Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice and I’m just sharing my opinion about the subject. If play to earn games are what you’re planning to dive into it’s still best to do your own research.
I know I’ve made a few posts on the subject with snippets of my stand between these two types of play to earn games. There’s plenty to talk about when it comes to this new era of use case for the blockchain beyond the extension of the NFT trend. Whatever type of game you want to sink your money on, be sure to have a clear mindset on whether you want to play it for fun with a side incentive of kickbacks or just trying to gain some profits. Those are two different objectives and it’s greedy to attempt to gain both perks especially when the game can have it’s own economic downturn.
We have a limited pool of cryptogames to choose from out there and the vast majority of gameplay shows these are the games we wouldn’t bother installing on our devices, it’s not unlikely to think that the main selling point of the game was the promise of return on investment that got us to even look at it longer. While this still holds true for today, it may not be what we’ll see tomorrow. Crypto is gradually gaining more attention to the mainstream whether it’s a bull or a bear market there’s still money to be made.
So what happens if gaming industries started entering into the scene and released their own playtoearn games loaded with content you would usually see players whale for without any promise of returns? It’s more realistic to think that in the coming years, we would be seeing games that have a full story campaign, immersive lore, and different ways to entertain the player base.
If you haven’t been in touch with the Japanese mobile gaming industry where Gacha is a thing, a lot of these types of games are pumped out yearly because mobile platforms cost less to develop and the return on investment is fast. A possible limitation we got from bigger players in in the industry from entering is the uncertainty of profit and local regulations. Crypto isn’t without it’s issues with the law and due to the nature of the flow of money so it’s risky business trying to invest the company name and capital. Furthermore, blockchain devs aren’t cheap as far as I can tell. It’s a niche skill.
The distinction I got between telling a game is a passive or active one is based on the amount of time and effort you got to put into it to progress. And the longer you spend time trying to get somewhere the more the game leans on your active participation.
| Active Game | Passive Game |
|---|---|
| It's a grinding game where more effort means faster returns | It's an idle game where you wait for results and earn |
| There is pressure to be competitive or you miss out of major rewards | You play at your own pace but incentivized if you do want to be competitive. |
| You spend an average of half an hour or more on it daily | It only takes a few minutes to check what's up and you're all set to do something else productive. |
| You need to log in daily to maximize your rewards | If you feel sick or not into playing, you still get the rewards of playing idly. |
| The rate of your return on investment will depend on how much you're willing to spend time and effort on it | You can let things play out by themselves in due time with little clicks as possible and still arrive at your goals |
| The community has less tendencies to dwell into a dick measuring system where my rank is higher than yours | Rank matters less, you still get fair share of rewards from the pool relative to how much you've put into the game |
An active or passive game can still incorporate the features found from their opposites. Like letting your digital asset be leased for passive income when you’re not interested in playing and just banking on capital appreciation for those assets. An idle game can incorporate some limited time event where they it would reward players to be more active in a specific time frame and produce results.
My bias is spending more time exploring on idle games because it gives me more time to do other productive things than spend hours playing active games I’m only in for the financial rewards. I get the hype with active games as you can see your accomplishments as soon as rewards start coming in after winning a match. That dopamine rush shouldn’t be underestimated as it fuels the instant gratification people may want.
There are mechanisms in place to prevent the drain of the reward pool like having limitations in the form of “energy” from active games. This is somewhat an illusion as players would have to spend more time to maximize their gains but everyone still has a cap relative to the tiers they are in. While this feature is understandable to prevent more printing of tokens and increase the selling pressure, it just baffles me that some players don’t realize this conditioning.
I don’t have to put up with that from playing dCity though, once I see the pending rewards after I installed some new cards on the game I can reasonably expect to get the maximum returns for those actions. It doesn’t work for grinding games, there’s a quota you have to fulfill to get those perks and these take precious time. It’s good for people that have a lot of time to burn though.
While people who aren’t into the playtoearn model can just dismiss it’s potential, remember that there’s still money to be made and these models became popular because they work. It answers a demand an average person would want, how to make money using the most fun and instantly gratifying way with less work and at the comforts of your leisure.
Just my speculation but it’s not far fetched to think other money making schemes for devs under these models is studying player behavior and selling off the data third party marketers. Nothing new really, it’s been done for quite a while now with the conventional games one installs from Apple and Google playstore lowkey.
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When Investing in Play to Earn Cryptogames Become Less Fun
If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.