A Guide to Learn About "Play to Earn Games"
Play-to-earn (P2E) games offer lots of new experiences and provide players with game assets (not limited to game-life), real cash and cryptocurrency earning opportunities.
With the immense popularity of crypto-currencies, NFTs and their underlying blockchain technologies, it has been adopted by almost every industry. The gaming industry has also adopted it to deliver new experiences, which created a new game model popular as the Play 2 Earn game.
Indeed, P2E games have become the primary topic in the gaming community after the popularity of blockchain. Moreover, many investors and entrepreneurs are interested in making their play-to-earn games after knowing the potential of making profits from such games.
In this blog, we have rendered detailed aspects of Play 2 earn games, including introduction, tokenomics, revenue generation and exciting pros of Play to earn games.
Introduction: Play to Earn Game
"Play-to-earn" is a newly introduced game model that offers players to earn rewards in the form of money, tokens, NFTs, etc.
These games are also popular as Crypto games, as you may have heard about Cryptokitties, Crypto dragon etc.
Crypto games USP (Unique Selling Point): Users can earn cryptocurrency by playing games.
These games are based on a business model that develops and works on Web3 and blockchain technology as these games are decentralized, where players can allow to trade their digital assets with other players. As we know, these games are depend on blockchain technology, that make these games available to distribute their exclusive NFTs and crypto coins among their players.
How Play to Earn Game Works ?
In Play to earn games, gamers can buy and hold valuable game assets in the form of NFT can be anything from game assets, cards, and a particular cryptocurrency. The game earning depends on the "Play more, Earn more" concept.
The more gamers play the P2E games, the more assets they will be able to collect; moreover, it will also increase the value of assets with the increasing share of consumers.
Furthermore, these games' assets are not only valuable inside the game like traditional games because Play to earn games' assets have real-world value. Players can transfer game assets in the real world and can sell them for cryptocurrency or real money according to their terms.
As Play to earn games are developed on a decentralized platform, these games cannot be fully controlled by developers like traditional games were, and each player can verify their transactions and track their NFT records.
Each player of Play to earn games contributes to the game's growth because in these games assets are distributed among players and by participating (in-game economy), players generate value for other players as well as game developers.
What is the Economic Model of Play to Earn Game?
We are using an example of the popular game Axie Infinity to make you know how the economic model of Play to earn game works.
Axie Infinity, is one of the fastest growing and most popular Play to Earn games, developed by Sky Mavis, a Vietnamese developer. The game has about 1 million daily active user base.
The gameplay is based on breeding, training and completing task using Axies (Cute Furry Creatures). Players can buy, breed and train them to conduct battles with the goal to small love potions (SLP), which can use to create new Axies.
Moreover, SLP is a cryptocurrency and can be traded on crypto exchange. Pro players make more than 1,500 SLPs a day ( 1 SLP is for $0.00383 at this moment, you can check current rate here).
Axie Infinity also enable users to sell, as Axie is an NFT and can be traded on a dedicated marketplace. As this, game allows users to trade Axie and other game assets =-(real-estate, flowers, and other objects) to other player.
Tokenomics of P2E Games
As a central concept to crypto gaming, tokenomics is a fast emerging field in game design.Tokenomics is the portmanteau of ‘token’ – specifically a crypto token or coin – and ‘economics’. The term defines the interaction between various blockchain and decentralized technologies.
A game’s tokenomics align the motivations of various parties; from creating a profit for a developer, in a simple model, all the way to being the defining aspect of fully decentralised and autonomous projects with millions of participants and billions of dollars in market capitalization.
Play-to-earn games work with different tokenomics systems as some games work with native cryptocurrency and some game functions remain on cryptocurrency.
Native Cryptocurrency
There are many P2E games that have their own native currency in the form of tokens. These tokens act similarly to traditional, in-game currencies. Additionally, these game tokens have real-world value.
Some Examples are:
- The Sandbox ---------SAND
- Decentral Land -------MANA
- Axie Infinity ----------SLP and AXS
- Gala ------------------ GALA
- WAX ----------------- WAXP
Note: All these currencies exist on the Ethereum blockchain and have market value, which falls and up time by time.
Existing Cryptocurrency
Some games like Cryptokitties, Crypto dragons' tokens are developed on existing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Cardano, etc.
Why is Blockchain a Mandatory Part of Play to Earn Game?
Since the introduction of blockchain technology, many developers have released their games based on technology as this is an emerging technology and have a lots of pros for each industry for gaming it brought decentralization, and asset ownership.
Moreover, it has been acknowledged that most Play to earn games are modified version of Free-to-play games. Emerging Blockchain technology in free-to-play games expands the opportunities to create many exclusive digital assets such as NFTs, crypto coins, etc.
Benefits of Using Blockchain in Play to Earn Games:-
There are various advantages of creating play-to-earn games on blockchain technology; some advantages are mentioned below:
➤ Developers can host their games on decentralized server for free-of-cost using blockchain technology, which is more stable than centralized servers.
➤ Using blockchain technology helps developers to make and distribute NFTs as compared to other digital assets.
➤ As an emerging and fraudulent free technology, it avails option to receive crypto rewards directly in the player's wallets.
Benefits of Play to Earn Games
These games are not just popular and becoming a trend because of their unexceptional growth, but these games give various benefits to their gamers, developers, and game producers. So, here, we are covering the benefits of Play to earn games.
Assets Ownership
The remarkable benefit of Play 2 earn games is asset ownership. In traditional video games, this never became a part of gameplay that the players have full control over their assets. Since the game assets can only be used inside the particular game only, which become worthless once the game developers decide to shutdown their game.
Although, P2E game concept has changed the scenario, now players are owners of their infinite game assets. Infinite in the sense that the assets will not be limited to game life. It can be traded inside the game or any other supported blockchain marketplace.
Real Money
Since Play 2 earn games offer players to earn money while playing these games. Play 2 earn games are designed with game-economic system which enables players to earn different assets in the form of NFTs, crypto-tokens and in-game currency.
These games give opportunity to players to create their own NFTs within the game and powers-up their NFT(which can be Hero, , Land, or Game assets according to the gameplay) through different stats.
After creating NFT, the players can trade their NFTs within a game to the other players or can trade it in different marketplace. Some games also have options to earn crypto-token from games, which can be traded as NFTs.
Develops Community
As per DappRadar data, Play 2 Earn games strengthen the gaming community, and the latest P2E games are rapidly growing their communities. Axie Infinity, a Play to earn game has a community of 106,000 daily active users and 302,000 weekly active users.
This tremendous community growth is possible due to the P2E model into games, since these games' players can play together to accomplish the missions and can split the rewards.
Blockchain Adoption
An Adoption of blockchain technologies by gaming industry could leave a positive impact on other industries, which would also help to introduce millions of people to the power and innovation of blockchain and other underlying technologies.
Equal Benefits
P2E games can be expanded to any length with lots of new things which were not possible before. P2E gameplay not just shares game revenue to the organization but also shares opportunities to earn real cash and offer DAO rights to its players. So, players can decide how they want to play the game and what their rules and regulations should be.
What are the Important Factors for P2E Games?
There are various factors that should be considered to make a better strategy for any P2E game. Here, we have mentioned some of them.
Market-Oriented:- This factor helps you to decide how engaging your game will be for a large audience base. So, while developing P2E game it should be tested with initial gameplay and other marketing standards.
Monetization Modules:- Monetization is to measure how much the users will spend and purchase in game assets of your game. You can earn more money by offering different digital assets.
NFT Minting Power:- This factor measures that how much your players will have to pay for each issued NFT. The more charges of NFTs will help to claim more profit and generate high-revenue for companies.
Economic Sustainability:- Play-to-earn games are popular for economic; so, it is mandatory to have a economic sustainability, which will help you to attract more players towards your game.
Gameplay Longevity:- Game longevity is one of the main factors of successful games. So, more longevity of games will maintain a significant user base in the game.
User Retention:- Retention in game is to calculate how much time a player spends playing your game. A higher retention graph helps the developers in expanding their game's community.
Wrapping Up:-
We hope you have gotten an idea about Play to earn game and its token models; moreover, you are aware of its benefits of players and the gamers community.
Gamix Labs is a game development studio working with the blockchain industry's best talent and providing all the solutions for Play 2 Earn game development like Web3 integration, Wallet integration, Token minting, NFT minting, smart contract development, multiplayer games, and so on.
FAQs
What is Play to earn game?
Play to earn games are developed based on the concept of 'Play more, earn more'; these games utilize blockchain technology.
How many types of tokens are there in Play to earn games?
Usually, there are two types of tokens: Native Cryptocurrency or existing cryptocurrencies. However, both tokens have real market value and function similarly.
Why are Play to earn games popular?
Play to earn games offer the opportunity to earn cryptocurrency with real-world value while having fun, which is one of the main factors contributing to their popularity in the gaming industry.
Are Play to earn games legit?
Yes, Play to earn games are legal in almost every country, including India.
Why invest in Play to earn games?
There are various reasons that can be considered for investing in Play-to-earn games. As play-to-earn games market is growing rapidly, and giving a better business opportunity to entrepreneurs, developers, and gamers. Statista reported that the global gaming market is expected to reach around $270 billion by 2025. Moreover, there are other graphs and report that shows win-win chance for investor in the gaming industry. ➤ Consumer spending in the United States has grown upto 8% in 2021. ➤ The gaming market has generated highest revenue, which is around 180.3 billion dollars in the year 2021..