What is Play to Earn?

Gianluca Busato
Enkronos
Published in
5 min readJul 5, 2022

Play to Earn refers to a new type of video game.

In traditional video games, the aim of game studios has been to earn as much money as possible from the player. For this reason, even the Pay-to-Win system was introduced to multiplayer online games, and players who contributed financially to the game were rewarded with in-game advantages. Play-to-Earn games, on the other hand, make the player a part of the game’s economy, allowing them to earn money while playing the game.

The Play-to-Earn system is used in many NFT and metaverse games today. User’s farm or collect tokens and NFTs that they can convert into real money as they play the game.

Read Blockchain Games: Why Play-to-Earn is the Future of the Gaming Industry

How to make money with Play-to-Earn games?

If you want to participate in a play-to-earn game and earn money from it, you must first open an account with one of the cryptocurrency wallets supported by the relevant game. Then you can log in to the game with your wallet.

In general, you need to make a certain investment to earn satisfactory amounts of money in play-to-earn games. Although some games, such as Alien Worlds, give you a starter tool, these are insufficient and you want to get better tools, avatars, lands to extract more tokens during the day. These are sold as NFTs in the game’s marketplace. Buying and selling these NFTs is just like buying and selling any other NFT, i.e., you pay both the price of the NFT and a transaction fee. Therefore, to generate income from play-to-earn games, you should usually have the game’s token in your wallet. These tokens are

In play-to-earn games, you can earn money by collecting tokens and NFTs according to the content of the game. You can complete daily quests to collect more tokens and NFTs. Some games allow you to increase your assets by staking your NFTs and tokens.

You can convert the tokens you collect into fiat currency on exchanges and sell NFTs on marketplaces.

Why are play-to-earn games safe?

Making money from games is not a new phenomenon. In many massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs), characters, items and weapons are already traded between real people for fiat money. However, due to frauds such as item copying, gold/money scams and various scams, it was not safe to exchange money in these traditional games.

Play-to-earn games make it completely safe to earn money by playing games. Because these games and their tokens are located on the blockchain. In other words, the assets in play-to-earn games are blockchain data. Blockchain technology can easily prove authenticity and ownership. It is almost impossible for a person to change, duplicate or delete a blockchain data. This means that it is impossible to counterfeit tokens and NFTs in a play-to-earn game.

Popular play-to-earn games

With the recent interest in NFTs and the metaverse, there has been an increase in the number of play-to-earn games. Therefore, it is important to spend time on play-to-earn games that are worth your time and where you can earn a satisfactory amount of income. You can find the three-leading play-to-earn games below.

Axie Infinity (AXS)

Axie Infinity is currently the most popular play-to-earn game, with over one million daily active players. The NFT marketplace trading volume of the game on the Ethereum blockchain network has reached $3.79 billion at all times, according to DataApp data dated 14 December 2021.

Inspired by Pokemon and launched by Sky Mavis in 2018, Axie Infinity is a game where we collect, develop, and battle cute digital creatures called Axies. In the game, you need to have at least three Axies to be able to pit your Axies against other players’ Axies.

Each unique Axie is also an ERC-721 based NFT and can be traded on Axie Infinity’s NFT marketplace. By battling and doing quests with your Axies, you can collect in-game tokens called Smooth Love Potion (SLP), which you can then convert into fiat currency.

Axie Infinity’s governance token is called AXS. To play the game, you need to open a Ronin Wallet account, transfer the appropriate amount of AXS that you can buy from the stock exchanges to your account, and link this account to your game account.

Decentraland (MANA)

Decentraland is a 3D virtual world metaverse platform and play-to-earn game consisting of 90,601 plots of land. In Decentraland, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain network, users can buy and sell virtual property in the form of NFTs. NFT trading on Decentraland is done with MANA, an ERC-20 token. The NFT properties that users buy, and sell are called LAND.

To participate in Decentraland, which runs in a browser, you need to link your game account to a Web-3 wallet such as Metamask. All the properties in Decentraland are currently sold out, and users can build anything they want on the properties they own, from galleries to virtual stores.

Decentraland also includes a variety of games and quests. These are created by LANDowners and designers. Entrance to some of these games and missions is paid, but you do not need to pay any fee to spend time in Decentraland.

Alien Worlds (TLM)

Developed by Sarojina McKenna and Michael Yeats, Alien Worlds is a space-themed, browser-based play-to-earn game.

Alien Worlds is basically based on two mechanics: Mining and battles. When you first enter the game, you are given a miner avatar and a shovel as an NFT. Your goal is to mine planets with this shovel and two other tools that you can purchase from Alien Worlds’ NFT marketplace. Depending on the style and quality of the equipment you have, you collect the Alien Worlds governance token TLM. Meanwhile, it’s also possible to find NFTs that you can sell in the NFT marketplace for decent money.

Another way to get NFTs and TLMs is to defeat your opponents by using your weapons and minions in the arena called ThunderDome Arena. So, instead of converting the NFTs and TLMs you find into fiat money, you may want to spend them to strengthen yourself in the game.

TLM, an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, is Alien Worlds’ governance token and allows you to have a say in planetary decisions in the game with the DAO system. You can even become the administrator of the planetary councils in the game. All you need to do is participate in the weekly elections and collect enough votes from other players.

This democracy, which is one of the internal mechanics of the game, is also included in the external mechanics of the game. TLM’s “cross chain” feature allows you to join the game from any blockchain you want. You can also choose where to store your TLMs.

Would you like to build your own play to earn blockchain game? You’re at the right place. Contact our experienced team today. Enkronos team are waiting to answer your questions.

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