A simple search for “Axie Infinity” on YouTube shows how much the community focuses on winning and less on playing. Every investment has risk. So are Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies just a giant pyramid scheme? While it's possible, no one can say for sure. It remains to be seen if the world of cryptocurrency will generate untold riches for everyone who buys, or if it will eventually collapse and leave most owners in the dust.
As with any investment, do your homework and be careful. Because, by nature, all investments involve risks. My mental wealth from the history of scams is disturbing and I feel that if there were a night of questions somewhere and the only category was “scams”, I would steal money from people as if I were Madison Cawthorn posting about going “to the moon”. Square Enix recently sold its Tomb Raider and Deus Ex franchises to invest money and time in NFT scams in its next titles.
I'm surprised by the Tomb Raider game because those games were excellent. But it's not that surprising with Deus Ex, since cryptocurrencies are the type of technological garbage that games warn about. STEPN is the latest money-making game that captures people's attention, reaching 3 million active users in record time. Millions of dollars have been invested in the game to win games and major publishers, such as Ubisoft and Square Enix, are adding up.
Microtransactions were a reasonable start, as they occasionally added great content to games. For example, if the NFTs or chips you win could be used in several games, you'll be less likely to pick them up. Ever since the concept of horse armor, gaming companies have been trying to find a way to get people to effortlessly funnel more money into a game they already own. Because you earn in-game items such as NFTs and tokens, you can easily take them to another game or sell them for real benefits.
Play to Win allows players to earn in-game items in the form of NFTs and tokens that they can then redeem for profits in the real world. The supply of chips increases because current players withdraw them (the supply increases) instead of re-investing them in the game (reducing the supply). The gaming-to-win games that I've tried are more like DeFi protocols with a gaming user interface than real games. Good article, I agree that it's paying to play and then maybe winning and now they're trying to change the jargon to “Play and Win”, I think that web3 games need to learn from mobile games and how it was an appropriation of money initially until F2P mobile games such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile to Honor of Kings appeared and now they dominate in revenue because the games are very fun and free with a lot of incredible content, events, etc.
There have already been a lot of games in the last five years that were specifically designed with the promise that people will earn money while playing. Fortnite prints money because it allows people to pay to customize their characters and in-game items without affecting the balance of the game. The Axie team is working on a free version of the game along with other efforts, but it's unclear if players will return. Manticore Games is the developer and operator of Core, a metaverse platform for people who want to build virtual worlds.
