# Play To Earn Needs The Metaverse By [Stephen Edelstein](https://paragraph.com/@fkthat) · 2022-05-16 --- **Play to Earn Needs The Metaverse** **A new generation of Play to Earn games is promising to bring fun and immersive metaverses into blockchain gaming. If they succeed, they will do much more than hook gamers and have solid sales figures. The Play to Earn revolution promises to literally be life changing.** **The dream is that players will make impressive earnings while simultaneously building an in-game identity. If it works, a gamer’s in-game life could become as important to them as their regular life. This has never been done before! Beyond the technical challenges of making these games function on computers and with the blockchain, developers face an even greater social-engineering challenge. P2E metaverse games are creating complex economies with interminable player interactions. The game design must be balanced like an ecosystem. Zoom in and the details are impossibly complex; zoom out and the big picture can be wrapped up by three main principles. These principles are accessibility, intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards.**  **Accessibility is fundamental to the success of Play to Earn. Simply put, games must either be free or affordable to play. The conventional game industry is dominated by either free to play games (that offer in-game purchases) or blockbuster AAA games that cost $60 to own. Games that are free to play can expect to have a larger initial player base than an expensive game. This gives free games an advantage because community is what drives the success of any project. More players will lead to a healthier community. Of course, accessibility is all for naught if the game is not well liked. But, it is important to emphasize the advantage that accessible games have over inaccessible ones.** **Many current blockchain games have accessibility issues due to expensive NFTs. In order to play Axie Infinity, Wonderhero, Spidertanks, War Riders or many other NFT-based blockchain games, you must first purchase an NFT to use in game. This would be tenable if the games were shooting for the AAA model of a $60 purchase price. Unfortunately, the cost to enter most NFT-based blockchain games is hundreds of dollars.**  **To combat the affordability crisis that many blockchain games face, scholarship systems have been instituted. First pioneered by Axie Infinity, scholarships allow veteran players to lend NFTs to new players with a profit-sharing arrangement. For example, a seasoned gaming collector could loan a team out to a new player with an agreement to split in-game winnings 50-50. Eventually, the new player could earn enough to purchase a team of their own. Thus, they’d get access to the game for no upfront cost.**  **While this arrangement has been lauded for improving accessibility to expensive existing games, it is a quick fix for flawed game design. It would be best if games kept accessibility high regardless of changing market conditions. More importantly, it’s far more equitable to have an accessible game for everyone rather than a scholarship system which gives richer players passive income. Wealth disparity has many negative externalities in society. In a metaverse, whale players could become ‘overpowered’ or gobble up governance tokens. This is the gaming equivalent of gerrymandering! Having ‘all’ the governance tokens gives one undue influence over DAOs and game policy. Thus, it is imperative for game designs to factor in low (or free) entry prices.** **The second core-principle of Play to Earn economies is intrinsic rewards. Games must be FUN! Players should enjoy playing the game without any consideration to how much they are earning. Without fun, many players will burn out and stop playing all together. Without players a game is dead. Another interesting thing that comes with fun is a diversification of the player base.**  **Enjoyable games have a mix of casual gamers and hardcore gamers. Casual gamers by definition spend less time in the game. They are motivated by having a recreational experience. Within a game’s economy, they are tantamount to tourists or consumers. They will bring money into the game economy without the expectation of taking anything valuable out. In contrast, hardcore gamers will be playing hours on end with an eye towards extracting all possible rewards for themselves. These players will make up the most dedicated part of a game’s community—it is important to keep them entertained. If hardcore players get burnt out, watch out! They will be responsible for much of the selling pressure on a game’s earned tokens. To prevent selloffs, a fun game with the right systems in place will convince the hardcore base to reinvest in the game. Reinvesting will improve long term earning potential which motivates players to stick with the game. Speaking of earnings, this brings us to the third core principle of P2E economies: extrinsic rewards.** **Extrinsic rewards—what a player earns—must be carefully considered. Any P2E game needs to have a balanced reward systems that creates a long-term sustainable economy. Inflation is the main fear here. If too many players earn too many rewards too fast, the rush to bring those rewards to market will crash the game’s economy. Many current blockchain games have hyper-inflationary structures. The more players play, the greater the supply of the rewards token. A positive feedback loop of hyperinflation can then spiral as the increasing token supply continually lowers prices; the more players play, the greater the inflation of a token; the greater the inflation rate, the more players are forced to play to maintain real earnings.** **Token utility is a way for games to combat inflation and selling pressure. A game’s  aforementioned hardcore players must be given plenty of options for reinvestment after they earn tokens. Depending on the game’s marketplace, players can buy land, equipment, vehicles, upgrades etc. These items can give gameplay greater depth as well as enhance a player’s future earning potential. For example, an upgraded storage item might allow one to collect more winnings per adventure. Another great token utility is staking. When a player stakes their tokens, they essentially lend them to the developers for a set duration of time. At the end of that period, the tokens are returned with interest. This obviously combats selling pressure by removing tokens from the circulating supply. It is also gives players incentives for holding the token. Thus, there is the possibility that staking rewards will help players see their tokens as a long-term asset.** **When looking at the big picture, token utilities are ways of ‘reprograming’ player behavior. Essentially, the game developers are desperate to find ways to make players use their tokens instead of sell their tokens. Sure it’s called a Play to Earn game; but if the players simply earn and cash out, the game economy will never survive.**  **The ultimate solution for a sustainable in-game economy is harnessing the power of the metaverse. Here games will go beyond the simple structure of ‘beat a level, win some rewards.’ The epic sci-fi universe of Star Atlas has space travel with many different planets, asteroids and space stations to visit. This leads to a multitude of ‘employment opportunities’ in Star Atlas’ metaverse. For example, players can act like prospectors and look for ore or good tracts of land on distant planets. They risk their time and their character’s safety on the journey. But the game is designed to give them a reasonable chance at rich rewards. These kinds of gameplay choices feel authentic and liberating for the players. No two players will have the same experience and the all-important video game metric of ‘replayability’ will be high.**  **This is where P2E transcends the work/play dynamic. Yes, players are choosing paths based on potential earnings. But the individual can take on the identity of a prospector and feel the authentic highs and lows of that career arc. In other words, their gameplay experience won’t feel transactional or forced. Again, the ability to replay the game will be endless. Think of the possibilities! Just within Star Atlas, one could be a bounty-hunter, mercenary, pilot, pirate, farmer, and much more. The point is that ‘replayability’ is a major component of sustainability for the P2E economy.** **Another advantage of the metaverse-based economy is opportunities for player cooperation. In order to defeat the most difficult and most rewarding challenges of a game, players will form clans, connect on Discord and organize raids. Big Time is one of the metaverse games focusing on this raid dynamic; it’s taking its queues from the success of World of Warcraft. Cooperation and organization is where players can lean into their game identities; this social component of the gameplay loop allows players to ditch their analog life and reinvent themselves among their digital peers. As seen in many current games, bonding after a successful mission is often just as fun as the gameplay itself. Cooperation and connection will enrich a player’s experience. This is the core of community. Through the metaverse, friendships will be made, game communities will flourish, and many players will get a sense of belonging that they lack in their ‘real’ lives. Life in the metaverse could fully blur the lines between work and play. Thus, designing a game that requires cooperation is another key to the long-term health of a P2E game.**  **The gaming industry is huge. Video games generated over $180 billion in revenue in 2021. It is estimated that 2.77 billion people played games last year. These numbers serve as motivation for blockchain game developers. What if blockchain gaming took even a small piece of that pie? That’s a lot of potential earnings for gamer and developer alike. For web3 idealists, the potential is so much more than just profit. Gaming COULD be a vehicle of mass crypto-adoption. A massively successful game would onboard millions into the decentralized, tokenized future. This would be a welcome win for the blockchain industry which has seen difficult price action since November. Thus, many eyes are watching this new generation of blockchain games with great interest. Playing and earning in the metaverse could cascade into one of the biggest changes in society since the invention of the internet.** --- *Originally published on [Stephen Edelstein](https://paragraph.com/@fkthat/play-to-earn-needs-the-metaverse)*