Introducing Play-to-Earn Mechanics Into Popular Games

aryansachdev@newsletter.paragraph.com (Aryan Sachdev) — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 23:35:15 GMT

Play-to-Earn or P2E games are online games that allow players to turn in-game achievements and playing time into real-world money. These rewards can come in many different forms, like virtual assets, digital collectibles, or in some cases the game’s native cryptocurrency. At this point you may be asking yourself: why would any companies want to make their games PTE, and how would they ever make money off it? To address the first question, many game companies are starting to integrate this concept into their games so that players can own their assets in games that they have spent hours and hours earning. Still, how does this benefit the developers? By players believing in the game’s economy. When players are participating in the game marketplace, they are effectively creating value in the currency where there used to be little to none. By believing in the value of assets in the game, they are making money for themself and the people that created the game. This incentive of making money by just playing a video game also in turn increases the player base, forming a cycle benefitting the player and the developer.

The play-to-earn game market is rapidly growing, as shown by the 20x increase in one year. This exponential growth clearly points to current games adopting it into their ecosystems. In fact, we already see popular games incorporate auction systems into their core gameplay. For example, Minecraft’s most popular server Hypixel has an auction house where players can buy and sell valuable items for the server’s in-game currency. Hypixel takes a 1% fee on every transaction, further relating it to the play-to-earn business model. Currently, all of the items on the auction house are made by the server’s developers, but this could be easily altered to add some user-generated content (UGC) that would be used as the in-game NFTs.

Ironically, Mojang has recently published a statement banning any involvement with NFT buying and selling on their platform so that there can’t be an “entry barrier” to playing the game. Keep in mind this is all while they maintain the pricey 30-dollar price point for the 11-year-old game. This press release is a good example of how some of the gaming community is unwilling to accept this new concept, thinking that it goes too far from what the traditional video game should be. However, the developers at Roblox think otherwise.

Roblox is a game engine that hosts hundreds of thousands of community-built games that anyone can join and play for free. They also have a market on the native Roblox website where players can buy community-made skins and accessories on with the platform's currency, “Robux”. With all of this UGC already present, moving to a play-to-earn business model could soon be possible. Developers are already discussing letting users auction custom-made items that would be limited to a certain amount through the market, similar to how NFTs are sold and traded in real life. Users could make money playing games submitted by community members, and then use that money on the Roblox market, all while the company makes a small percentage of revenue on every trade and transaction. As the game’s audience is primarily children and teens, this new mechanic could draw new audiences including people interested in cryptocurrency and maybe even companies that want to get their brand out there for people to recognize.