Last year was my first time at Gamescom. I did close to zero research. I knew it was in Germany. That was about it. Then I arrived at the venue. It was massive. Genuinely hard to grasp the scale until you’re inside it, zigzagging between towering halls, each big enough to be its own event. I spent most of the first day just trying to figure out where everything was. Got lost a lot. And still, that felt manageable, until Saturday. Saturday at Gamescom is the full public day, and the crowds were on another level. Every corridor packed. Every demo line overflowing. If you ever want to see what 100,000 people playing games in one building looks like, that’s the day to go. To give you an idea of scale: 2024 attendance: over 320,000 visitors It’s big. Very big. Naturally, I wasn’t just there to soak it in. I was on the hunt for web3 games. And I found them, 13+ Web3 titles scattered across different halls. Sometimes tucked away beside mid-tier mobile booths, sometimes right out in the open with premium setups. Here’s the list I found last year: AutoLegends, BadMadRobots, The Bornless, Engines of Fury, Illuvium, Parallel, Pixelmon, RiftStorm, Rogue Nation, Space Nation, Synergy Land, Wilder World, Wonder Wars, and a few others I met casually in lounges or at side events. Some of those projects have since faded out. That’s the nature of Web3 right now, lots of building, but also lots of attrition. On the flip side, projects like Wilder World are back again this year, showing off more exclusive gameplay and pushing further into polish and performance. Web3 gaming remains in a mixed state. Some games are finally seeing traction, player growth, and actual economies forming. Others are quietly shutting down or pivoting. It’s messy. But still moving. This year, I’m going in more prepared. I’ve got side events lined up with: Immutable, Polygon, Beam, Beamable, NeoTokyo, WolvesDOA, Saga Plus I might try to sneak into a few traditional gaming events too. Always good to see what’s going on outside the crypto bubble. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting daily recaps from floor impressions to crypto game highlights, side event moments, and maybe a few surprises. And yes, I’ll probably still get lost. Just hopefully less often this time.