Quick take:
- Wolf is bringing a team with traditional gaming experience to P2E.
- Zynga is also recruiting more specialists with knowledge of DeFi.
- Wolf believes the anti-blockchain sentiment amongst gamers will fade.
Following news of social gaming company Zynga jumping into P2E gaming and Web 3 acquisitions, the company’s vice president of blockchain gaming, Matt Wolf, said is setting up a new team to bring “traditional gaming experience” to P2E.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Wolf said that the talent pool in P2E gaming is “off the charts” when it comes to economics and traditional finance firepower as well as innovation and technology.
However, he conceded that the level of talent in the gamification of NFT and P2E games is “thin”. While he has previously admitted that Zynga’s team does not have experience in building Web 3 games, he is confident that Zynga can breathe new life into the space with its “strong game muscle”.
Wolf adds that the company is currently developing its “DeFi muscle” as it is recruiting more specialists with knowledge of DeFi.
When asked about the backlash traditional game publishers are facing in entering the P2E and NFT gaming industry, Wolf said to Coin Telegraph: “As you look at the historical nature of the gaming community, you’ve witnessed folks standing on the sidelines and are resistant to change. They had the same sentiment when free-to-play was launched, and you’re seeing much of that now.”
He believes that the anti-blockchain sentiment amongst gamers will “fizzle out”.
Zynga made a name for itself more than a decade ago with mobile social games FarmVille, CSR Racing and Words With Friends which were popular on social platforms like Facebook. The company registers over 100 million regular users on its multiplayer games each quarter.
Rather than turning existing games like Farmville into a P2E game, Zynga plans to build blockchain games from scratch. However, Wolf said that some of its new blockchain games will be inspired by its existing ones such as Mafia Wars.
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