Applying five seconds of critical thought to the concept of Play To Earn, you inevitably arrive at the question "Where does the money people are earning come from?" and the answer must be that it comes from eternally recruiting new players into the game, at a high base cost, and then siphoning that money off them in a very inefficient, diffuse fashion while trying to get more players in. Forever.
It's the most obvious pyramid scheme I've ever witnessed, with the only new twist being that it's a video game instead of makeup or knives being sold.
It will work repeatedly, over and over and over again.
Every new pyramid scheme videogame will blow the fuck up instantly as the NEW THING because at least 100k people will want to get rich off of it, those people will go about mass advertising the game and talking it up.
Same story will happen again very soon. I guarantee it.
Time for a communist grift to fund some shit. Too bad it seems like the people repeatedly running the scams all seem to know each other and game each other’s shit
It's really ultimately determined by the numbers you can push. I would focus on making something that has the kind of novelty Twitch would like, you wanna hit a niche like Gangbeasts, Getting Over It, Mount Your Friends and Genital Jousting.
Hit the right notes and you can use shock value/weirdness in combination with bros that wanna get rich as the springboard for massive initial takeup via twitch audiences.
Or take the idea offline and consider how you can implement a realworld AR game with features similar to Pokemon GO as an app.
Some real grift value in there for people with the right skillset. Every mechanic and idea you need already exists you're just turning it into a pyramid scheme.
Problem is you're not just doing this to the finance bros, you're doing it to everyone else that gets dragged into the fever too.
I don’t think this is the case. Take free to play games for example. These games certainly benefit from an expanding user base, but the majority of their income comes from a minority of players, the so-named whales, who spend inordinate amounts of money on the game.
Play to Earn games just take this model and instead of keeping all the profits, they redirect some to the players who don’t spend as much money in the game. This has the benefit of increasing the player base, thus enticing more whales and sustaining the economy.
The problem that I’ve seen is that many play to earn games are also pay to win. This means that the whales are pulling a larger portion of profits back out of the game than is sustainable, thus devaluing currency for players who don’t spend as much money and destroying the player base. Ultimately collapsing the game economy.
If play to earn games stick to cosmetic transactions so that whale’s don’t have an unfair advantage in gameplay there’s no reason they can’t continue to function indefinitely.
There’s a lesson about global economics somewhere in their but I’m too lazy to find it.
Play to earn games can't sustain on whales buying into the game, because whales only buy to have some kind of advantage over others (cosmetic or gameplay affecting). In a free to play game, who cares, but in a play to earn game you've utterly changed the incentive set from "have fun" to "make money". Axir Infinity's economy crashed hard not too long ago because the net profit from playing fell below the Philippines minimum wage and people just stopped playing.
Also, you illustrated the pyramid scheme for me.
This has the benefit of increasing the player base, thus enticing more whales and sustaining the economy.
This is something Fortnite does. If you don't buy or get a skin, you get a randomized character model and gender, always wearing the same basic outfit. You're denied self-expression unless you buy into it. It's a super minor thing but it's an undeniable psychological trick games do: if you don't have a skin, you are less than the other players.
Okay but that doesn’t give the a disadvantage in the game. Which is where they earn currency in a play to earn game. Every player is on even footing. The only way to make more money is to play more. Not to buy power ups or items that give you an advantage over other players.
I can't think of a single example of a stable pay to earn game.
The free to play games using the whale model are not pay to earn games as the things earned by non-whales do not have a real monetary value and are just items internal to the games that the company can create infinite supply of arbitrarily.
Crucially you cannot extract money from these games.
Growth allows them to make more money but they have no outputs requiring new income to cover allowing them to be stable even in negative growth.
That's really the opposite of the takeaway I get from this. I mean it is a rare win so it's hard to recognize it's happened but does seem that this one specific vector of financializing games has been rejected by anyone that could be considered a player.
Axie proved that it’s possible with NFTs and crypto. They’re just shitty at maintaining the game economy. EVE has been going strong for well over a decade with their economy.
Applying five seconds of critical thought to the concept of Play To Earn, you inevitably arrive at the question "Where does the money people are earning come from?" and the answer must be that it comes from eternally recruiting new players into the game, at a high base cost, and then siphoning that money off them in a very inefficient, diffuse fashion while trying to get more players in. Forever.
It's the most obvious pyramid scheme I've ever witnessed, with the only new twist being that it's a video game instead of makeup or knives being sold.
It will work repeatedly, over and over and over again.
Every new pyramid scheme videogame will blow the fuck up instantly as the NEW THING because at least 100k people will want to get rich off of it, those people will go about mass advertising the game and talking it up.
Same story will happen again very soon. I guarantee it.
Time for a communist grift to fund some shit. Too bad it seems like the people repeatedly running the scams all seem to know each other and game each other’s shit
It's really ultimately determined by the numbers you can push. I would focus on making something that has the kind of novelty Twitch would like, you wanna hit a niche like Gangbeasts, Getting Over It, Mount Your Friends and Genital Jousting.
Hit the right notes and you can use shock value/weirdness in combination with bros that wanna get rich as the springboard for massive initial takeup via twitch audiences.
Or take the idea offline and consider how you can implement a realworld AR game with features similar to Pokemon GO as an app.
Some real grift value in there for people with the right skillset. Every mechanic and idea you need already exists you're just turning it into a pyramid scheme.
Problem is you're not just doing this to the finance bros, you're doing it to everyone else that gets dragged into the fever too.
I don’t think this is the case. Take free to play games for example. These games certainly benefit from an expanding user base, but the majority of their income comes from a minority of players, the so-named whales, who spend inordinate amounts of money on the game.
Play to Earn games just take this model and instead of keeping all the profits, they redirect some to the players who don’t spend as much money in the game. This has the benefit of increasing the player base, thus enticing more whales and sustaining the economy.
The problem that I’ve seen is that many play to earn games are also pay to win. This means that the whales are pulling a larger portion of profits back out of the game than is sustainable, thus devaluing currency for players who don’t spend as much money and destroying the player base. Ultimately collapsing the game economy.
If play to earn games stick to cosmetic transactions so that whale’s don’t have an unfair advantage in gameplay there’s no reason they can’t continue to function indefinitely.
There’s a lesson about global economics somewhere in their but I’m too lazy to find it.
Play to earn games can't sustain on whales buying into the game, because whales only buy to have some kind of advantage over others (cosmetic or gameplay affecting). In a free to play game, who cares, but in a play to earn game you've utterly changed the incentive set from "have fun" to "make money". Axir Infinity's economy crashed hard not too long ago because the net profit from playing fell below the Philippines minimum wage and people just stopped playing.
Also, you illustrated the pyramid scheme for me.
It’s only a pyramid insomuch as capitalism is a pyramid scheme.
How are cosmetics an advantage?
This is something Fortnite does. If you don't buy or get a skin, you get a randomized character model and gender, always wearing the same basic outfit. You're denied self-expression unless you buy into it. It's a super minor thing but it's an undeniable psychological trick games do: if you don't have a skin, you are less than the other players.
Okay but that doesn’t give the a disadvantage in the game. Which is where they earn currency in a play to earn game. Every player is on even footing. The only way to make more money is to play more. Not to buy power ups or items that give you an advantage over other players.
I can't think of a single example of a stable pay to earn game.
The free to play games using the whale model are not pay to earn games as the things earned by non-whales do not have a real monetary value and are just items internal to the games that the company can create infinite supply of arbitrarily. Crucially you cannot extract money from these games. Growth allows them to make more money but they have no outputs requiring new income to cover allowing them to be stable even in negative growth.
That just means there’s market share available fir the taking. Proof of concept already shows its profitable and desirable to players.
That's really the opposite of the takeaway I get from this. I mean it is a rare win so it's hard to recognize it's happened but does seem that this one specific vector of financializing games has been rejected by anyone that could be considered a player.
Axie proved that it’s possible with NFTs and crypto. They’re just shitty at maintaining the game economy. EVE has been going strong for well over a decade with their economy.