Play to earn
Play-To-Earn (P2E) games are a subset of blockchain video games that reward players with real money for winning or, in some cases, just for playing. P2E is a way to complement games by making them more competitive, more attractive to players and, in some cases, by allowing the best players to play the game as much as they want by properly rewarding them.
These games are usually based on a DeFi cryptocurrency project, and use NFTs to allow players to own their characters, items, and weapons.
PROs
- Allows players to play more
- Incentivizes competitive players
- Makes competition more exciting
- Allows players to own their characters and items, thanks to NFT technology
CONs
- Sometimes used to hide poor game quality
- Don't often offer high enough earning potential for average players
- A lot of P2E projects are scams
- Some P2E games have Pay-To-Win mechanics
- Earnings are sometimes paid in a token that loses its market value
- Possibility of rug pull
Conclusion
Play-To-Earn games are the future of gaming, because they motivate players to fully commit to the games they like. Nevertheless, monetization doesn't make for a good game on its own. It is a great extra feature, and can make a good game even better. But gameplay must always come first, because a poor gameplay experience will not attract players even if there are rewards involved, and this will ultimately lead to the native token of the game quickly losing any value.
Analyst Opinion
When choosing a Play-To-Earn DeFi game to play or to invest in, it is important to avoid games with the following red flags:
- no information about the team
- no Free-To-Play option
- not enough information about the game itself, or very confusing information
Major red flag:
Tokenomics cannot be distinguished from gameplay; some games have very poor, or even nonexistent gameplay mechanics. These types of games offer many ways of staking, receiving NFT gifts and swapping the project’s native token for other tokens or NFTs, but do not have any actual underlying gameplay. Rather, they deploy random elements like a lottery game, and are purely focused on offering people ways to make money.
Play-To-Earn games should be fun, with interesting mechanics, and original ideas. They should be games that will be enjoyed by a lot of players, regardless of monetization options. Making money should be a complementary focus that allows players to play even more, and with more excitement within a competitive, fun game that they play even if those monetization options didn’t exist.
Matěj Procházka
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