Jonathan Huang, Partner at Bitkraft
The world of Web3 gaming, once hyped as a revolution and then dismissed as a fad, is quietly entering a new phase. At the forefront of this shift is Bitkraft Ventures, a US$1 billion global gaming-focused VC firm founded by gamers for gamers.
For Jonathan Huang, Partner at Bitkraft and a veteran of both Web2 and Web3 investing in Asia, this moment marks what he calls “Web3 Gaming 2.0”, a reset that strips away speculative excess and brings the focus back to games worth playing.
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Huang, who previously spearheaded Temasek’s late-stage investment into Roblox before joining Bitkraft in 2023, believes the industry has matured past the token-fuelled frenzy of Axie Infinity and other play-to-earn titles.
“The fundamental shift now,” he says, “is a return to first principles, where games must create genuine entertainment value before capturing economic value. The first wave of Web3 games inverted that logic.”
From play-to-earn to play-to-stay
The early crypto-gaming boom promised players the chance to earn money through gameplay. Instead, most titles devolved into thinly disguised financial products with little fun attached. When token prices collapsed, so too did player enthusiasm.
Huang argues that the next generation of blockchain-enabled titles is different. “Blockchain should be the infrastructure, not the value proposition,” he says. “The design space only becomes interesting once you ask: are you solving a real problem in Web2 gaming, or unlocking a new kind of use case?”
That means blockchain will increasingly power persistent state and player agency–the invisible rails that enable new gameplay loops and ownership models–rather than serve as a marketing hook. The best studios are now gameplay-first, staffed with AAA veterans who see blockchain as a tool, not a gimmick.
Interoperability: Beyond swords and skins
If early Web3 gaming narratives were dominated by visions of players carrying swords across different game worlds, Huang is quick to dismiss them. “That narrative is dead on arrival,” he says bluntly. “Games are fundamentally designed by their constraints. A sword balanced for one game breaks another’s economy. Assets without context are just database entries.”
Instead, Bitkraft sees promise in portable reputation and social capital. Hours are logged in DOTA 2, win rates are in Fortnite, and rankings are in Clash Royale; today, these data points are siloed on different platforms.
Blockchain could unify them, giving players a persistent identity across the gaming universe. “No single platform has a holistic view of who you are as a gamer,” Huang notes. “Unlocking this creates tremendous value. It just has nothing to do with transferring swords.”
Yet he cautions that most interoperability use cases in Web3 add more complexity than benefit. “You’d really have to ask what problem you’re solving that centralised solutions couldn’t.”
A post-crash reset in Southeast Asia
The collapse of the play-to-earn hype cycle has had a cleansing effect on Southeast Asia, once the epicentre of Axie Infinity’s rise. Opportunistic founders chasing fast token launches have largely exited, replaced by entrepreneurs building with a decade-long horizon.
“Seed funding is harder, but raising follow-on rounds is easier than ever,” says Huang. “That tells you the market has matured. The founders we back today are optimising for five- to ten-year outcomes, not five-month paydays.”
For Bitkraft, that’s a healthier environment. Southeast Asia’s combination of mobile-first gamers, high digital wallet penetration, and willingness to experiment still makes it fertile ground for the next Web3 breakthroughs. Singapore, in particular, has emerged as a hub for both capital and talent.
History repeats, and that’s a good thing
To critics who dismiss Web3 gaming as hype, Huang offers a history lesson. He points to the Atari shock of the 1980s, when console revenues collapsed from US$3 billion to US$100 million, only for Nintendo to reinvent the category. He recalls the dot-com crash, when online console gaming was declared dead—until Xbox Live and Halo 2 proved otherwise.
He also cites the 2011 collapse of social gaming, when Facebook killed viral spam and investors fled, just before Supercell and King redefined mobile-native hits.
“Every platform shift follows the same arc,” he says. “Speculation, terrible early products, spectacular crashes, obituaries, and then genuine innovation from builders who understand the medium. We’re currently in year two or three of the hatred cycle. That’s exactly when the most important games emerge.”
For Bitkraft, the holy grail isn’t just games with tokens, but games that could not exist without crypto. Huang predicts that by 2030, the biggest games will use blockchain as seamlessly as today’s titles use the internet.
What comes next
Huang and Bitkraft are tracking non-obvious shifts: from new monetisation models built on player-owned economies, to generative AI streamlining customer service and game balancing, to decentralised identity systems reshaping how players build cross-platform reputations. Each points to a broader transformation of the gamer’s relationship with platforms.
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“Web3’s real promise isn’t speculation,” Huang insists. “It’s agency. It’s about giving players ownership of their time, achievements, and communities in a way that Web2 platforms never could.”
If history is any guide, the skeptics will continue to dominate headlines until the breakout hits arrive. But for Bitkraft, Southeast Asia is already incubating the developers who will write the next chapter. “The biggest games of 2030,” Huang says with quiet certainty, “will be built on crypto rails. We just need patience to see it through.”
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