2023 saw 54 developers come together for the annual onchain gaming event Autonomous Worlds Summit.
In 2024, however, a total of 132 fully onchain game enthusiasts gathered in Lisbon for the AA24 event, spanning across a more diverse set of developers, players, and guilds alike.
Far from the current focus on token speculation or mobile games with a touch of crypto rewards, the overarching theme was composability, where developers’ focus was to build on other people’s games.
We checked in with Playmint CEO David Amor, who is building autonomous world Downstream, about his takeaways from the event, why onchain gaming excites him, and where he thinks the industry is heading next.
There’s never been a better time to be a gamer, but when was the last time there was genuinely seismic innovation in the games industry?
My view is that technology never stops innovating and we’re overdue a disruption.
David Amor – CEO Playmint
BlockchainGamer: What’s your strongest takeaway from the Autonomous Anonymous 2024 event?
Amor: Whenever there’s an event that focuses on fully onchain games I’m reminded why I come to work each morning. Smart, interesting people trying out ideas that are new to the games industry.
Which projects stood out the most to you and why?
The theme was building upon other people’s games, which is one of the affordances of fully onchain games. There were a few fun ones: a feature that let you ‘hire the yakuza’ by paying another player to guard your resources; a casino that let you gamble in-game currency with other players; an ‘autonomous centipede experience’ project that took outputs from three games and used them in a third. 22 projects in total.
Based on your own event recap, cross-chain cross-game interoperability seems to have reached a new height. Can you tell us how this advanced and how players will benefit from it?
In the games industry I’ve always been interested in new design spaces, for example the Wii opened up the motion control design space. I believe onchain games open up new design spaces and cross-game interoperability is one of them. One of the hacks at AA24 was a turf war that played out in our game, Downstream, by winning games in a completely different game, SkyStrife and neither of the underlying games were modified to make this happen. Nested game loops across two games.
Do you think tokens can be a good measure to enhance fully onchain games?
Tokens definitely play a part in onchain games but in web3 generally there’s more examples on how to do it wrong rather than how to do it right. Done right they can help bootstrap a network and reward people who are adding value.
You’ve said previously that the gaming industry has never been as boring as it is now. How can fully onchain gaming challenge the current situation?
There’s never been a better time to be a gamer, but when was the last time there was genuinely seismic innovation in the games industry? Maybe Roblox UGC or mobile free-to-play about 12 years ago? My view is that technology never stops innovating and we’re overdue a disruption.
Yes, I think fully onchain gaming and/or autonomous worlds will be a big shakeup, but that won’t be for a few years yet and current efforts are fairly primitive.
Did any new ideas spring up during the event that will impact your own game Downstream?
As soon as the event was over we quickly remembered that we’d committed to getting a pre-alpha version of Downstream on Redstone mainnet for May 1st, so ideas since have been about making that happen.
Once the dust has settled we’ll be discussing the ideas, talking with builders and planning the second half of the year.
More generally, what’s your outlook for fully onchain gaming in the short and long-term?
Short term? Interesting but primitive games that few people play and fewer spend money on.
Long term, a completely new paradigm in how digital worlds are owned and operated.
Stay up-to-date on Downstream via the game’s website. To discover more about Playmint and how Downstream is developed, dive into our recent podcast interview with David Amor.
