WazirX cofounder, SuperGaming launch Web3 games asset marketplace Tegro

WazirX cofounder Siddharth Menon is teaming up with Pune-based game development firm SuperGaming to launch Tegro, a Web3 game ecosystem marketplace.

This announcement comes on the heels of SuperGaming roping in Menon as an adviser for its upcoming Web3 initiatives that include building its crypto platform and games. Tegro will, however, be a separate company, it said.

“Mobile games disrupted the games industry and Web3 games could be an even bigger disruption,” Menon said. “Web3 games will be the next paradigm shift in gaming, opening new economic and creative opportunities for players, and have the potential to unlock a 2 trillion dollar market.”

Web3 is billed as the next iteration of the internet based on blockchain technology.

Tegro is building game asset (game content) marketplaces for players, traders and institutional investors, enabling them to trade, hold and play with these game assets. It will also provide asset stats to help them trade and invest better, the company said.

With growing crypto adoption in India, blockchain and non-fungible token (NFT)-based gaming firms are gaining steam and it is expected to be one of the key trends in the sector in 2022, as Moneycontrol reported on December 24.

However, the company said most existing Web3 games and their economies didn’t put players at the centre and were built "in a way that is unsustainable".

Existing Web3 games tend to have poor game economies that are not designed for sustainability, which means they don't survive for a long time and provide zero visibility into asset activity, Menon said on Twitter on February 15. "You really don't know when to sell or when to buy as there are no data to refer to," he said.

Menon said video game microtransactions hadn’t evolved "since the days of horse armour in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from 2006. They largely serve publisher interests...With Web3 + crypto + blockchain there is a way to make it so much more for players."

zero visibility into asset activity — you really don't know when to sell or when to buy as there are no data to refer to.

Few protect players + in-game investors. They don’t solve for liquidity which would attract players and institutional traders over time.

— Siddharth ( WazirX ) (@BuddhaSource) February 15, 2022

Future Roadmap

Apart from the marketplace, Tegro said it will provide market SDKs (software development kits) and APIs (application programming interface) to game developers, helping them make games and design "economies for a global audience".

"We see Web3 technologies as complementary to our player-first ethos, allowing us to produce new creative and economic opportunities for them. With the potential of Web3 games and Tegro, we can do so in a way that’s sustainable, fair, and transparent for all" said Roby John, co-founder of Tegro and SuperGaming.

SuperGaming, which counts Akatsuki Entertainment Technology (AET) Fund, BAce Capital, Dream Incubator, and 1Up Ventures among its investors, has developed its gaming engine for running hyperscale, real-time multiplayer games used by third-party studios with the official PAC-MAN game being the most famous one among them.

The startup claims to have developed nearly 100 games serving more than 300 million players. Among the popular ones include MaskGun (shooting game with 60 million users) and Silly Royale (real-time social multiplayer game with 14 million users).

SuperGaming is also developing Indus, a made-in-India battle royale game for PC, consoles, and mobile, inspired by Indian history and culture.

Also read: YouTube's 2022 roadmap: NFT integration, immersive gaming videos and monetizing short videos

Among others eyeing the web3 gaming space include nCore Games that raised $10 million funding to expand its properties into metaverse and NFTs as well as launch new games in the Web3 and play-to-earn space.

IndiGG, the India sub-decentralised autonomous organisation (subDAO) of the Philippines play-to-earn gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG), secured $6 million seed funding from investors such as Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Animoca Brands in January.

Dream Sports CEO Harsh Jain also recently said at an industry event that they were exploring a foray into the nascent blockchain and NFT market.