The end of the Pay to Play blockchain games hype?

[stompix]

Two small things first before I start making my arguments about this:
- I put the title "pay to play" instead of the "pay to work" I will refer further down not to make it confusing for readers
- I'm a bitcoin maximalist so I'm obviously biased against tokens and altcoins, deal with it! 
LE: Title update to make sure we're talking about blockchain model games


The model:
First I must point out that games that have described themselves as "play to earn" have existed long before the blockchain, it was either by viewing ads through the game or selling resources in-game or on an afar larger scale and for deals outside the game simply farming the shit out of gold or items and selling those to other players. So the idea is not new at all, the only thing special about it is some buzzwords like NFT and Blockchain, as for the games, are still some lame ass copies of more famous games with no actual revolutioanry technology behind them.

The free to pay entry
This is the main problem with all these games since they have to attract users by rewarding them and then need also an entry point, it's all you can eat but with an entry fee so that not only some might lose money on it but you also keep some desperate people motivated to click endlessly each day to recover the loses. So, at this point, it's not as much play to earn but work your ass to not be in red.

The work part
The game I will mention a few times axie infinity considers itself some pokemon clone, of course with nothing other than having some characters fight. Actually quite funny, pokemon go creatures don't breed in the game at all. So while comparing itself to famous games it lacks one thing, innovation, and it has tons of another, called repetition. And this is where the two models completely cut ties, while gamers on the pokemon side play when they want how much they want, walking eggs to hatch for miles if they have the lungs and legs for it,  in play to work models you're restricted, because, well, it would mean too much money printed. And this is where you completely cut the link between a fun game that has millions of users coming out of their houses in the rain to fight gyms or 5-star raids with millions desperate to sell their tokens as high as possible.

The failing revenue model
And this is the part that is most interesting.
Somehow users new to the cryptocurrency scene think that everything that has currency and decentralization and other bling words will gain value out of thin air and stay like that forever. Probably the 100 to 0 Luna fail might have taught some a lesson but I doubt the majority will indeed understand.

Pay to work apps like axie have a simple revenue model for their users, I will play a bit with the numbers to make it easier, not for accuracy reasons. You have 10 guys trying to start work, they have to pay 500$ for a good team in order to work. For them to earn back their money those 5000$ have to come out somewhere! Money doesn't magically get printed and if it does it turn to 1$=1c luna style.
Ona linear scale this would be sustainable, the first 10 guys invite other 10 guys who pay 500 each, and the next invite other 10 so if the model would really work like that it would be sustainable but the problem arises when somebody is making 50 000 and others are desperate for 50$.
The second problem is that after recouping your investment, in order to earn you have to make more than that, so again with the 10 user model, they have to make at least 100$ a month to make it worth it, which means they need 2 more guys for each user each year for that. Every new user regenerates this way the need for 2 paying players, and here it starts looking like the MLM scheme its actually is.

With currently 3 million players in the game for each to make some 100$ a month you would need 300 million influx each month, now assuming you would find 3 new million players willing to pay 100$, oh now you have 6 million players wanting money.The result?

The failed control
Our entire history is filled with examples of how we managed to lose control over currencies and how fixing them lead to more disastrous events. Every time you try to prop a currency without taking a look at the basics you either postpone the catastrophe or make it happen faster.
And here is the perfect example of a failed patch


To stop the failure of the token, they did cut the supply, but cutting the supply while still printing money isn't fixing a thing if you have more outflow than you still print. And of course, the consequences when you print less money is that you have less money to give out, which again, has consequences like the numbers of players dropping, fewer players coming to the game so less money inflow, or in short a spiral of death.

The Con Patch
There is also another way to try to prop out the falling ruin, and this is rebranding. Rebranding has always the advantage of luring some fools into these new schemes because they have learned one less, the first in Ponzi schemes and MLM schemes are the ones with a chance of getting some money for real, so simply print some other jpgs and sell some virtual plot lands to try and balance the money flow. Of course, it helps short term but long term it suffers from the same drawbacks and you end up with two problems instead of one.

The need for a token.
This is the reason why I mentioned bitcoin maximalism.
Why would any game need its own token if it's a play to earn and obvious all the earnings will be converted into either BTC or ETH and then used to pay in $ for things. There is no need for those tokens, every single game out there could simply run with a database or if they would absolutely want to use a blockchain, a blockchain doesn't need to have a currency on it.
The only real need for the specific token is far away from decentralization, it's about initial money-grabbing and absolute control over it.

So, what's your opinion, will the "play to earn' model really work or at least survive?

More sources for both the info I've posted and for further reading, if you're interested in other's opinion
Play-to-earn sells the dream of gaming for cash — so why isn’t everyone playing?
Axie Infinity Daily Active Users Drop 45% Since 2021 Peak
Axie Infinity Making Big Changes to Fix Its Ailing Play-to-Earn NFT Economy

[mk4]

It can really still work — assuming an actual competitive game studio manages to create a game that's actually fun to play. There just needs to be a decent balance between players who play for fun, and 'players' who just 'play' solely to farm the game. Current existing "P2E" games fail because only like 1% play for fun while 99% just farm the game to death.

But then again, are gaming studios even incentivized to have free trade in their game (regardless if using tokens or not)? Mostly not. There's more money in making the game items/skins untradable (e.g. Valorant, Fortnite, etc).

[danherbias07]

True. Play to earn feature existed way back in the boom of MMORPG i.e. Ragnarok. I played Tantra Online before (way back where you need to top up a card to play the game) and I sold stuff that can be exchanged for cash by the use of the "Trading" system.
That's what the new games did now, they turned off that feature so you cannot directly trade your items to another player who offered you cash in return instead of in-game currency. It's either an item that is "bound" (cannot be traded) or unbound but can only be sold in the market, not traded directly.

Pay to play is dying, I agree with that. But pay to play to earn might live for a long time. Gamers just don't stop playing, the game pulls them back even after years of rest. Although it's different now because there's a chance to make money instead of just spending like in old times.

But I agree with the necessity of sustainability. The road to gain should not be easy to avoid abuse. Security must also be tight against bots or multi-accounting where they take advantage. Also, it should not be like a pyramid scheme where you invite more because the profits will come from them. Items bought should be a choice not because you will not be able to play because you lack NFT items. It gives chance to play-to-earn players to grind their way in.

The only irregularity that I see is when the players who can afford takes over, but that's normal because they paid for it.
About the coin usage, I also don't understand why there's a need to create a new coin or use a new blockchain. Why can't we just pay or sell items for the top coins that have a higher trust?
Blockchain traffic maybe?

[bakasabo]

As usually, hype lived only for some time and starts to die. How long has been all these play to earn project on hype? A year? How long has been Axie Infinity in trend? A year also? That is more than enough. People tried to save and continue this trend with walk to earn (StepN project), sleep to earn and other imitators. But such trend can not last long. People get bored with such methods of earning and switch to a regular one - work.

[stompix]

It can really still work — assuming an actual competitive game studio manages to create a game that's actually fun to play. There just needs to be a decent balance between players who play for fun, and 'players' who just 'play' solely to farm the game.

So the whole plan would have to be put starting completely the opposite way, first get a really good game that people enjoy then try to monetize the game, not advertise it as a money-making machine and then think about the mechanics of the game.
While in theory, I would agree with this approach, you might have another problem down the road
Nearly 70% of gamers hate NFTs, or the Ubisoft fiasco.

A game can't survive without its fan base and if you push that to the limit you might end with nothing.

But pay to play to earn might live for a long time.

Live yeah, on a smaller scale but the hype is gone, or at least I think so.

About the coin usage, I also don't understand why there's a need to create a new coin or use a new blockchain. Why can't we just pay or sell items for the top coins that have a higher trust?
Blockchain traffic maybe?

That's an excuse for control and for printing money, they could make payments via LN as cheap as possible and again, the need for the blockchain is not there in the actual game mechanics,  you have to trap your users in an ecosystem they can't get easy out of this and that's why those tokens are there.

People get bored with such methods of earning and switch to a regular one - work.

I don't think people get bored with these methods, in my opinion, the main drawback is that the method isn't working anymore.

[Rikafip]

The free to pay entry
This is the main problem with all these games since they have to attract users by rewarding them and then need also an entry point, it's all you can eat but with an entry fee so that not only some might lose money on it but you also keep some desperate people motivated to click endlessly each day to recover the loses. So, at this point, it's not as much play to earn but work your ass to not be in red.

I think that it all depends on the model. While i was more active in gaming I generally preferred online games that have some kind of subscription model as from my experience with "free to play" games they  ended to be way more expensive than just paying for a monthly sub.

So the whole plan would have to be put starting completely the opposite way, first get a really good game that people enjoy then try to monetize the game, not advertise it as a money-making machine and then think about the mechanics of the game.
While in theory, I would agree with this approach, you might have another problem down the road
Nearly 70% of gamers hate NFTs, or the Ubisoft fiasco.

No wonder that gamers don't like NFTs (and crypto in general, especially because GPU prices) because all we got so far are shitty browser based games that that didn't have gamers as target audience but people that are more into crypto that didn't play game for fun, but only to earn some money. And if you built your games around that, of course its going to suck and fail eventually.

I do think that play to earn can survive and that it has its place in gaming industry but developers will have to change the approach drastically.  Earning in game should be a secondary thing, like getting few bucks simply by doing what you like instead being the main focus of the game.

[mk4]

So the whole plan would have to be put starting completely the opposite way, first get a really good game that people enjoy then try to monetize the game, not advertise it as a money-making machine and then think about the mechanics of the game.

Precisely. The original "P2E" games in the past worked because it was fun first, with (optional) earning second. Advertising a game as P2E is just going to get the attention of the wrong people. Tbh, they should just advertise as a game with "free trade" or something not straight-to-the-point.

While in theory, I would agree with this approach, you might have another problem down the road
Nearly 70% of gamers hate NFTs, or the Ubisoft fiasco.

Yea that's another topic lmao.

[davis196]

The so called "play-to-earn" games can survive only, if they turn into pure Peer-to-peer gambling games.
The players bet some money, coins or tokens, play the game against each other and the winner takes it all. The creators of the game simply deduct some fees out of the bets, in order to maintain the game and make some profit. That's a somewhat sustainable business model.
All the mining, farming, "buy digital stuff to earn dividends" type of play-to-earn games are just ponzi schemes. They can't survive without an influx of new paying players, just like OP said.
The only thing, that's compelling about those P2E games is the "earn money while you play" concept. The games aren't entertaining or fun to play. They are really boring, but the players keep playing, because of the desire to make money.

[ultrloa]

Its on the peak of dying state because almost all of P2E either a big project and newly created is falling, maybe this is another end of ERA just like what ICO gets. So its really better for anyone to take precautionary measure to invest on new and don't fall to any hype since we don't know when this craze really end up. Also better chill out on investing on any of it for now because its really risky type of investment as of now. Better trade because we are in bearish season and all of coins and tokens are affected so much on this incident.

[Kakmakr]

OP, I think the two things that killed most "Play-to-Earn" projects in the past, was :

1. Bots - Farming the shite out of the game/project and taking all the "new" money that are coming in.
2. Trends - People get bored quickly with games, because they are bombarded with "clone" copies of old concepts.

Solution : Software developers must listen to the gaming community (or Alt coin / NFT community) and develop something unique and something that the "users" need. (Not what they think the users wants)

They also have to find ways to reduce the impact that bots have on the gaming platforms. (Use facial recognition or finger print scanning to login into these platforms and use complex artificial technology to identify bot behavior and to block them)

You cannot "rebrand" old concepts and inject "new" money into clone projects and think that it will succeed.  

[Taskford]

OP, I think the two things that killed most "Play-to-Earn" projects in the past, was :

1. Bots - Farming the shite out of the game/project and taking all the "new" money that are coming in.


They also have to find ways to reduce the impact that bots have on the gaming platforms. (Use facial recognition or finger print scanning to login into these platforms and use complex artificial technology to identify bot behavior and to block them)

You cannot "rebrand" old concepts and inject "new" money into clone projects and think that it will succeed.  

Bots are really a huge pest on P2E industry since they are the one who's killing the project and what I think the counter action for this is they should implement a game which needs human interaction. I like what Tank Warzone a P2E game which injected the candy crush like game and make this became more competitive and like that dev should find if not the same a similar implementation so that no bots will interfer their game and kill its economy.

[lionheart78]

So, what's your opinion, will the "play to earn' model really work or at least survive?

There are lots of factors to consider whether a game will work or not, regardless of the play-to-earn aspect.  We all know even without the play-to-earn option people tend to spend lots of money on games.  They spend money on in-game cosmetics, in-game power-ups, character slots, in-game subscriptions, etc.    I think if the game is planned carefully and considers the economic model of the game, there is a high possibility that a p2e game will succeed.  The only problem with the current P2E is that they produced the game half-baked.  Cryptogame developers rush things, many of these developers are just in for the money grab, and that is where the problem starts.  If only they study  the economic model for P2E thoroughly, and give a just reason why players need to spend money on the game, then there is a high possibility that the P2E game will work.  We can take the Mobile Legends as an example, even though they are not P2E, people are spending money because the game is well planned and create demands for the player to spend money. According to record, Mobile Legends In-app purchase revenue within the game peaked at a cumulative 236.1 million U.S. dollars in 2021[1].



[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089412/mobile-legends-player-spending/

[laredo7mm]

It can really still work — assuming an actual competitive game studio manages to create a game that's actually fun to play. There just needs to be a decent balance between players who play for fun, and 'players' who just 'play' solely to farm the game. Current existing "P2E" games fail because only like 1% play for fun while 99% just farm the game to death.

But then again, are gaming studios even incentivized to have free trade in their game (regardless if using tokens or not)? Mostly not. There's more money in making the game items/skins untradable (e.g. Valorant, Fortnite, etc).

99% of the P2E project was some classic model game that can be played by anyone. The actual game is very easy to play which makes those attractive for that player who will only play for money but at the same time team made them hard for free players by giving extra power to the paid player by adding the so-called NFT or items to the game. It's for sure those developers just want to make more money like a ponzi scam where only a few people win.

I am also a former gamer so I know how attractive it is to play a multiplayer RPG or Shooting game. Those are highly competitive so if some popular gaming studio tokenized their industry then it will be highly attractive for gamers.

[Wexnident]

I honestly don't think it could work out really, the proportion of players that would always play the game not for fun but rather for the money would always exceed the former. Even if we consider it being implemented in say, MMO type of games, early on players could get big bucks for their profit but it would inevitably die at the end. This would basically rely on how the game developers would model the ecosystem of their game, maybe if someone here played WOW or FFXIV (some of the most popular mmo's out there) they could give out a few things about the economy and how selling in-game gold works or something?

While in theory, I would agree with this approach, you might have another problem down the road
Nearly 70% of gamers hate NFTs, or the Ubisoft fiasco.

I honestly don't think they're against the idea of what an NFT is, but rather what happened with NFTs instead, and probably what companies (such as Ubisoft, and lately afaik SE also have plans about NFTs) are doing/planning about it. There's also how NFT enthusiasts market it out to the rest of the world, labeling it as something "new, groundbreaking, etc." and yet most of the place is full of, well, hype.

[Bitstar_coin]

.....I am also a former gamer so I know how attractive it is to play a multiplayer RPG or Shooting game. Those are highly competitive so if some popular gaming studio tokenized their industry then it will be highly attractive for gamers.

You are right, I believe play to earn hasn't even started based on the type of p2e projects we have in the ecosystem. Most of the current p2e are either too easy or not worthy because of the game design,  or the reward itself is not worth putting the time into. I think p2e will become appreciated by gamers when the actual gaming studios create tokenized games that will be highly attractive to gamers.
Gamers have spent money on in-game items for years without getting anything in return except having fun, it is not bad to start earning from games too but only if they are done right.

[istiak2277]

I honestly don't think they're against the idea of what an NFT is, but rather what happened with NFTs instead, and probably what companies (such as Ubisoft, and lately afaik SE also have plans about NFTs) are doing/planning about it. There's also how NFT enthusiasts market it out to the rest of the world, labeling it as something "new, groundbreaking, etc." and yet most of the place is full of, well, hype.

Right now, NFT in crypto is more like a piece of JPG arts. Most of them have very limited use-cases and are not planned for a long-term investment plan. The market needs more time to expand the use-case of NFT in the real world. Many possibilities can be implemented in various parts of the business. Most of the NFTs right now are scams, and their trading volume is highly manipulated.

[dataispower]

I honestly don't think they're against the idea of what an NFT is, but rather what happened with NFTs instead, and probably what companies (such as Ubisoft, and lately afaik SE also have plans about NFTs) are doing/planning about it. There's also how NFT enthusiasts market it out to the rest of the world, labeling it as something "new, groundbreaking, etc." and yet most of the place is full of, well, hype.

Right now, NFT in crypto is more like a piece of JPG arts. Most of them have very limited use-cases and are not planned for a long-term investment plan. The market needs more time to expand the use-case of NFT in the real world. Many possibilities can be implemented in various parts of the business. Most of the NFTs right now are scams, and their trading volume is highly manipulated.

It's clear that some of the investment right now don't have the intension of expansion. and people hyping the project is like bringing people to scam zone. That is the reason any one that wants to invest in any cryptocurrency or any developing projects that is not officially recognize or can be recommend to people, is to look well for the project and know if the project will work and stand like others. They hire this promoters to make their projects to look like relevant projects whereas the is not

[mk4]

99% of the P2E project was some classic model game that can be played by anyone. The actual game is very easy to play which makes those attractive for that player who will only play for money but at the same time team made them hard for free players by giving extra power to the paid player by adding the so-called NFT or items to the game. It's for sure those developers just want to make more money like a ponzi scam where only a few people win.

The initial Axie Infinity game model was dumb as hell and could literally be played by our grandparents and they would still earn tokens. After a while, they did update the game whereas only players with a minimum MMR ranking could earn tokens (which can actually be pretty tough to play, as I've played it myself). It was a needed update, but it was too late — the death spiral was already ongoing as there was too much heavy over-supply of the earned tokens.

[el kaka22]

Axie had literally just one reason why it drooped; being unlimited. The logic from the start was screwed, if you can breed as many axies as possible, and there is no limit to it, then why wouldn't it go down? Of course it would go down, because there will be more axies, more people who own them, more scholars to use them, more money to be made from everyone, and more SLP to be sold on the market.

Everyone who had axies or scholars would end up making too much money and they would all sell that SLP eventually. So when you have just 10k axies that system works, but when it reaches 10 million how could it feed everyone at the same time?

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Pay to play is dying, I agree with that. But pay to play to earn might live for a long time.

Even though I don't completely understand what's going on in the game space (I'm not a gamer) as far as this pay-to-play stuff goes, I have a feeling that if gamers think there's a chance to earn anything, there's going to be a non-negligible number of them who will gladly and wholeheartedly participate.

Just look at how many people work in these bounties for shit tokens--and sometimes in the end they don't even get paid anything.  Think of all the people who watch videos and ads on sites like Cointiply, earning very small amounts of cryptocurrency.  And those are probably adults doing that; if minors have the ability to earn something through a game, I would say they'd be excited to do so.

I have seen some videos on Youtube that mentioned some of what Stompix described, but I only gave it like 1/5 of my attention, so I'm still in the dark as to what the whole situation is.  As far as the NFT shit goes, it seems like a lot of projects/businesses are using them to attract the idiot demographic.  Every time I see that happen, I have a visceral feeling that there's a whole lot of pandering going on, and it's disgusting.