Moving to a World of Less Trust, More Truth in Games with Dot.Play

Polkadot’s Pivotal Hub for Gaming 
Dot Play acts as the pivotal hub for gaming, and the top of the funnel is business development. We meet with many each week to provide feedback and to guide founders, either to other Polkadot gaming efforts, such as Mythical Games or Polkadot-native Everloot, or to other investors. Mythical is the publisher of well-known titles such as NFL Rivals and Nitro Nation World Tour, along with pending titles such as Pudgy Party and FIFA Rivals. The Dot Play team is also working with ecosystem partners to build a portal to onboard game developers, alongside the launch of Polkadot Hub & Cloud.  Separately, Dot Play manages a games publisher, or an operating business that provides services, tools and funding to game developers. This effort is managed by the process called OpenGov, in which the largest DAO in the world, managed solely by token holders, allocates the Polkadot Treasury. Finally, in September 2024, the Web3 Foundation announced that it would seed Signum Growth’s new Polkadot ecosystem fund, AD8 Dot Play New Superstars Fund, to invest in the intersection of mass-market culture and emerging technologies that enable new economies in digital communities.

As Signum Growth Dot Play’s CEO and CIO Angela Dalton explained, 
“We focus on independent developers and User Generated Content (UGC) because of a key investment mantra – Merge onto the highway of behavior that is already happening.

Game development has been democratized with professional, accessible, low-cost tools during a time when the traditional games industry is struggling. This trend will only accelerate, and we aim to empower independent developers with funding and tools.”

AI is Fueling a Highly Deflationary Environment
A confluence of events is fueling the future of gaming. We are seeing a democratization of tools, making it easier and cheaper to create games. As our Head of IP Development, Eliza Jäppinen, says: “Studio-level tools are in the hands of 15-year-olds.” AI is simply accelerating the deflation that already exists. While the games industry is typically an early adopter and creator of new technologies, some AAA studios are blocking the use of generative AI. Meanwhile, indies are embracing AI, not only for its speed and cost, but also as a brainstorming tool. Platforms that provide such tools are proliferating and garnering an increasing amount of time spent. For example, according to Matthew Ball’s latest report, Roblox, a platform of 40 million games, currently has more MAUs (monthly active users) than all of AAA gaming combined. Epic Games’ UEFN Creator platform has quickly established a second large presence, and there are others coming, such as Build A Rocket Boy’s Everywhere.

AI Pours Gasoline on the Fire of Inauthenticity
While we are seeing an exciting AI-led explosion of creativity, what about the unintended consequences? Digital asset creation has never been easier. However, an explosion of digital assets comes with an explosion of inauthenticity. The volume of IP rights infringements we are about to witness was certainly not foreseen by the authors of the DMCA. Isn’t it a matter of time until we see a national security threat-level identity scam, thanks to AI?

Web3 Will Solve the Problems that AI Creates
We can almost hear a games industry executive in response asking, ‘Is there a technology that can protect property rights and privacy and prove authenticity and provenance all at the same time?’ This will be Web3’s moment to rise up as it was originally intended – shining in the background and delivering value to players in games as its first real use case. The era of trusting a few large entities with our personhood, even knowing that these entities are littered with falsehoods, is surely close to an end. It’s time to make way for the new world of Web3, built on a different and more secure ethos of ‘Less Trust, More Truth!’

About the Author
Angela Dalton
Signum Growth
Dot Play’s CEO & CIO

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