When you're playing League of Legends or DOTA (Defense of the Ancients), what are you getting in return? Many livestream gamers earn a decent amount from playing their favorite games, and professionals are winning millions of dollars from tournaments.
But, for ordinary players, entertainment is all that they're getting. In fact, some are even willing to spend money in order to acquire powerful items and cool skins.
However, with the revolution of blockchain technology and NFT, even ordinary players can now play games and earn.
What Are Play-to-Earn Blockchain Games?
If this is not a scam, where is the money coming from?
Essentially, play-to-earn games are just another world where a free economy exists. As players invest their money to buy characters or items, the game earns a reward pool by charging transaction fees from purchases, trades, and other gameplay activities. Ordinary players can then jump into the opportunity by providing value to the game by investing an initial amount and dedicating their time to playing it.
There are two ways you can earn from playing blockchain games.
- Earn cryptocurrency through gameplay
- Acquire NFTs and sell them
The crypto or NFT rewards from the game can be traded into real money. The blockchain technology and the concept of NFT allow this kind of game economy to exist as it tracks all the transactions and provides proof of ownership to the items and characters.
Examples of Blockchain NFT Games
Axie Infinity
In early 2018, the company Sky Mavis created a blockchain game called Axie Infinity. Pokemon and Tamagotchi inspired the Ethereum-based NFT game. It consists of millions of adorable, fancy creatures called Axies, which can be bred, raised, and battled.
Each Axie can fall under 1 of 9 categories. Like Pokemon types, each category has an advantage over another during combat. Axies fight in teams of three. The team can battle other players in the Arena Game mode or non-player in the Adventure Game mode. When the Axie team defeats the opposing team, they earn a small amount of Smooth Love Potion (SLP) or Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) tokens.
Players can exchange the token for fiat currencies, such as PHP, on exchanges such as Coins.ph. Axies and other in-game items can also be sold on the Axie Infinity marketplace. The earnings from the game can depend on several things, such as the price of SLP, the quality of your Axie spawns, and the time you spend playing the game.
SLP tokens are required to breed Axies. To ensure that the Axie population remains stable and sustainable, each Axie can only be bred seven times. Each additional reproduction requires more SLP tokens.
Sorare
Released in 2019, Sorare is a global fantasy football game based on the Ethereum blockchain. This play-to-earn game quickly rose to popularity even in its early stages. Recognizing its potential in the cryptocurrency space, many venture capitalists and athletes are now backing the game.
Players can collect NFT digital playing cards in the gameplay and use them to compete in fantasy football tournaments. There's a new tournament every week, and players can earn by competing and winning rare cards and ETH prizes. They could also sell their NFT on the Sorare marketplace and other NFT marketplaces.
The game has a limited number of cards created for each player. These NFT trading cards are so rare that, in a given season, each player within the game will only have 1000 limited cards, 100 rare cards, ten super rare cards, and one unique card. The rarer the card, the better it is in the game.
Town Star
If you love Farmville, this play-to-earn game is perfect for you. The blockchain game was created by Gala Games (GALA), which was started by Eric Schiermeyer, one of the co-founders of the company behind Farmville.
In a nutshell, the game's objective is to create resources and sell them to other towns. The money generated from those sales can be used to upgrade your town to make it more productive. While it may sound simple, the mechanics of the game are a bit complicated. It requires balancing the cost of production against the sale price of commodities. The productivity of the town should also be monitored.
NFTs that you can use in Town Star will earn TOWN tokens based on the NFT's rarity. Placing those NFTs on your farm will allow you to earn TOWN token rewards every time you complete daily challenges. There's also the Gala Power, which determines the number of NFTs you can use on your farm. The Gala Power is based on many factors, such as the number of Gala tokens in your wallet, referrals, your account age, TOWN coin holdings, etc. Plus, there are weekly competitions where players can win GALA coins and in-game assets.
CryptoBlades
It's a blockchain role-playing game (RPG), where players can earn SKILL tokens by crushing their enemies, going on raiding parties, and staking gains. The gameplay in CryptoBlades is very straightforward. There are four elements within the game: fire, water, earth, and lightning. The elements are assigned to each character, attributes, weapons, and enemies. The elements play a huge role when battling other players.
Rare powerful weapons can also be acquired, which can give players an edge during combat. These special items can also be crafted as NFTs and used in-game or traded on the CryptoBlades marketplace. Characters are also issued as an NFT.
SKILL tokens are required to recruit a character and start playing. For this, you'll need a MetaMask wallet installed. You'll also need to buy a few SKILL tokens, which serve as "gas fees".
The Sandbox
It's like Minecraft, but you're playing on the blockchain. The Sandbox (SAND) is an immersive metaverse where players create virtual lands (real estate) and monetize the gaming experiences they provide. The Sandbox has a range of universes to pick from, such as Summer Jam land, The Walking Dead land, and even Snoop Dogg-themed lands.
Within the Sandbox metaverse, you can buy plots of digital real estate. Players use these lands to build worlds and populate them with in-game assets to create unique gaming experiences. If your world is cool enough, you can charge SAND tokens to other players who want to visit your land and play the games you've built.
The Sandbox has created a whole new ecosystem and economy on top of this model. In-game assets and lands are sold on The Sandbox marketplace, which can then be used to create cool worlds. These pieces of land in the metaverse are tradable NFTs, which you can sell on different NFT marketplaces. The result: Demand continues to increase while the supply of $SAND remains the same, which increases the value of the token and in-game NFTs.
Challenges of Play-to-Earn Games
While the mechanics of a play-to-earn game is already a win-win for many players, this model actually has many disadvantages.
In a play-to-earn game, you need to spend a lot of time playing to earn a significant amount of money. Many players are also forced to play games they don't actually enjoy because they don't have much choice.
The play-to-earn model is quite limiting, as many games require a significant amount of starting capital. So, players are forced to play a limited number of games they can afford.
Furthermore, many players are only playing to earn money. They play the game and cash out their earnings rather than reinvest them back into the game, hurting the game's economy and hampering its growth.
How Play-to-Earn Turned Into Play-and-Earn Games
The GuildFi Ecosystem solves all the problems in the play-to-earn model.
GuildFi is an example of a Web3 platform that brings investors, developers, and players in one place.
Here's how it works:
Inside the GuildFi Ecosystem, there are different gaming guilds governed either by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) or an ordinary group of gamers. Each guild has a significant amount of crypto and NFT holdings, which they invest in games inside the GuildFi Ecosystem.
If a player doesn't have the required funds to start playing a game, he can join a player community or guild. A guild can then lend out their game NFTs, allowing players to play and earn. The player can take most of the rewards from gameplay while the guild takes an interest.
With GuildFi Ecosystem's game library being constantly updated, players can choose blockchain games they will enjoy playing. A player can play several games, earn more, and keep track of his performance.
Each GuildFi player will have a public experience bar. As a player becomes better, he will have several advantages over other players, such as more awards and opportunities from guilds. The data and metrics for player performance will also enable developers and guilds to measure their ROI (Return of Investment), incentivizing gaming performance and experience – not the amount of time spent playing.
Moreover, player experience/performance will serve as an excellent tool to distribute tokens and NFTs to those who are more likely to reinvest their earnings.
The result of this model is a play-and-earn ecosystem, where players are not playing just to earn but to become better at playing the game while also earning from it.
Play-To-Earn spawned Move-To-Earn?
The Play-To-Earn economy started a new category of games called Move-To-Earn. In Move-To-Earn, users are rewarded for moving in the physical world.
This can be walking, running, or even cycling. The main idea is to incentivize users to move around, be active, and earn rewards while doing that.
One of the most popular Move-To-Earn game is Genopets where users convert their steps into Energy which can be used for in-game actions like harvesting tokens and leveling up your pets.
Conclusion
Reluctance to accept innovation is the easiest way to miss out on big opportunities. The development of play-to-earn games and play-and-earn ecosystems allows players to earn even without investing any amount. So, if you love playing games, there's no reason for you to be wasting your time on regular games. Earn cryptocurrencies now and play cool games.
Disclaimer: The information and publications in this article are not intended to be and do not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice or recommendation offered or endorsed by Coins.
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