Play to Earn: How it is Revolutionizing the Gaming Space?

What if I tell you, that you can earn money by playing video games? No, I am not talking about streaming. I am talking about the Play to Earn(P2E) gaming industry that is emerging rapidly over the past two years.

The Success of the Gaming Industry

The gaming industry is already the highest entertainment industry in the entire world. It is higher than Hollywood and the music industry combined. The growth rate of the gaming industry from 2006 (USD 8 billion) to 2020 (USD 160 billion) is higher than that of all other entertainment industries.

During the pandemic when everybody was forced to stay at home, people started looking for ways to entertain themselves and the gaming industry levelled up with energy boosters. According to a study by Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet, Twitch saw an 83% year-on-year uprise in viewership when the pandemic hit, with over 5 billion hours of content viewed in the second quarter of 2020 alone.

Problem with Current Scenario

However, these gigantic numbers have a different story too. Only a few corporations and companies that provide platforms or develop games earned the most profit. Streamers earned only a small portion. The story doesn't end here. Only the well established famous streamers are responsible for a huge share of revenue earned streamers.

Gamers who don't have a huge audience or don't stream at all face a hard time earning through gaming. If they are playing as a hobby or in their free time, there is no way to earn - unless, of course, they start streaming and stay consistent enough to have an audience.

Only companies and big streamers could generate a successful revenue in the gaming industry. Others just played games and completed side missions before starting the campaign.

The second thing that bothers gamers is only a handful of games provide the functionality to resell in-game assets once they are bought. By in-game assets, I mean skins, avatars, weapons and such things that are only useful in that game. Many games, even free ones provide a way to buy these assets with money or an in-game valuable asset. This is called In App Purchases and it can be seen in every game.

Only a handful of traditional games like CS: GO and Dota 2 offer to resell in-game assets. Therefore, once you buy it, you are stuck with it forever. Of course, you can buy new assets but there is hardly a way to get rid of your current collection if you get bored.

The Rise of P2E

A new model is becoming popular in the gaming industry, the Play to Earn or P2E model. It embraces the idea of the open economy, blockchain and NFTs to think of the video game industry in a completely new way.

As blockchain technology became more mainstream and NFTs and Defi became more popular, the idea of decentralising everything that is currently controlled by a centralised organisation arose. It benefited the gaming industry as well.

Play to Earn is an innovation in the gaming industry that leverages blockchain, DeFi and NFTs to create online games. It allows gamers to earn rewards for their skills and participation in the game. Rewards can be sold for cryptocurrencies and then converted to cash.

Revolution of the Gaming Industry

This game changing approach has been revolutionizing the gaming industry. As explained in the previous section, only companies and famous streamers could earn by gaming. But P2E opens up the market for everyone and awards individual gamers for actively participating in the game.

Unlike traditional games, P2E offer more to all stakeholders by allowing users to own their in-game assets and tokenize them as NFTs. Tokenization is the process by which the blockchain gives an item value by representing it with a cryptocurrency. With the introduction of NFTs and tokenization, any valuable and/or rare game asset could be tokenized into NFTs and then sold/traded with other assets, crypto, or real money.

Another thing that differentiates P2E gaming from traditional gaming is that gamers can become a stakeholder in the game after playing it long enough. Since they have invested their time playing the game and played it for hours, they can make decisions about improving the gaming experience and adding more features to it. They can also invest in the game and become its investor.

With rising P2E games, video games are no longer just for entertainment. Players can now compete and engage in leisure with the added incentive of a cash reward.

How to Earn through P2E

Surprisingly enough, you don't need to have a high end gaming setup to start earning with P2E gaming. You can play games as you normally play and earn in your free time too. Here are three main ways P2E works:

1. Sell In-game Assets: P2E games encourage gamers to create assets as NFTs. Assets can be skins, maps, or addons. These assets are then sold, bought or traded on the NFT marketplace. Rare assets have more value as compared to normal assets.
2. Earn Crypto through Gameplay: Gamers can play side quests, competitions and many tasks that are rewarded. Throughout the game, assets are either hidden in the gameplay or given as a reward for completing a mission or the game. Rewards are in the form of crypto, NFTs or in-game assets. The more you play the game, the more money you can earn.
3. Earn Crypto as Investment: Since the amount of total in-game assets is limited, the price gets jacked up as more people join the game. In-game assets can be treated as real world assets that you hold for a duration and sell when their price increases.

How do Companies Earn profit?

In laymen's terms, P2E lets gamers re-sell something they have bought over and over again. One important question you might ask is how is this a sustainable model for the company that develops these games?

The company earns profit in two ways. When the in-game asset is bought for the first time and then when it is sold to other gamers in the community. The process of generating an asset for the first time is called minting. The buyer(gamer) pays the transaction amount directly to the company. Later the company provides a marketplace to sell or trade these assets and takes a percentage of the entire transaction as a fee.

Assets that are sold initially are limited in quantity. As the popularity of the game increases and more gamers start trading assets, it becomes profitable for the company as well.

P2E Games to Try

Axie Infinity

Launched in 2018 by Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity is one of the biggest P2E games until now. The game is about collecting creatures and making them fight against each other. Monsters are called Axies and they are minted as NFTs.

With 2.8 million daily users and a total trading volume of 3.8 billion US Dollars, Axie Infinity is one of the most dominant games in the P2E space. In countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, it is played to support their families.

You can know more about the game on The Dapp List or play it from here.

Mobox

Mobox is another P2E game that combines automated optimized Defi yield farming and gaming NFTs to create a GameFi Metaverse. Mobox combines cross chain and cross platform functionality of NFTs and shows a true NFT interoperability. Mobox has its own metaverse, Momoverse, which empowers developers to create new games on the blockchain.

Players can create content or enjoy others' creations on any device. The developer team has created a one-of-a-kind ecosystem in which developers, players, and NFT collectors are rewarded for sharing and enjoying their work.

You can know more about the game on The Dapp List or play it from here.

Wrapping Up

Play to Earn or P2E is a game changing innovation in the gaming industry that rewards players for actively playing and participating in the game. The rewards are in the form of NFTs or cryptocurrencies that could be sold or traded in the marketplace.

The play to Earn ecosystem has revolutionized the gaming industry we knew. Gaming, which was considered a source of entertainment until now, has become a source of income for many gamers in the world.

With the latest technologies and innovations, the gaming industry will bring forward new concepts, games and user retention models that were never thought of before.

We will keep covering such interesting topics and adding more P2E games on our platform The Dapp List. Join us on Discord, Telegram and Twitter to stay updated!

Until then, Happy playing to earn! 😎🎮