Move-to-Earn collapsed, does Play-to-Earn have a future?

Domestic users are definitely a special existence in the blockchain industry. In terms of participation, Chinese users have absolute enthusiasm for participation in the entire circle, from the popular project meme Tugou project or the disgusting air project Pixiu plate. From public data, it can be found that Chinese users are ahead of users in other developed countries in terms of participation in blockchain projects. The main characteristics are strong profit-seeking, weak technical capabilities, and short-term operations.

The reason is that apart from the Chinese people's diligence, it is more that this industry has changed from investment to investment behavior with a gambling nature. This conclusion is not the opinion of a single person. From the fact that after the StepN statement blocked the IP and GPS positioning of mainland users, the corresponding shoes and GMT plummeted.

Looking at GMT from the data, the plunge has continued for a period of time since StepN issued the announcement. The fundamental question is, is this to Earn mode really healthy besides panic?

At the same time, people turn their attention to Play-to-Earn earlier than Move-to-Earn. Companies such as AxieInfinity and Decentraland, headed by Play-to-Earn, are all the rage in the cryptocurrency world. Although praise and criticism are mixed, they seem to be revolutionizing the gaming industry in a new and highly attractive way.

If you understand these models, you will know that users who enter the market early will often make a lot of money, and users who enter the market later will have lower profits, and there will be losses. Considering this from the perspective of investors This model is very unhealthy, because there is no balanced economic system to support this model.

P2E way to make money?

It can be said that all Play-to-Earn games require players to earn some money by playing games.

For example, a model like the one used by AxieInfinity requires players to make a large upfront investment in a game-specific NFT. After that, players can trade the in-game digital assets they get from the game with other game players at an appreciated price, and these assets will circulate with the market, driving the price of the corresponding currency.

In the cryptocurrency space, it has always been crazy. When the P2E concept was popular last year, Axie's AXS tokens will grow by more than 100,000% during 2021, while Decentraland's MANA tokens will grow by 6,000%. Investors use survivor bias to see the rate of return, and they may also calculate in their minds how much money I have made if I invested in the first place, but I hope you think about how much you will lose if you invest in the lowest point money. Putting aside the cloak of various concepts, its own economic model may not stand up to scrutiny, but it does not affect ordinary users' investment and trading of NFT. At this time, we need to consider a problem, the continuity of this game, and the possible investment risks for players.

What kind of game can make you money?

CryptoPunks has led to the vigorous development of the entire NFT industry. We can check the data on the professional NFT data analysis website. Except for the projects with a large brand effect in the head, there are very few projects that can maintain their capital without losing money in the huge database. The data in the blockchain game industry will also be the same, and most of them will not be able to recover the cost. The main reason for these reasons is that in addition to blindly imitating without innovation, the bigger reason may be that there is no balanced economic model, just like the beginning As I said, only users who have just entered the market can make profits with a high probability. Of course, the premise of making profits here is to hold tokens for a long time and participate in the game, excluding short-term operations.

An economic model that is more friendly to users who enter the game at any time is relatively healthy and may be more conducive to long-term development. The absence of new blood and poor game experience may be two other factors that affect game development besides the economic model. And fresh blood may be an endless loop. New users are very profitable, but not early users may not be able to make a profit or make little profit. The attraction to new users is relatively weak, and it is even more difficult to pay attention to the game experience. big obstacle.

Recognize the essence of P2E

To see the essence of P2E clearly, how does it make a profit? The answer is transaction fees. New players are required to pay to purchase in-game currency, which is the game's main source of income. The most attractive part of the game is the price appreciation of the original token, which is not much different from other tokens. Therefore, in the P2E field, games with a solid community and brand have more advantages than other small game developers.

Still take Axie as an example. Axie’s biggest competitive advantage is that it can grow its players at a rapid rate. According to a report by Bloomberg, most of Axie’s game players are from developing countries, and a common point in developing countries is that There is no shortage of population. And these people changed their respective lives through Axie, making these people more loyal.

Is the business model sustainable?

Possibly, but in fact there are many problems with P2E, because before players enter the game, they think about making money instead of playing the game, which will weaken the game experience. In this way, a big problem arises, whether the game should continue to develop, or choose to be bad, anyway, everyone is thinking about making money.

So, the only way to make the P2E model sustainable is to improve the quality of gamers. Purely for profit, it may detract from the entertainment and experience of actually playing. Once people pay too much attention to the price trend of tokens instead of the game itself, it may also mean death for a project.

In addition, a good game needs a constant influx of new players to maintain the business model and develop revenue.

Extend X-to-Earn

From the very beginning, the entire GameFi was full of speculation. Play-to-Earn failed to allow users to obtain income as simply and neatly as other DeFi products, but spent more time immersing themselves in it. Not only did they not enjoy the fun of the game, but also Can't make much money. Until the Move-to-Earn model represented by StepN, the industry has seen a new direction, more To-earn forms.

We can understand that this is a microcosm of the entire industry’s exploration of new directions. There are many modes of Play to Earn, Watch to Earn, and Write to Earn, which are characterized by poor user experience, generally strong profit-seeking users, and the possibility of rising in the later stages of the project. Sexuality is weak, early users may get a wave of bonuses and other characteristics.

write at the end

Of course, the early exploration of the industry requires constant trial and error. Innovation is the greatest competitiveness under the premise of learning from the mechanism. Blind imitation and copying have more disadvantages than advantages for itself or the development of the industry. We cannot ignore the innovation of StepN. But you can’t blindly tout how powerful it is. It is true that it can receivable 100 million-level income in just one month, which means that it is very successful at least in the short term, but the sharp drop caused by the withdrawal of users also shows its shortcomings. The economic model is the only Achilles' heel for those "successful projects" after the current stage of enthusiasm, and Paris will one day shoot that fatal arrow.

The above views represent the views of the author only, not the views of the platform. Investment is risky, please invest carefully!