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.
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.