Fighting inflation in Eternal Games. The concept of Wipe Threat.

The advent of blockchain games revealed the problem of inflation that has long existed in classic games. The difference, however, is that now this inflation is much more difficult to disguise — the situation with it is visible in stock reports.

At the same time, many contradictions were inherent in the process. For example, an online game must, by definition, create some resources out of thin air, this is essentially its direct task — to create game value for things that have no objective value. And this is a disaster in the language of economics. The second important point is that the game always works with the irrational behavior of the player. And it is rather strange to expect from the player that he will simultaneously behave irrationally, making an impulsive purchase, and then the same player will become rational and calmly take losses, getting rid of the unnecessary and lost in the value of the asset.

It is also a curious fact that even if not originally intended to participate in the market speculation, game values will always do so, since the free possibility of reselling allows you to play with them in the “Greater fool”, which for many is a much more interesting game than the one that developers offer to play.

The consequences of the temporary hype and subsequent inevitable inflation are very unfortunate — a game in which an interesting economy that motivates players to do something useful, gain new experience, etc., remains with the economy killed by a jump in the hype. At the same time, it can no longer be saved by the methods adopted in classic games since the blockchain inherently implies some restrictions for manipulation by developers.

What should developers do in such a situation?

First, let’s go through the methods that definitely will not work in this situation:

1. Using stablecoins or other collateralized assets is too callous — players still want to believe in a fairy tale, even only for a minute. And here the player, in fact, immediately sees only losses. Maybe not now, maybe some other time … and not in this market.
2. Keep abreast of the economy by accelerating burn if necessary, and reducing the minting of tokens or NFTs if the game economy is overheating. Unfortunately, this approach does not work — the more players try to squeeze out game resources, the more they accumulate them, rightly believing that they are being deceived again. Players will start getting rid of game resources with a sharp and panic collapse of the course — thereby again finishing off the economy and the game itself.
3. Ignore — unfortunately, this strategy will not work because feedback is very important in new genres and trends. At the same time, it is almost impossible to distinguish the speculators from the players and lies from the truth. Everyone says they want an interesting game, but at the same time, they don’t mind earning some extra money :)
4. Wipe/session. In general, it is not clear why blockchain is in such games. It makes no sense to protect assets, which are finite in their effect anyway and have no long-term value.
5. Make the earnings too small, and the effort to get them disproportionately large for those who do not enjoy the process itself. Basically a workflow. Often works in CCG on the blockchain. But not to limit everyone only in the CCG genre? Again, many games like to share their earned money with players, for example, in the form of eSports events. Blockchain games are supposed to develop this trend and not vice versa.
6. Use the methods of classic games. Well, if only these methods somehow managed to solve this problem. But then again, why is blockchain in the game?
7. Try to make the pros outweigh the cons. In fact, a game that under normal conditions no one would ever know about, thanks to the use of blockchain technologies can get its moment of glory, thousands of players (and it is not so important what motivated their interest), and enough profit to recoup the costs. What else do you need? Yes, after a while the game will lose its position, but the development team will have enough time to make a new one, according to the already familiar and well-established scheme. Nonetheless, this option is not without its drawbacks. Such a goal is extremely unambitious, and we must not forget that it is working only now. The avalanche of similar and extremely dubious games is growing geometrically every month, and it is quite possible that their creators will at some point repeat the fate of those who previously provided them with profit — namely, they will invest in a pyramid scheme at the time of its collapse.

Now a little about the game parameters that we want to get. Those must be:

1. theoretically unlimited in time
2. be equally interesting for players of any income
3. successful players must make a profit as a measure of their success in the game; the profit can be significant, and the phenomenon itself — massive
4. be an actual game, not only DeFi
5. the player can choose between investing his funds or his time in order to achieve the goals he has chosen
6. use blockchain technology not just as a proof of ownership but as a way to protect your own plans from the arbitrariness of developers and the dictatorship of the majority
7. give the player an opportunity to flexibly adjust their strategy to changes in rates, creating feedback between the economy of the game and tokenomics
8. give players the possibility to determine the fate of the project

Considering the given restrictions and a need for a high degree of reliability, one of the possible solutions is the Wipe Threat. Wipe is needed to guarantee the destruction of the savings of the most thrifty players. There will always be such players, and blockchain restrictions make it impossible to clean up these reserves, except to untie the game tokens themselves from the game. At the same time, as we remember, the ideology of a regular wipe does not suit us for the reasons described in the corresponding paragraph, so we need to find the correct mechanism for launching a wipe. Ideally, a wipe should be possible, but there is also a chance it will not happen soon enough or happen at all.

Obviously, in such a situation, it is impossible to give the control of the wipe to either the developers or the DAO, since on the one hand, it will create a point where players can put pressure on it, and it will also strongly centralize the management of the game. The ideal option here would be to give a choice to players and not in the form of a regular vote, but in the form of a set of actions, each of which adds or removes the wipe approach.

We, as developers, set some criteria for a fun game that we have chosen and create mechanisms that infinitely push back the wipe if the current state of the game meets these criteria, or vice versa, bring the wipe closer and launch if the game does not meet them.

For example, we bring the wipe moment closer if the accumulation of players is above some line. And we’re also pushing back the wipe if players are engaging in some activity that should be burning game resources.

Thus, if the majority of players endlessly accumulate resources, they will quickly be punished by a wipe and lose all their progress. But if the community of players burns resources in various activities, then the game can exist within one session for an infinitely long time.

Of particular interest is the impact on this concept of the ability of one player to punish another. This capability is expected to have several implications:

1. Players, eager to keep their progress as long as possible, will unite in larger structures and try to fairly distribute the tasks of burning the resources among themselves and punishing those guilty of “hoarding” as well as those who do not want to take on such obligations. The game should stimulate such activity by itself and conflicts between several structures, provoking real wars.
2. Players who are lagging behind in development can try to interfere with the players from the first point by active actions, trying to bring the wipe closer, which will equalize the chances for everyone. There may be those who entered the game late, those who were unfairly deprived by the structures of players that have developed in the game, those who were defeated in some of the conflicts. Again, the game should encourage and allow such players to open up at the mechanic level.
3. The reaction of the market to the possible outcome of such wars will be funny. Depending on the intensity of the struggle, the price of game resources (tokens) will either soar, in anticipation of the next phase of the war of attrition, or fall sharply in fear of the prospect of a wipe, because then these tokens are guaranteed to depreciate.
4. At the same time, changing market sentiment will affect the plans for associations of players and single players, thus creating a two-way connection. The periods of active actions will fall at the moments when the tokens become cheaper and their burning is compensated by the result. And on the other hand, a sharp rise in the price of tokens will lead to a forced truce and the transition of conflicts to a smoldering mode.

As you can see, each of the listed points can be a potential source of non-trivial situations, especially when they act together. Perhaps, there are moments of calm and general pacifism, but the more interesting will be the sudden change in the aggregate state of the game to the “war of all against all” mode.

Everything described above shows that this approach to solving inflation, in addition to solving the problem itself, with the introduction of additional mechanisms, will provide players with a sufficient amount of fun. Naturally, such an approach will require high skill of developers, a high-quality study of all possible risks, and a full disclosure of the possibilities of the game mechanics.

At the same time, it will ultimately depend on the players how the game will go on: from their speed of learning, evolution, the ability to create communities and set themselves the right and long-term goals, the ability to take responsibility.

On the other hand, why do you need blockchain in games if not for all of this!

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