During the Unbounded Perspectives Conference on March 9th, 2023, Joe De Pinto, Co-founder of Haste, presented his company Haste and its two products, Haste Arcade and Take It NFT, which utilise the BSV blockchain to support their micropayments and NFT auctions respectively.
Introducing Haste Arcade and Take It
De Pinto briefly introduces both the Haste Arcade and Take It and describes later on their innovative potential and the pain points they solve in the gaming industry.
The Haste Arcade is a platform that allows players to compete for high scores and earn money through micropayments. The concept is called Haste Leaderboard Payments (HLP). Players can earn a portion of other players’ payments if they fail to beat their high score. The platform includes modern arcade-style games, and players can earn cash instantly deposited to their HandCash wallet.
The platform Take It features player cards, which are output NFTs that can be created and collected from friends or top players. Holding a player card allows players to earn a portion of each gameplay output, which can be used to purchase prizes, player cards, or redeemed for cash. Base tokens can be earned daily and can be traded on exchanges.
Monetisation in Gaming – Why only 5% of games turn profitable
De Pinto discusses the challenges of monetising the gaming industry, particularly hyper casual games that take two or three minutes to play. The industry primarily relies on advertising, which requires a large user following or large investments in advertising for a game. Other ways to monetise games include in-game purchases or NFTs, which sometimes are seen as unnecessary or inconvenient. A huge problem in the gaming experience are pay-to-win models. Moreover, the short life expectancy of these games creates a lack of incentive for customers to continue playing.
Another option, mainly for AAA games, are to sell these games via publishers and to hope that the game gets enough traction to turn into a profit. As AAA games take huge amounts of upfront cost in development, they pose a huge risk for studios and the barrier to enter the market is very high for independent developers. Large upfront costs are also inconvenient for users, as such games cannot always be tested before buying them.
As a result, only 5% of games turn a profit. The Co-founder of Haste proposes new revenue models that involve micropayments, player cards with rebates, and tokens that can be earned by playing in arcades.
Making games fun and profitable with Haste
Joe De Pinto discusses Haste’s impact in the gaming industry through micropayments and in-game NFT collectibles. Through these monetisation models, they have reduced the entry barriers and avoided giving advantages to gamers in pay-to-win models. The impact of Haste can also be proven in concrete figures. Haste has achieved a revenue of $1.70 per month per user in their arcade, compared to $0.13 generated by traditional hyper-casual games.
This could mainly be achieved through the Haste Arcade’s Leaderboard Payments. With Take It, Haste ventures now into the NFT gaming market. De Pinto proposes a solution to the high costs of creating and purchasing NFTs in other chains through Take It, which has lower minting costs, and allows for much more participation. This would enable a more affordable pricing and price discovery for NFTs.
De Pinto mentions that Haste focuses on independent game developers, who are struggling to turn a profit in a $300 billion market. Currently, Haste develops most of its games on its platform itself. However, the company hopes to attract more independent developers to its platform. Through its API, developers can easily integrate to Haste and incorporate its Leaderboard Payments model.