In 2019 - 2021 we saw one of the most crazy things happen yet. That was the explosion of the p2e system and the metaverse which was primarily fueled by the covid shutdowns in which everyone was confined to their homes and not working. Throw in stimmy checks and people blew through money like crazy (Of which we are greatly paying for now but that's a story for another day)
We also saw games start to fuel full time "jobs" and NFT sales that were blowing up my big time names looking to cash in on the hot new trend.
Rolling out of lockdowns however everything took a very bear market and since then it really hasn't come back. While many games still operate there are countless others that closed up shop.
What this gave us as it always does is what are the solid games and platforms and what aren't so if you still have assets in a solid active game something like Splinterlands
Many of these games however ended up being extremely centralized much like you would get with a traditional game. Players didn't really get a say as to how they would developed and processes rolling forward.
The Game Has Changed
What was once boosted as p2e or play to earn is quickly changing now to pae Play and Earn or pao Play and Own. Which better sums up in my opinion what a game should be.
The game overall if solid and fun will fuel itself but the big benefit over it is you get to own, trade, buy and sell the assets you earn or buy within the game. You actully own them.
We see this as a thing in the web2 gaming space all the time where new skins come out but they are locked to an account. What if instead you got a NFT and you could simply transfer that NFT and own it to another account if you wanted to change names etc. Or perhaps list it up on the market and sell it off. This all makes logical sense and again if the games overall just fun that a main portion of your player base wouldn't be looking for a payout all the time but instead simply enjoy building their stacks of NFTs, showing them off and getting their friends involved.
The Shift Of Blocks
It feels like lately a lot of games are starting to develop their own chains to run their games. We have places like Gala games, Immutable, Splinterlands hinting at their own chain and many others starting to move to that change.
We are actully seeing this shift across many chains now as platforms are getting tired of paying hive fees for no reason in particular the Ethereum blockchain.
With that we are starting to see blockchains change their ways by trying to improve their own chains instead of relying on layer 2 chains to do the work for them.
This means in a few years we could see a number of layer 2 tokens phased out and the core chains regain their strength again.
The other side of it all could be a drastic shift up that we see in where major blockchains become a thing of the past and more and more smaller chains become their own thing. The question then would come down to how often the main chains got hit for data or if data would remain on the smaller exchanges with a heavy penalty for taking it off chain which could present an even heavier tax then the already hive fees from some blockchains.
The next few years will for sure be seeing some shakeups in this field. It's something to really watch if you're betting heavy into the classics right now of Ethereum and BTC.