“How are you going to earn any money if you spend all of your time playing video games?”
More often than not, this question will not be unfamiliar to many gamers from concerned parents who do not want to see their children “wasting time”. It has long been the prevailing view that gaming is an unproductive activity, and that unless you are directly working in the gaming industry, there is no way to earn a living. But that’s changing.
Since those humble beginnings with the likes of Pong and the first generation consoles in the late ’70s, gaming has evolved. We’ve gone from pixelated 8-bit images through to the incredible immersive games we see today.
Thousands of games studios exist the world over, which are in turn generating millions of dollars in revenue. The amount of joy these studios bring to everyday people’s lives is enormous. What used to be a fringe industry that people joined because of passion has grown into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth.
Play to Earn (P2E)
Gaming has typically been viewed as an “unproductive” activity. Sure, it’s something that players enjoy, but outside of the highest levels of e-sports, it’s not going to enable you to earn a living. Yet with the rise of blockchain technology, that has changed. Every day, players can now make a living whilst they are playing. The rise of Play-To-Earn games like Axie Infinity is causing us to reevaluate what it means to be “productive”. If players can earn real money whilst engaging with these platforms, is gaming still an “unproductive” activity? However, there are issues with Play-To-Earn, and those issues lie with choice and scholarships. Many guilds offer scholarship programs, and they have helped a huge number of people to access an earning platform they would otherwise have been excluded from. In doing this, however, they have also shut true gamers out of the system they were trying to open. With the explosive rise in popularity of play-to-earn games, gamers are being shut out and replaced by those looking to make a quick buck.
To add to this, these in-it-for-the-money gamers have no incentive to reinvest their earnings back into the game. High emission rates of in-game currency and items with no lock-up period or incentive to reinvest is potentially hampering the growth of the ecosystem as players opt to take sell instead of feed funds back into the game for more growth.
This dynamic is also compounded by issues surrounding choice. As it currently stands, the number of high-quality play-to-earn games is limited, and the competition for scholarships is fierce. This means that players are faced with a choice: compete to play the games that will earn them money, or play the games they actually want to play and lose out on the earnings. Though the prevailing game style is already moving away from a basic turn-based design to the story-driven, gameplay-focused offerings indistinguishable from AAA titles in the traditional gaming space, players still face a choice. They can dive into worlds they want to explore for the joy of it or choose the worlds they have to explore for the money. But, what if there was a way to turn any game into a play-to-earn platform? What if players could play and earn, and not have to make the choice at all?
Play and Earn
The GuildFi platform fixes this problem and ensures that players don’t have to make the choice between what they want to play and what they have to play. Proof-of-Play is a reward system that is unique to the GuildFi platform which turns any game into a play-to-earn game. This is revolutionary for players as it means they won’t ever have to make the choice between the games they love and the games that pay because all games play in the GuildFi ecosystem.
Not only is this revolutionary for players, but it also presents an incredible opportunity for developers. Developers that list through the GuildFi ecosystem can forget about how to economically incentivize players to explore their metaverse and focus on what they do best: building great games that players actually want to play while having their rewards boosted by GuildFi.
By engaging with the blockchain universe through the gaming center, players can choose from a well-organized list of only the best blockchain games, and developers can ensure that their games are only associated with the best out there. Then, by leveraging the metrics and data that are unique to the GuildFi tools zone, players can understand what the ROI of their metaverse experience is going to be.
