BNB Chain is one of the earliest and most developed ecosystems in Web3 gaming. Indeed, there are over 800 games which makes it one of the largest Web3 gaming ecosystems.

This makes sense as Binance is the dominant centralized exchange and has a vested interest in making sure its gaming ecosystem thrives. We saw this in 2021 when Binance Smart Chain and Animoca Brands partnered to launch a $200 million investment program to accelerate and incubate early crypto-gaming startups.

So let’s dig a little deeper.

We looked at the top 50 games on BNB Chain based on 30-day volume per DappRadar. Our mission was to research all 50 games and see what kind of macro trends emerged. To do this we looked at three different metrics: genre, tokenomics and whether or not the game offered a free-to-play option.

Let’s dive into the data.

Macro Trends

One of the first things we looked at was genre. Are there certain types of games that dominate the ecosystem? Or is it evenly distributed? Let’s look at the numbers: 

• The most popular genre of game in the BNB Chain ecosystem is role-playing games (RPG) at 18% of our sample size. Top names for the genre included, Heroes & Empires, Drunk Robots, Faraland and PULI
• This was followed by battle games at 12% which included names like Galactic Arena and StarMon. 
• The third largest genre was trading card games which included names like Raini: The Lords of Light, X World Games, Era 7: Game of Truth.
• The Other category included various other genres including: Arena, Autobattler, Idle, MOBA, TPS and a few others. 

Next up we looked at tokenomics structures of the in-game economy. Did the games prefer a single token, dual token or even a three-token system?

A single token was by far the dominant system games used. 80% of our sample size utilized a single token, whereas 16% used a dual token system and only 4% used a 3 or more token system. It looks like games prefer to keep it simple with one token.

The final metric we looked at was whether or not the game offered a free-to-play option. We’ve seen many headlines over the past few months that have speculated Web3 games are moving away from expensive NFTs and toward a free-to-play or free-to-own model. What does the data say?

Based on our sample of games there was an overwhelming 70% that offered a free-to-play option. Indeed many of the top games by volume included a free-to-play option such as Outer Ring, Tap Fantasy and Meta Apes.

Closing Thoughts

This was just a brief overview of some of the macro trends we are seeing on the BNB Chain gaming ecosystem. We found out that single-token, RPG games with free-to-play options are the dominant trend. Stay tuned for next week as we continue this series on the BNB Chain gaming trends.