Axie Infinity and other play-to earn games became immensely popular in the COVID-19 crisis, which gave millions of Filipino video game enthusiasts a way to live.
Many saw the rise of P2E as a blessing. In 2020, Philippines’ gross domestic product fell 9.6%, which was its largest drop in over 70 years according to an IHS Markit study. P2E was a popular choice for thousands because so many Filipinos were out of work. Axie Infinity’s team reported in March 2020 that more than 29,000 new players from the Philippines signed up to the game, out of 70,000 new sign-ups worldwide in the same month.
Axie Infinity offers players a means to generate a steady income by simply playing the game and fulfilling achievements. What’s more, Axie’s community provided a solution to the requirement that players purchase an NFT before they can start playing, offering scholarships to new players in return for a slice of their income.
P2E’s rapid growth in low-income countries has been well documented, but the real breakthrough for the industry will only come when it manages to tap the traditional community of video game players who’re not motivated primarily by earnings. Statista states that 66% gamers primarily use video games to relax and decompress.
NFT-based video games don’t offer the same variety of games as traditional games. They have more diverse titles with rich plotlines and highly-realistic graphics. Grand Theft Auto and other immersive sandbox games offer gamers the chance to escape reality completely, to be immersed in another world. They can also put aside their mundane lives to play as the protagonist in engaging stories. The biggest P2E games don’t do this – to put it bluntly, the gameplay in Axie Infinity is about as dull as it gets, and until the industry does something about this, conventional gamers who play for fun are unlikely to want to get in on it.
P2E Games of the Top Tier are on Their Way
Combining P2E, low barriers to entry and exciting gameplay is the winning combination. It is a great thing that some of the most exciting P2E games are aware of this.
Battle Drones will soon be available on the Solana cryptocurrency. It is a 3D, isometric shooter that shares similarities to classics like Fortnite or Call of Duty. Video game purists will be eager to hear that Battle Drones’ developers have built the game using Unreal Engine, a popular and widely-used game engine developed by Epic Games. Using Unreal Engine, developers can create massive virtual worlds with incredibly rich graphics and smooth motion, meaning an altogether different level of realism than is possible with today’s P2E games.
With Battle Drones, the developers plan to launch with a player-vs-environment mode called Onslaught where players will be able to win rewards such as BATTLE tokens and drone parts. There’ll be a community leaderboard too, so players can chart their progress and fight for recognition among their peers. To enhance players’ experience, Battle Drones plans to add more game modes, such as multiplayer, co-op and tower defense, or even drone racing.
You can customize your drone NFTs using parts from Drones Bones Store. Or you can win by beating other players and taking on challenges. They also plan to hold regular Battle Royale matches between players, in which many people will compete.
A second promising title that’s aiming to turn the P2E dynamic on its head is Plutonians, a forthcoming MMORPG Metaverse space strategy game that will have elements of strategy RPG, shooter action, multiplayer PvE, and social alternate reality games.
Plutonians is built using a combination of Unreal Engine 5 and WebXR and will take place in an enormous metaverse that’s accessible through multiple screens including augmented reality, virtual reality, web and mobile.
This will be an adventure space game that resembles Elite. Players can choose to play as a pirate or loot other ships. You can trade with your fellow spacefarers at the closest cantina. The players will be required to search for items such as spaceships, technology and weapons that are more advanced and powerful, and to travel through the vast Plutonians universe in order to discover new worlds.
What does this mean for guilds?
Battle Drones, Plutonians and other new titles promise to make P2E gaming more accessible to gamers who care about the gameplay and not just how it looks. The ability to earn a living will merely become a bonus for gamers seeking an escape from the grind of their daily lives, but one that’s potent enough that it could well become the norm, with P2E aspects eventually incorporated into most new video game releases.
It becomes more difficult to predict the longevity of P2E games, which could be a problem for gaming guilds like Avocado Guild and Crypto Gaming Guild.
Players without sufficient financial resources can access NFTs through guilds, which are vital to the success of the P2E economic. Yield Guild Games and its rivals have amassed vast collections of NFTs that they rent to scholars in exchange for a slice of their income, but it’s a model with inherent risks – if a game loses popularity, those NFTs will quickly lose their value, to the detriment of the guild that’s invested in them.
As P2E shifts its focus onto gameplay and newer, more exciting games constantly enter the fray, we’ll likely see a shift in guild’s strategies. Balthazar is an example of this. Balthazar, a self-governing autonomous decentralized organization that is similar to other guilds but with a very unique business model, is quite different. Rather than buy NFTs, it rents tokens from individuals before loaning them to its most promising “wizards”.
Balthazar sees itself as the “Airbnb” of P2E gaming guilds, its chief executive John Stefanidis told Stockhead in a recent interview. “We want to stay as asset-light as possible,” he said, explaining that it’s impossible to predict which P2E games will endure.
Balthazar is working on a second model with Balthazar buy, which will soon launch a marketplace for investors. Balthazar is going to recommend NFTs to be bought by investors. When they buy those tokens the company will then rent them to them and lend them to their wizards. Stockhead was told by Stefanidis that it makes perfect sense, as Balthazar has the ability to find high-yielding NFTs.
It is only a matter time before the P2E gaming industry becomes saturated with hundreds of high-quality games. These top-tier titles will not only make the game more fun, but they also have huge communities. Perhaps Battle Drones or Plutonians might one day be recognized. Balthazar and other progressive guilds will profit, offering anyone who wishes to get involved the chance to participate.
Image: Pixabay