Fun, Finance & the Android.

Crypto games have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years. In 2022, crypto games reached a peak 1.13 million daily active players. Crypto games also raised a total $7.6 billion from investors in 2022.

The success of crypto games in 2022 was a big improvement over 2021's success. The bull run in 2021 brought unprecedented growth to crypto games. Axie Infinity was the biggest gainer in 2021 and spent most of the year as the biggest crypto game going by market cap.

The success of blockchain games in general has rubbed off on mobile crypto games. web3 games on handheld devices now make up a significant part of the mobile game industry. The success of web3 games has taken the blockchain gaming experience to mobile devices in unprecedented ways.

Despite the success of blockchain technology in the mobile gaming space, crypto games have faced challenges. From gameplay issues to Apple's 30% fees, it hasn't been a very smooth ride to the top for web3 games.

Before we discuss mobile crypto gaming, let's take a walk down memory lane.

History of gaming

Source: Pixabay.com

Video games date back to the 1970s. The first video game, Pong, was developed by Atari with the release of the console, Atari 2600. The era from the 70s to the very early 80s was dubbed the "golden era" of video games. Video games at the time were played in gaming arcades. Players had to insert physical coins into the arcade machines to play the games.

In 1983, the gaming industry experienced a bust following its boom in the '70s. Industry-wide profits dropped 30% to 40%, with almost 2,000 arcades shutting down. This period from 1983 to 1985 was dubbed the "video game crash".

During the video game crash era, Atari went from being a pioneering gaming company to being one of the biggest losers. The company lost $356 million due to falling sales and had to lay off about 3,000 of its 10,000 employees. Atari's sales decline was so bad that the company had to dispose of about 728,000 video game catriges. This 1983 event is widely regarded as the Atari video game burial.

Video games made a comeback in 1985. Between 1985 and 2013, the "Console Wars" raged across generations. The release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) heralded the console wars. This period saw the introduction of 100 million PlayStation consoles and 150 million PlayStation 2 consoles into homes across the world.

The early 2000s brought a new dimension to gaming. Online games crept onto the scene and opened a world where gaming became globalized. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (“MMORPGs”) became popular. Gamers could now face off with one another from continents away.

The 2010s took gaming to a new level with the creation of mobile games. Not only could gamers play with players in other countries, they could do it from anywhere. The popularity of mobile games has made the mobile gaming industry twice as profitable as the console industry. Even the portable console gaming industry was not spared by the wrath of mobile gaming.

The growth of android crypto games

Source: Pixabay.com

Mobile devices are currently the largest sub-sector of the gaming industry. More players play games on their smartphones than on any other devices. Despite having a head-start, having been around for years longer, PCs and consoles have fewer gamers than mobile devices.

The reason for the success of mobile gaming seems pretty obvious. The last decade has seen smartphones make their way into the core of our daily lives. Hardly anyone in the modern world can go days without using a smartphone.

The ubiquitousness and portability of mobile devices make them the ultimate companion. On the bus, in the car, on the train, in airplanes, and even on a ship, mobile phones are always available to play games on.

The pricing of smartphones also contributes to their success as gaming devices. consoles and gaming PCs cost up to thousands of dollars. The average Android smartphone costs only a couple hundred dollars. The price of smartphones make them accessible to a larger number of people. In turn, more people can take part in the mobile gaming ecosystem.

While mobile gaming has thrived, most of its success has been on one platform⏤Android. Apple's devices haven't enjoyed as much of an audience of gamers as Google's.

While the fact that there are generally more Android phones than iPhones explains this disparity, there's a little more to the story.

Why not Apple?

Android games have made up the bulk of the mobile gaming space. Besides the abundance of Android devices, an abundance of fees also trouble the Apple side of the divide. Apple charges a 30% fee on in-app purchases.

For crypto gamers, these fees are charged on NFT purchases made within games and apps on Apple's devices. Apple also doesn't allow in-app payments via third-party systems. These restrictions have affected companies like Coinbase.

Elon Musk, Twitter's CEO, also decried Apple's high fees. According to Elon, Apple's 30% commission is "definitely not ok", and is "literally 10 times higher than it should be."

Fortnite's creator, Epic Games, have also had issues with Apple's cut. Epic Games went as far as suing Apple in 2021 over the company's fees.

I'm hoping Apple relaxes on its fees and restrictions over time. It'll be nice to enjoy crypto games on iOS without having to pay through our noses for the experience.

My top 5 android crypto games

In no particular order, these are my 5 favorite crypto games on Android right now.

Plant vs Undead (PVU)

Source: Twitter.com

If you loved the classic game, Plants vs Zombies, you'd probably love Plant vs Undead's gameplay as well. PVU is a play-to-earn game that doesn't require a starting capital. You can start off with a free-to-play gardener to help grow your in-game assets (plants).

PVU starts off with a backstory. The game is set in a fantasy world where the Undead infiltrated the planet through meteors. The only defence against the Undead are seeds and plants with superpowers to counter the Undead. The plants need to keep the home of "Mother Trees" safe from the Undead or lose their planet forever.

PVU gives you six plants and a mother tree to get started. The in-game currency is PVU. You need PVU tokens to buy additional plants and seeds from the PVU marketplace. When a you kill an Undead, you are rewarded with energy that can be used to upgrade your plants' powers.

Now for the tokenomics. PVU has a maximum supply of 300,000,000 PVU tokens. At the time of writing, each PVU token costs $0.023. PVU also allows you to stake your tokens for more rewards.

MOBOX

Source: Mobox.com

MOBOX is a blockchain game built on the Binance Smart Chain. It is free-to-play, and combines web3 gaming withyield farming. MOBOX aims to introduce NFT interoperability by connecting metaverses through NFTs.

MOBOX allows you to participate in various activities like yield farming, NFT farming, and blockchain gaming. The game also allows you to create your own NFTs.

MOBOX offers a higher level of creative freedom to players than most other blockchain games. You can build your own games on the platform, opening up a world of possibilities for game developers on MOBOX.

MOBOX's native currency is the $MBOX token. At the time of writing, 1 $MBOX costs $0.46. The token has a circulating supply of over 185 million tokens and a daily trading volume of nearly $6 million.

Axie Infinity

Source: Axieinfinity.com

Is a blockchain gaming list ever complete without Axie Infinity? Axie Infinity is arguably the OG of blockchain games. The game was released in March 2018 by Sky Mavis and soon became a hit. At the peak of its reign, Axie Infinity boasted the highest number of daily active wallets (DAWs) among blockchain games. Axie Infinity also had the highest total market cap among web3 games.

Axie Infinity involves small pet-like creatures called Axies. These Axies are used in 3s in a turn-based card-game style to battle one another. Success in Axie Infinity depends on skill, strategy, and how powerful your Axies are.

While Axie Infinity has lost much of its prestige, it remains relevant within the blockchain gaming space. It is also one of my favorite blockchain games. Axie Infinity's native currencies are Axie Infinity Shard ($AXS) and Smooth Love Potion ($SLP).

Axie Infinity offers different game modes including player vs player (PvP) and player vs environment (PvE). Winning battles in Axie Infinity gets you $SLP tokens as a reward. These $SLP tokens can be used to purchase in-game items to upgrade your Axies and to breed new Axies. $AXS serves the same purpose as $SLP, but also acts as a governance token.

The Sandbox

Source: The Sandbox

The Sandbox is an Ethereum-based web3 game. It is the biggest crypto game by market cap with a market cap of $1.18 billion. The game allows players to buy digital assets like NFTs and parcels of land. The Sandbox's native token is $SAND, it sells for $0.64 per token at the time of writing.

The Sandbox features a VoxEdit tool. The VoxEdit tool allows you to create 3D models and graphics for the game. These models can be exchanged for $SAND tokens on the marketplace.

A lot of the gameplay in The Sandbox is centered around land. As a landowner in The Sandbox, you can sell or rent your land, host events on it, and even build entire PE3 games to be played on your land.

The Sandbox's $SAND token also acts as the ecosystem's governance token. Holders of $SAND have a say in the decision-making process that determines the direction of the game. This policy-making is done through decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Decentraland

Source: Twitter

Decentraland is the second biggest web3 game right now going by market cap. At the time of writing, Decentraland has a market cap of $1.12 billion. Decentraland's utility token, $MANA costs $0.60 as at this time.

Decentraland's gameplay is derived from its name. Most of the operations in the game involve the use of land for a variety of purposes. As a Decentraland player, your chief game resource that you can acquire land with are $MANA tokens.

You can use these tokens to purchase land. You can rent your land to other players for a fee, or host events on your land. Decentraland takes pride in its offering of a complete metaverse experience.

In Decentraland, you can create avatars of yourself and customize your avatar however you want. The customization process for your avatar involves changing things from their hair to their clothes. Most importantly, all these items are all yours, and not the game developers'. You can trade, sell, or rent them as you please for a fee.

Conclusion

Android is a popular platform for both crypto and non-crypto games. The proliferation of crypto games on the Android operating system over the last few years has seen Androids become an important part of web3 gaming. Despite some setbacks that the blockchain gaming industry has experienced, like Apple's fees, the space continues to thrive.

There are currently over 2,000 crypto games in existence, and many more still in development. I doubt any one person can sufficiently play them all (but they can try). The most important thing is that the space is growing, and this list of top 5 crypto games may only be relevant for a short while before another set of amazing games come to to take their place.