Solana will tout games at PlayGG Comic-Con event in July

The Solana Foundation announced it will launch a free Solana games exhibition dubbed PlayGG at an event ahead of San Diego Comic-Con International in July.

Johnny Lee, head of games at Solana, said the company wants to show more than 50 Web3 games at the exhibition as part of a bid to normalize blockchain games, which have been criticized for poor quality and scams.

It’s also an attempt to revive the reputation of the Solana blockchain protocol, which saw its value dragged down last fall with the collapse of FTX, which was one of the protocol’s biggest supporters. Solana also had stability problems, and it has seen a number of its game developers migrate over to other blockchains such as Immutable and Polygon.

The new celebration of games will take place on July 18 and July 19 at the Julep venue in San Diego, immediately before the big Comic-Con event. Developers and other personalities like Twitch streamers are expected to show the Web3 gaming wares at PlayGG, which stands for Play Good Games.

Attendees will have the opportunity to play games, meet developers and learn about the latest developments in Web3 gaming.

Solana previously did a Solana GameState event back in November, where it had 33 game studios with 40 playable games. About 20 of those games are now live.

“We’re so positive about Solana games that we decided to do it again,” Lee said. “But we decided to do it in a little bit more strategic fashion. So we removed Solana or any blockchain references from the name. We call it the Play Good Games festival. We think here that, finally, the blockchain games are going to be able to get rid of the deserved bad reputation that blockchain games are not fun.”

He said the team has playtested many of the games that are under development, and that this event will be aimed at the community.

“I tell the events team all the time that my goal is to see families there with children playing the games,” he said. “And if the games are good enough, they will go deeper into the player experience and choose or not choose to interact with the blockchain part.”

Lee said there are several large developers who are not going to participate in the event because they’re still keeping their game private until they’re ready to launch later on. A number of large studios, many in Asia, are expected to launch games in Q4 of 2023, Lee said.

As for FTX, Lee said, “That was more of a headline problem than an actual real problem, in my opinion. As the dust has settled, I think people have come to a similar conclusion. We were always two separate companies. [FTX] held a good amount of Solana because they felt that that was a good investment position of theirs.”

The protocol is also putting more emphasis on core stability and testing.

As for developers leaving Solana for other platforms, he said some left because Solana decided not to make investments in them. He said that Solana has made investments in game companies in the past and continues to do so. But it isn’t going to invest when it doesn’t make sense, and every game has to pass muster in playtests. Solana had $100 million set aside along with Griffin Gaming Partners and Forte to invest in games.

Lee said the company has focused on blockchain games with user-generated content, social player versus player and massively multiplayer online games. He said those games help show off Solana’s technology advantage, which includes things like scalability and the ability to handle lots of transactions at once.

He said the network has been battle-tested and performance metrics are now looking better. As for winning over gamers, Lee said the way the industry talks to gamers has to change, and the focus has to be around fun. It’s not about selling users a technology but a better experience, he said.

“Let’s focus on the value to the player,” Lee said.

As for takeaways from the recent Game Developers Conference, Lee said it is a “healthy time to build” games and create the highest-quality experiences.