Play-To-Earn Games -How Do They Even Work?
Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? Playing video games to make real money!
The phenomenon is still surrounded by mystery to some extent, and moreover, there are people who just outright doubt the credibility of the concept. Shouldn’t it be working the other way around? Us paying to play games? Well, buckle up folks, you are all about to be educated on a hot topic that many “crypto experts” claim to have a complete understanding of.
The Concept Behind The Phenomenon:
First, a disclaimer. The practice of play-to-earn is not new in the video game industry, though the economics and earning models have been shifting. Consider a simple case of videogame events where the winner earns a cash prize or in-game items that are rare and hard to find which can be sold for the desired price of the seller.
The assets that are sold or purchased in games are a representation of NFTs. NFTs, being backed by blockchain technology, have proof of ownership of any digital asset, making false claims for ownership impossible. But this is not limited to just in-game items, anything in the form of digital media can be an NFT.
The representation of in-game items in the form of NFTs means their trade with confidence in the trade structure built over the blockchain which guarantees each “item” is unique and worth its own value. Each game can have its own set of rules about items that can be traded in exchange for cryptocurrency, which in turn, can be converted to real currency.
As mentioned above, each game will have its own particular set of rules surrounding the concept of its tradable NFTs and the monetization of the model itself for the developers. Consider a game called Axie Infinite where players are required to start out by purchasing three Axies (little creatures that can be trained and bred), similar to any pay-to-play game. Then after you have trained and developed your Axies, they can be traded in exchange for cryptocurrency. Some games, although free to play, may contain advertising as a revenue model for the developers.
The Pros?
The adoption of DeFi-based NFT games is at an all-time high with more and more people adopting the model, given the fact that they are actually investing their efforts to reap the benefits later.
The best part is that players get to have all the fun they want as gamers, whilst simultaneously developing future prospects for unprecedented returns! Last year, an Axie sold for around 300 ETH, about $1 million.
Take the same game for example where a player can earn up to $1200 per month — which is quite a lot for people living in countries where there is a high conversion ratio from dollar to local currency. The platform reports 350,000 daily active players, and that’s just one game!
Though blockchain games took off as a small industry, they have seen rapid evolution and have developed into a fully-fledged industry. These games are providing not only decent income to people, but have changed the primary source of income for a lot of people.
