In the GAM3 Awards of 2022, multiple web3 games and content creators were elected by the community as the best projects in one or more categories. The winners will share funds from a 1,000,000 prize pool. This is possible thanks to contributions, services & grants partners like Immutable X and Blockchain Game Alliance. Polkastarter Gaming organized the whole event.
More than 100 web3 projects encouraged their communities to vote for their projects in the GAM3 Awards of 2022 contest. This resulted in over 40,000 community members voting on their favorite projects and content creators resulting in a total of 250,000 votes across the 16 different categories. Thirty-two projects were filtered out of all the votes and below are the winners of each category on December 15th:
- Game of the Year: Big Time (↗)
- Most Anticipated Game: Shrapnel (↗)
- Best Graphics: Star Atlas (↗)
- Best Action Game: Superior (↗)
- Best Mobile Game: Thetan Arena (↗)
- Best Adventure Game: Big Time (↗)
- Best Casual Game: Blankos Block Party (↗)
- Best RPG: Illuvium (↗)
- Best Shooter Game: MetalCore (↗)
- Best Strategy Game: Gods Unchained (↗)
- Best Card Game: Gods Unchained (↗)
- Best Multiplayer: Game: EV.IO (↗)
- Best Esports: Game: EV.IO (↗)
- People’s Choice Award: League of Kingdoms (↗)
- Games’ Choice Award: The Harvest (↗)
As for the content creator award, twenty-three web3 gaming content creators received nominations until the final voting day. But who took the prize home was Brycent, a Twitch streamer.
Besides being an awards event, many web3 games shared some alpha with their community members. An example of this was the project Blocklords. During the stream, they showed some gameplay for the first time ever.
This was a major event in Web3 Gaming. Justin Kan, Founder of Fractal, shared his thoughts and commented: “We are excited to partner with Polkastarter Gaming on this event, it is truly a step in the right direction for the industry, and the first of its kind in web3 gaming!”
Last Thoughts
The GAM3 Awards this year were one of the most expected events in the web3 gaming industry. A lot of enthusiasts took their time to vote on their favorite games. But, even though I agree with some of the awards, I am not sure it reflects accurately the best projects out there.
The projects who won are the ones that got the highest amount of votes. So, did the winners win because their product is the best in a specific category, or did they win because they have the largest community? Are GAM3 Awards about quality or about marketing and hype?
I can give you a few examples. Star Atlas won an award in the ‘Best Graphics’ category while they only have a very limited demo out. On the other hand Phantom Galaxies also has AAA graphics, maybe even better than Star Atlas’! It also has a lot of content, voice acting, quests, multiple areas to explore, gathering, combat, and different classes. Overall, it is light-years ahead of Star Atlas when it comes to development and quality and they did not win anything while both games fall into the Sci-fi, MMORPG genre. Maybe the graphics shown in Star Atlas demo are a bit better, but it is just a demo in a tiny area while Phantom Galaxies also has mind-blowing graphics in a much vaster area, where players can do a lot more than just walk around.
Personally, I think this is not fair and I also think that the awards should be distributed based on established criteria and not votes. Votes just represent which project has more hype and the largest community and is not directly related to the quality of a project.
When it comes to the number of people voting I think it is a positive sign. It indicates that there are more and more people interested in web3 gaming and that the industry is growing by the day.
