Play-to-earn games are the most recent addition to the gaming industry's business models. By using blockchain technology, it is possible to combine gaming with the benefits of crypto. Play-to-earn (P2E) games essentially involve rewarding players for participating in a game.
There are different types of gaming business models;
The pay-to-play business model requires gamers to buy the game before they can download and play it.
Free-to-play games, as the name implies, do not require users to pay before downloading or playing a game.
Play-to-earn games are the most recent business model introduced in the gaming industry, rewarding players for playing or participating in in-game activities with real-world money, such as fiat, tradeable tokens, or cryptocurrency.
How Does the P2E Gaming Model Work?
Most P2E games offer native tokens or cryptocurrencies for in-game purchases in the form of NFTs. These tokens or NFTs can be traded between players inside the game's marketplace or on external NFT marketplaces and exchanges.
The traditional gaming ecosystems followed a closed-end model where players had to pay for the game or in-game assets, then dedicate a lot of time to grinding and unlocking advanced levels and earning in-game assets.
But once they are done playing the game, or the game shuts down for some reason, players cannot transfer, access, or sell these assets, and all of their hard work and grinding go in vain.
When a user plays a P2E crypto game and unlocks in-game assets such as avatars, weapons, tokens, virtual land, and other NFTs, they can either use these assets or earn money by trading them on marketplaces and exchanges.
Using Axie Infinity as an example, the player uses ETH to buy Axies, a Pokemon-like NFT creature. Players will earn SmoothLovePotion (SLP) tokens. SLP acts as a kind of experience point spent when breeding new Axis.
Unlike traditional games, players have full ownership of in-game assets and can transfer these assets within a game's virtual world and into another world or sell these assets for real money.
The Future of the P2E Crypto Gaming Industry
The opportunity to earn by playing games is already opening up new and innovative ways of playing and earning together, and gaming guilds are one of them.
Several gaming studios, like Ubisoft, have already started integrating blockchain-based assets into their games.
The future looks bright for play-to-earn games, but to become a sustainable business model for the long term, they must surpass the entertainment and engagement threshold offered by existing gaming models.
Like free-to-play and subscription-based games, play-to-earn games will also find their place in the gaming ecosystem and become a dominant model in the future.
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