The advent of blockchain games, working on the principle of P2E, revealed the problem of inflation that has long existed in classic games. The difference, however, is that now this inflation is much more difficult to disguise — the situation with it is visible in stock reports.

At the same time, many contradictions were inherent in the process. For example, an online game must, by definition, create some resources out of thin air, this is essentially its direct task — to create game value for things that have no objective value. And this is a disaster in the language of economics. The second important point is that the game always works with the irrational behavior of the player. And it is rather strange to expect from the player that he will simultaneously behave irrationally, making an impulsive purchase, and then the same player will become rational and calmly take losses, getting rid of the unnecessary and lost in the value of the asset.

It is also a curious fact that even if not originally intended to participate in the market speculation, game values will always do so, since the free possibility of reselling allows you to play with them in the “Greater fool”, which for many is a much more interesting game than the one that developers offer to play.

The consequences of the temporary hype and subsequent inevitable inflation are very unfortunate — a game in which an interesting economy that motivates players to do something useful, gain new experience, etc., remains with the economy killed by a jump in the hype. At the same time, it can no longer be saved by the methods adopted in classic games since the blockchain inherently implies some restrictions for manipulation by developers.

What should developers do in such a situation?

First, let’s go through the methods that definitely will not work in this situation:

Now a little about the game parameters that we want to get. Those must be:

Considering the given restrictions and a need for a high degree of reliability, one of the possible solutions is the Wipe Threat. Wipe is needed to guarantee the destruction of the savings of the most thrifty players. There will always be such players, and blockchain restrictions make it impossible to clean up these reserves, except to untie the game tokens themselves from the game. At the same time, as we remember, the ideology of a regular wipe does not suit us for the reasons described in the corresponding paragraph, so we need to find the correct mechanism for launching a wipe. Ideally, a wipe should be possible, but there is also a chance it will not happen soon enough or happen at all.

Obviously, in such a situation, it is impossible to give the control of the wipe to either the developers or the DAO, since on the one hand, it will create a point where players can put pressure on it, and it will also strongly centralize the management of the game. The ideal option here would be to give a choice to players and not in the form of a regular vote, but in the form of a set of actions, each of which adds or removes the wipe approach.

We, as developers, set some criteria for a fun game that we have chosen and create mechanisms that infinitely push back the wipe if the current state of the game meets these criteria, or vice versa, bring the wipe closer and launch if the game does not meet them.

For example, we bring the wipe moment closer if the accumulation of players is above some line. And we’re also pushing back the wipe if players are engaging in some activity that should be burning game resources.

Thus, if the majority of players endlessly accumulate resources, they will quickly be punished by a wipe and lose all their progress. But if the community of players burns resources in various activities, then the game can exist within one session for an infinitely long time.

Of particular interest is the impact on this concept of the ability of one player to punish another. This capability is expected to have several implications:

As you can see, each of the listed points can be a potential source of non-trivial situations, especially when they act together. Perhaps, there are moments of calm and general pacifism, but the more interesting will be the sudden change in the aggregate state of the game to the “war of all against all” mode.

Everything described above shows that this approach to solving inflation, in addition to solving the problem itself, with the introduction of additional mechanisms, will provide players with a sufficient amount of fun. Naturally, such an approach will require high skill of developers, a high-quality study of all possible risks, and a full disclosure of the possibilities of the game mechanics.

At the same time, it will ultimately depend on the players how the game will go on: from their speed of learning, evolution, the ability to create communities and set themselves the right and long-term goals, the ability to take responsibility.

On the other hand, why do you need blockchain in games if not for all of this!

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