Why are you participating for Based SEA?

Expanding a GameFi project into the Southeast Asian (SEA) market can offer immense opportunities due to the region’s rapidly growing tech-savvy population and high gaming engagement, especially with mobile games. The potential for blockchain and GameFi adoption is strong, as Southeast Asia has proven to be an active player in cryptocurrency markets and decentralized technologies. However, successfully tapping into this market requires a comprehensive understanding of the region's unique cultural, economic, and technological landscape. This guide explores strategies for breaking into the SEA GameFi market, considering key factors like mobile-first approaches, local content, partnerships, and regulatory challenges.

One of the most critical aspects of entering the SEA market is understanding the gaming culture and preferences of the region. Southeast Asia has a massive gaming community, particularly favoring mobile games due to the affordability and accessibility of smartphones. Countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia are leading in terms of mobile game downloads and active users. The region has been consistently growing as a gaming powerhouse, fueled by increased internet penetration, mobile-first internet access, and the youthful demographics.

What challenges are you focusing on?

Our niche and target market is within SEA region as the game market in region is a very promising market at $USD7.2B in size. From Top 10 in Asia, Top 6 are coming from SEA region but the penetration of Web3 however is still insignificant. The region however, has increased 25% adaptation in 2024 alone with Indonesia leading at rank 3, followed by Vietnam at rank 5 and the Philippines at rank 8.

Still despite the increase in the adaptation number, Web3 in many ways are known from Trader perspective only and most of the general public still don't know anything about Web3 unless they are Crypto Traders. This shows that the use case of Web3 is still very limited that the general public doesn't aware what other things that Web3 can offer besides Trading.

As we all know, there are many Web3 case study that can be found nowadays and GameFi is still one of the best case study to bring people to the Web3 environment.

How does your submission address this challenge?

Based from the data that we got, we are still confident that many early Web3 adapter are coming from GameFi landscape. Many people globally got their first introduction to Web3 through GameFi and hence for SEA region, we want to create a GameFi product that specifically catered for the SEA gamer by exposing more of their culture and cities.

We intended that way as the SEA culture is so diverse and by emphasizing on SEA cities & culture, we want the gamer to "feel at home" by playing our game product where their SEA culture can be highlighted. In addition to that, the Cyberpunk theme is also added to the formula to still make things novel and interesting.

Most MMORPGs that are available in the market right now are usually using medieval fantasy theme or a generic sci-fi as their go-to setting and the overuse of such themes can make many Games in Web3 to be seen as generic and soulless, especially if they can't come up with something novel or unique.

Not many games using Southeast Asian theme as its go-to theme and therefore, we want to incorporate as many SEA cities & culture elements so that the SEA gamer can be drawn to the game because the game offer something that they can relate into.

Challenges we ran into

Developing a GameFi MMORPG for mobile presented several technical and non-technical challenges. First, optimizing the game for a wide range of mobile devices, especially in regions like Southeast Asia where many users have lower-spec smartphones, required the implementation of adaptive performance settings. This allowed the game to adjust graphics quality and resource usage based on the device's capability. Additionally, blockchain integration posed a learning curve for users unfamiliar with crypto. To address this, we simplified the onboarding process with user-friendly tutorials and one-click wallet creation, while also utilizing Layer 2 solutions to minimize gas fees for smoother in-game transactions.

Non-technical challenges included maintaining server stability during high traffic periods and ensuring the game could scale effectively for a growing user base. We solved this by leveraging cloud-based infrastructure to dynamically allocate resources. Moreover, with localization being critical for engaging the SEA market, we worked closely with local translators to adapt the game into multiple languages and incorporated culturally relevant content to enhance player connection. These strategies helped us deliver a seamless and engaging experience across mobile platforms.

Additional Features

• Coinbase Smart Wallet (Account Abstraction) -> For easier user onboarding and great UX using paymaster and bundling operations.
• Basenames -> Onchain identity, for personalization and verifiable identity.
• Item mall -> Using $CQUAD onchain token on Base