What’s your biggest attraction towards GameFi projects? if we are being honest, play-to-earn will form majority of the answers…probably 100% of the answers. Axie infinity’s success quickly influenced an outpour of decentralized gaming projects with earning opportunity for gamers and investors alike. Binance smart chain’s ‘Cryptoblades’ posted astonishing price gains as users flocked the platform to play the game which rewards them with tradable tokens and Non-Fungible Tokens. Success stories from players littered the crypto space as more people flocked the platform. A ton of other similar platforms would quickly emerge, a new trend was birthed! Lot of users testified to earning more than their annual salary from simply playing ‘games’ on the blockchain.
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Hypes, disappointments and inefficiencies; many of the new and existing blockchain-based games failed to meet up with users’ expectations; financial and technological expectations. Technically, most of these games were far from properly developed. Users would describe them as ‘3D casinos’. You’d expect these shortcomings for projects built on an impatient community of users with high hopes of turning their financial conditions around by simply playing games on blockchain platforms.
“It’s a scam!” says users whose expectations weren’t met by the new game released by developers after just three weeks of development. But technical issues are hardly the main disappointment. Lamentations steam mainly from users’ inability to earn as much as expected from the games. In some cases, users run into losses leading to more intense ‘scam’ allegations. GameFi projects easily suffer huge price loss and endless backlash. Investors, disappointed with the low earning potentials continue to air their views in the sternest way, further confirming the fact that cryptocurrency enthusiasts are in fact more concerned about the earnings, and not the gameplay itself. Well, it’s reasonable.
The direct juxtaposition of gaming and earning in GameFi projects haven’t really worked best as the normal human greed gets the better of these projects. little shortcomings results in heavy price drops and loss of interest. In a space where investors are quick to suspect ‘scams’ (and rightly so); emerging technologies like GameFi faces a huge war between good and Bad…and the ugly.
But, how far has GameFi gone exactly? I’ll say, ‘very far’. Unfortunately, this is hard to realize when players are more focused on earning and will gladly shove aside a good game if it doesn’t offer a good earning opportunity. Passion aside, GameFi platforms has attracted more users in a very short period time than most popular games. EA Sports’ FIFA21 recorded an astonishing 31 million players on both PC and consoles, an additional 6 million players from its previous record. Taking into consideration, the global and resource availability, GameFi platform has outperformed even the most popular football game. Axie infinity has reportedly recorded an excess of a million daily players!
This impressive growth is however, influenced by earning opportunities as human greed comes into play once again. Despite the enormous number of daily users, players on GameFi platform hardly complain about technological shortcomings if the earning is good. To be fair, most people would do the same, why complain when the money is good? A rhetoric with a simple answer.
While most mainstream games don’t have direct earning opportunities, players develop a way to make external earnings by contributing to the games’ growth. Popular ‘Call of duty’ players make tangible income streaming their gameplay of streaming platforms. Game critics and analysts make good incomes as well. In plain words, players flock to these games for the real fun they drive from just playing the game. In contrast, GameFi’s Play-to-earn gets rid of the fun and users care least about the game play and how fun they are…the money will bring the fun, lol.
Will GameFi do better without play-to-earn? Well, YES and NO. Withdrawing earning opportunities from decentralized gaming platforms will allow faster technological growth, however, an opposite effect is expected on adoption as fewer people will play without earning; very few. NO, for short term and Yes, for long term. Taking off earning opportunities will inevitably reduce participation, but on the brighter side, the pressure to deliver in short period will be taken off the shoulders of game developers. Project development will as well move more smoothly as price talks won’t impede development. On the long run, the release of well developed games with really fun and interesting gameplay will drive even more users.
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I was thinking about that but I couldn't put words into it... I think that's the reason I'm still playing Splinterlands, it has a good gameplay/earning balance, so much that in the days I only lose, I think of the fun(?) I'm having trying to come up with a better strategy.
I still think these games should be fun first and investment after that, if it's not fun, the money will go after a while.