The Golden Age of Play-to-earn Games
In the age of Industry 4.0, technology can become obsolete in the blink of an eye. Video games are no exception. If game developers do not pay attention to market trends and prepare to embrace new technologies, failure will follow.
Recently, we have witnessed a rapid increase in the price of AXS (Axie Infinity Shard), the native token in the ecosystem of the game Axie Infinity.
(source: from the internet)
For Blockchain developers and veteran game developers, Axie Infinity's storming all over the Internet has been predicted. The question is, what will be the trend after Axie Infinity?
If you've ever played through any play-to-earn games, you'll find that they are not very... game-like. The most convincing evidence is that veteran gamers and famous streamers have not even batted an eye at any of them.
The reason can be fairly simple: The approach of those play-to-earn games does not start with the game itself but with blockchain. They also did not target genuine gamers in the first place. Cryptocurrency investors and speculators were their true prime customers.
(source: from the internet)
Thus, to optimize the earning of cryptocurrency for the community of users, who are not “yet” gamers, it is more reasonable to build gameplay that is as simple as possible based on blockchain applications. However, a gameplay system without depth will fail to meet the requirements of those investors who look for a more long-term and sustainable investment.
If the theory is right, we can predict the next trend. That is, instead of the old approach of building games on top of blockchain applications, next-generation blockchain game developers will first build a rich gameplay system, with an engaging storyline then integrate the application of blockchain into games to add real money-making features for gamers on the platform. This way, they can aim at both the cryptocurrency investment community and genuine gamers.
(source: from venturebeat.com)
This direction will certainly help elevate the gaming industry to the same level as other matured industries.
Before delving into what blockchain can bring to traditional games, we need to take a look at what traditional games have done. We can look at the case of pay-to-win games. Even though not always dubbed as pay-to-win, gamers of the Western community may be no stranger to the success of Clash of Clans, Dungeon Keeper, APB Reloaded, and Warframe. Despite not being too popular in the West, pay-to-win games were a big hit in a few Asian markets, especially China, Vietnam, and Korea. It propelled many game startups in these countries during the late dot-com bubble into tech startup unicorns.
(source: from the internet)
Right from the early days of these games, their communities have started to buy and sell from in-game items to game accounts with real money. Many jobs (either full-time or part-time) were born from these pay-to-win games: From account renting, account lending to “raise” accounts to sell for money.
However, hacking, identity forgery, difficulty in item pricing, and developer transparency issues have always been the chain keeping the video game industry from becoming a major industry.
Blockchain is the key to solving this problem. First of all, the combination of blockchain and games will bring the gaming industry a never-before-seen number of users. These are investors who have never played video games, and vice versa, the financial market will also benefit from billions of additional customers, who are hard-core gamers.
Next are the solutions that blockchain has already delivered to many other industries: theoretically indestructible security; the ability to turn in-game money that used to be valuable only in the game into cryptocurrencies that can be swapped or traded with other non-game cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDT in a seamless way; the ability to KYC users while ensuring their privacy; the ability to involve community support in game development; and finally, the ability to ensure transparency from the developer.
In short, once the game is integrated with blockchain, the exchange units in the game can go beyond the boundaries of the game, beyond the boundaries of the gaming industries, and even beyond geographical boundaries.
If a game is truly valuable and has a large enough player base, a whole global ecosystem around it will form, as long as the developer and the community have a consensus to expand the market of the game.
(source: https://legendfantasywar.com/)
So what are game developers waiting for? Axie Infinity has shown the boundless potential of blockchain games by showing a dazzling number: $2.5 billion - its token total market capitalization. But it is only the beginning. Next-generation games with blockchain integration can easily break this record.
This is an inevitable trend. We are living in the golden age of the gaming industry. The upcoming period will witness the launch of the most ambitious games we will have ever seen.