In Web3, ownership may eclipse the popularity of play-to-earn

If you’ve paid even the slightest attention to the blockchain gaming space, you’re already familiar with a three-letter word that has come to define this growing gaming sector over the past years: play-to-earn. The world first heard about play-to-earn (P2E) games thanks to Axis Infinity, the massive blockchain gaming juggernaut that aimed to reward players with real money for their time and effort.

But it’s been a long five years since Axi first showed up on Terminal Online’s radar. Today, the game is still reeling from a massive $615 million dollar hack, and the recent crypto meltdown has resulted in a steadily dwindling player base with reports of near-exploitation of some of its players.

Despite these setbacks, blockchain game developers believe the space is open for a new industry titan to emerge. And it won’t offer games to players with play-to-earn messaging. Echoing the sentiments of Brazilian game developer Marc Venturelli, there is a growing belief in the blockchain gaming sector that, in fact, game-earning mechanics have no place in gaming.

So what will take its place? Play by yourself. Instead of offering monetary rewards as an incentive for players to play, there is a belief that giving players actual ownership of their game rewards, items and characters is the way forward.

When Blockchain Integration Goes Wrong

On the ground, the play-to-earn model has left many gamers worldwide holding the bag. When games shut down, and their community support wanes over time, players who have poured hundreds of hours into these games are left with nothing but wasted time and worthless collectibles. Incidentally, when F1 Delta Time — one of the oldest NFT games on the market — officially shut down in April 2022 due to licensing issues, owners of its licensed NFT cars suddenly saw their utility disappear. At least you could play with Hot Wheels. These NFT vehicles become useless as there is no play around them.

However, looking at F1 Delta Time from an optimistic perspective, it’s hard to put all the blame on the developers. Licenses are a tricky business, even more so in games that hope to serve as ongoing live-service platforms years after release. Sadly, you could do a lot worse than building an entire platform and in-game economy on a licensed product in terms of stability. That’s what the founders of NFT Worlds did Minecraft Using an (admittedly sophisticated) mod system. Now they have to do what their more successful contemporary Decentraland did – actually make a game.

Thankfully, things move fast on Web3 — and it looks like blockchain game developers are ready to try new things. While the NFT space as a whole is rightfully skeptical of Pixelmon’s second attempt at life after the massive backlash following its first mint, the controversial project’s new leadership has shown some understanding of the larger blockchain gaming space. For example, this second time around, Pixelmon’s new leadership is keenly aware of the increasingly negative optics associated with play-to-earn gaming. Instead, it’s shifted toward something that many developers in the space fully believe in: play-to-own.

Blockchain developers shy away from P2E

But what does ownership have to do with gaming? According to WAX’s Chief Gaming Officer Michael Rubinelli, it’s all. WAX has established itself as a true hub for web3 gaming, becoming a thought leader in the space. Now in an interview with nft, Rubinelli is deeply critical of the play-to-earn game model, calling it a “failed sad experiment”. Like Venturelli, Rubinelli believes that the introduction of real-world money-making possibilities into a game inevitably becomes a player’s main focus while playing the game. Instead of, you know, having fun.

“When you put ‘income’ in the title of a movement, that’s its singular focus,” he said. “Like anybody, I’m only going to care about ‘making’ the piece of it, right? And for that matter, you’re going to attract people who only care about profit or income. It’s really harmful. [blockchain gaming] It’s super painful to move. It’s terrible, it’s cancerous, it’s toxic. And not surprisingly, it is disastrous to fail, and everything that models itself after it will fail.”

But where does the anger towards gaming revenue come from? For starters, what bad actors can do is when they roll from a game to a game of earnings. “Every project has holes. Pull the rug. Some terrible things happen because they are created by people who are strict and mostly focused on profit for themselves, and maybe a little for the players. [The players that do profit do so] In an unstable [and] Unhealthy way, and it creates all this scar tissue and all this blowback, and it’s never going to work,” he said.

The worst offenders, Rubinelli claims, are developers who don’t even bother trying to make their games fun, instead focusing their marketing on the integration of blockchain technology, even in titles. “You have to start with the game. It should be fun to play. What’s the point if the game isn’t fun? Like ‘I hate it but I do it anyway.’ Well, that sounds like a job to me. It doesn’t sound like a video game. Sounds like a video job,” he said.

A model that works

According to Rubinelli, ownership is a concept familiar to gamers for generations. The mainstream gaming industry has yet to catch up. somehow Speaking on WAX’s recent title Blockchain Brawlers, Rubinelli highlighted the pedigree of one of its key developers and the impact his past works have had on pop culture at large.

“Dude, it’s a game designed by [Magic: the Gathering creator] Richard Garfield. inside [Magic]22 billion cards have been traded player-to-player since 1995. Let’s start with that premise,” he said. Instead of clearly modeling this upcoming title to entice players with the promise of financial gain, WAX instead set up a system that has been proven to work for decades. “When you win things and when you lose things, it’s your own thing that you want to lose. So when you lose it, you win it back,” he said.

Other developers in the space have big ideas for what the game-to-own could include. Don Norbury, studio head of the upcoming Web3 first-person shooter (FPS) title Shrapnel, believes that blockchain technology enables gamers to unlock deeper levels of in-game storytelling. Placing players in a damaged near-future where an asteroid collision rains the titular shrapnel onto Earth, players must compete against each other to collect scarce resources.

“We believe that strong world building — having your own themes and aesthetics that people can relate to and then, building their own stories within that — is important,” Norbury says in an interview with nft now. “We’re not making a sandbox-style game where you can build everything under the sun. You are going to make that thing Shrapnel the world. […] Our goals and our vision, when we look long term. The community is effectively accepted [the game.]”

Specifically, Norbury hopes that this upcoming title will provide players with that level of expression through the creation of the game’s map. Like the very popular Forge mod hello series, Norbury expects players to make full use of the tools Shrapnel Will supply. “A tipping point is where most maps are being played [will be] User generated. We think it will actually happen very quickly. [Eventually,] Our seasonal updates and sample content [will] Just be a blip on the radar. That’s how we know we’ve succeeded in doing our job,” he said.

A million dollar idea

But what happens when in an in-game map Shrapnel Is it viral? What if one of its players could create the next industry-defining game genre? They will own it – and have fewer hurdles to overcome to bring it into the mainstream. Both Norbery and Rubinelli show a keen understanding of this potential, since some of the world’s most played games began as mods for popular games.

Counter strike — Initially a half life mod — gave rise to a new breed of fast-twitch ultra-competitive FPS titles. PUBG – which started as a Arma 2 mod — was the first major battle-royal shooter. However, one game may outshine all others in Norbury’s view Shrapnel: DOTA 2.

Currently one of the most played games on Steam, DOTA 2 It started as a mod Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne. It reimagined real-time-strategy gameplay, integrated it with role-playing-game stat-based mechanics, and was designed as a fully competitive endeavor. But what makes it so revolutionary – and relevant of shrapnel Goals as a title – how it did it while providing a way to engage more deeply with millions of gamers battleship Character and lore.

Through the paradigm of play-to-own gaming, ideas can finally return to center stage before the promise of in-game rewards. “For us, a truly healthy self-sustaining, economy requires deep community input and value. And that’s a lot of content for us [players make] Up to the top of that bubble. This is a super valuable piece of input from the community. So when we say production input, we don’t just mean the people who are making the maps for example. We mean real valuable things that are being done by the community Shrapnel universe,” Norbury said.

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