Aqua touts Web3 publishing platform and embedded game marketplace

Among the gaming veterans I ran into at the Game Developers Conference was Sean Ryan, the former vice president of the business platform partnerships at Facebook (Meta) and now the CEO of Aqua.

At GDC 2023, Ryan unveiled the Aqua Marketplace and a partnership with Polygon Labs. He also unveiled a casual games studio to show off what an embedded marketplace can do.

Ryan and his team of gaming veterans started Aqua to solve major pain points in crypto gaming. They made an external marketplace. They have built a series of partnerships, services, and even their own studio to expand its footprint beyond their core Web3 gaming marketplace product. And they also made a version of the marketplace that developers can embed inside their games.

“Developers kept asking us, ‘Can you give us a marketplace inside the game?’” said Ryan in our interview. “They don’t want the player to get a wallet and go to a third-party site. The embedded marketplace is really the product that is resonating with developers.”

Cahill added, “The tech side is geared towards game developers who want to get into Web3 without investing a lot of their own resources. Instead of having a studio team where you have to have a couple of people on marketplace, just do a deal with us. Now from a player’s perspective, this makes Web3 look like Web 2.5. It’s an easy onramp. It’s very low friction compared to what’s out there.”

Origins

Ryan left Facebook/Meta about 18 months ago and he tamed up again with John Cahill, who agreed to be the CTO at Aqua. They had worked together at SegaSoft decades ago and worked together on an early virtual world called Meez. About a year ago, they came back together to focus on a blockchain gaming startup.

Originally, they started a business-to-consumer marketplace. But they saw an opportunity to get closer to developers by building infrastructure that could help them run their games and monetize. And that was embedding a marketplace inside a game so gamers wouldn’t have to leave to buy something.

“This is another generational shift, like from Facebook to social to mobile,” Cahill said. “We’ve all seen the movie before. The phase shift you get in games is usually led by an innovative platform that powers creativity. And the infrastructure leads to a new wave of better games and sometimes even brand new player segments that weren’t engaged before.”

The company helps games monetize better, through both a direct-to-consumer marketplace and a publisher-facing platform. The company raised $10 million. It hopes to generate revenue by taking a cut.

Other leaders include Alay Joglekar, who heads marketing and formerly was head of social and influencers and PR at Riot Games. And the team includes Guy Cross, head of partnerships and former global gaming video strategy lead at Meta.

Much of the company’s development has been outsourced to studios in Argentina, China and Romania.

Embedded marketplace

There are plenty of other blockchain gaming marketplaces out there such as OpenSea and Fractal. But Aqua’s embedded marketplace can be embedded inside a developers game, enabling players to make purchases of in-game assets without having to leave the game. It’s a lot like a Web2 gaming experience in that sense.

The idea is to get rid of the currently fragmented player experiences of jumping from different sites to browse and make purchases of in-game assets, into a single-screen journey that keeps players in the game’s client.

The marketplace is in development for games like Gods Unchained (IMX) and Undead Blocks (Wagyu Games).

Aqua is recording a spike in player retention and increased sales after implementation among its early partners. And the partnership with Polygon Labs will enable game studios building on that platform nearly immediate access to the embedded marketplace.

The partners hope to onboard 15 game titles by the end of the year with current commitments from Dark Throne, Million on Mars, and Mojo Melee. Aqua also has its own external marketplace.

Aqua Studios

Ryan showed me some simple casual games being build by the Aqua Studios division. The idea is to create some approachable Web3 titles with a simple non-fungible token (NFT) integration and onboarding to entice casual gamers into Web3.

“These are really easy to understand, well-recognized games that have very simple mechanics,” Joglekar said.

The studio’s first three titles – Aqua Solitaire, Aqua Pool, and Aqua Ludo will introduce players to Web3 gaming and the concept of asset ownership, without the crypto-centric jargon and tedious processes that current players have to navigate through.

“Think about it as the Miniclip of Web3,” Ryan said. “As soon as you play any of these games, you sign up for an identity right there. It happens to have a wallet with it. We don’t call it a wallet, but it happens to have your identity, just like a Facebook login. It’s no different than what you’re signing up for with your social.”

Aqua Play Account

The Aqua Play Account is a player profile that gives the customization, simplicity, and style that gamers want, plus the utility of a wallet built in. The idea is to drive wallet identity and marketplace usage in the long term to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people, Ryan said.

“We start with a testbed. We drive our marketplace into as many games as we can. So far the acceptance has been great. That’s basically how we bring the mass market to Web3,” Ryan said. “Because at the end of the day, that’s where we think this market goes.”

This will eventually be the player’s portal to discover all the games that Web3 has to offer, but with easy connectivity and zero crypto-centric jargon. Aqua Studios games are going into closed-beta testing in April. Players can sign up on the site and receive a free Aqua Boost when the invites go out.

The platform can also make intelligent recommendations to you based on your game usage. Gamers will appreciate it if that works well, Ryan said.

“There is no longer a gamer profile in Web3 the way you have an Xbox or a PlayStation account or anything like that,” Ryan said. “People obsess about wallets. I’m so tired of talking about wallets. When we talk about your Xbox account, you don’t talk about your wallet. It just happens to be part of your Xbox or your PlayStation. It has a credit card or your Steam account. You can put together all of your game assets, everything you play, and everything you own. This will be started and will be super easy to use. You can get up and running in less than a minute.”