyone worldwide. While Web2 has provided user-generated content (UGC) tools, it still relies on centralized sites and servers. Centralized servers, such as AWS, host large amounts of website data, including everything on the internet, which has proven extremely valuable. Companies such as Facebook and Google use the power of your data for their gain. As the saying goes, “If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product” — This is where Web3 comes in.

Web3 will remove control by decentralizing the internet, so centralized servers will no longer be needed. Web3 centers around ownership and transparency. Due to blockchain acting as a distributed ledger (or decentralized database where anyone can add to the ledger), users can conduct transactions securely and share assets without requiring a third party. These features make things like DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain gaming possible.

Closing thoughts:

Web3 gaming still has a long way to go, but the concept is perfect for anyone already spending money on gaming. There is still a lot to learn from the web2 gaming industry and some bigger developers such as Riot Games or Valve will need to pick up this concept to become the future of gaming. If no big developer picks this up, then there will have to be a project that stands out like Call Of Duty, I saw some good projects so far but none of the sizes that a game actually needs to be. But the gaming future looks very bright, and the web3 concept and technology can help.

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