Break Free From the Work-to-Earn Chains, Help-to-Earn Supports Play-to-Earn

There’s a disparity between Work-to-Earn (W2E) and Play-to-Earn (P2E) that will likely hinder the growth of P2E, as an industry. The disparity is caused by prioritizing monetary wealth over experiential wealth. P2E earners have, on many occasions, stated that they are, in essence, generating income via “Play-as-Work.” This begs the question, if they’re playing other games for fun, what does the future look like for P2E, as it stands alone?

There’s a way to bridge that gap, however. Resting between W2E and P2E is a need for involvement and belonging that revolves around creating better opportunities for the people around us, without falling behind in modern society. Do gaming guilds provide this? Sometimes. In some ways. Speaking to my personal experience, having been in gaming clans and guilds for a decade or more, it’s not enough to fill the void.

Help-to-Earn (H2E) is a new operational model that seeks to supplement the current P2E and W2E economies. Rather than prioritize monetary wealth, H2E, like Gen-Z at large, prioritizes experiential wealth. People don’t just want to “live their best life” on Insta or any other platform. They want to build lives, rich with experience, for themselves. The LOG OFF Movement, founded in 2020 highlights this.

Available opportunities to belong and contribute to a cause that is, at least perceptibly, greater than yourself are the root of satisfaction. These can be hard to find. (especially when you’re locked behind a screen for 6-8+ hours each day—just for P2E purposes.) Never mind the highly addictive content serving and social media algorithms that keep people engaged for hours more. Gen-Z purportedly spends half of their daily waking life on screen time.

Many communities of older gamers have come to realize the emergent Pay-to-Win model is far better than a traditional “Grind-to-Win” model, provided a player cares sufficiently about what their time is spent on. Time is not money. Time is the one resource in the world that can be traded for anything.

There’s practically no time left in the day to seek these causes, much less support them on a wide scale. Help-to-Earn can provide these opportunities on the micro-scale. This results in the empowerment of entire communities, wherein contributors seek their own paths while retaining enjoyment in the other things they do. Some may guide raids, while others may sherpa couples to the top of Mt. Everest.

Can P2E Really Scale, Globally?

The meteoric rise and (not-so) steady downtrend of popular Play-to-Earn (P2E) games, such as Axie Infinity, has highlighted several core issues. Economies are, ultimately, driven by demand. If you don’t want it, it won’t matter to you. The thing with games like Axie Infinity is, that they’re progression-centric, but their end never really comes—only an opportunity to become the best.

Unfortunately, a vast swathe of the Axie community viewed playing the game as a job. Filip, a Slovakian in their 30s, stated that they only played Axie Infinity for money. When asked what they do for recreation, they replied,

“I play real games.”

There are projects, such as “Cradles: Origin of Species” that work to bridge the gaps, but most aren’t fully available or proven yet in the market.

MOBA games, such as League of Legends and DOTA 2 are progression-centric in a different sense. Start from the ground floor every time you play. Roguelite games, a genre that repeats on death but allows players to carry some progress forward, embody the concepts underlying League of Legends very well, but with a “P2E” twist—death isn’t all for naught. P2E games seek to cross the work-to-earn bridge, but fall short in the sense that grinding games, while pleasant in some circumstances, can just as readily become work, sometimes worse.

Just How Well Can P2E Economies REALLY Scale?

In-game economies are driven by advancement—progress—rather than scarcity. In-game base currency, such as gold, in League of Legends or DOTA 2, is often infinite in terms of supply, but time-based variables make the unlimited supply. Having this consistent, cohesive, pattern of feast and famine allows players to familiarize it.

This ultimately creates a shortened feedback loop by decreasing the game’s overall difficulty, until the match ends. Players’ brains become wired for extracting dopamine in specific channels. If left unattended, this process can effectively hamstring players’ ability to derive pleasure from life’s daily activities. These activities often provide a service that unifies players with the greater society. Without that, they are left with a deep and unfulfilled need.

Much of The Current P2E Landscape Is Rooted In (Unhealthy) Scarcity

As a result, many current P2E games are likely to scale very poorly as time goes on and adoption levels out, because the reductions in new cashflows will begin to limit the earning ceiling for players. Without new sources to draw from, other avenues must be used to secure net-new capital. This leads us right back to the current cycle, wherein advertisements and other means are used to draw in new money for the ecosystem.

At their base level, P2E games are often driven by scarcity—more specifically, the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), rather than progress. As a result, the number of potential adopters shrinks. The next logical step creates secondary economies that enable early adopters to make (partially) passive income, such as Axie Scholarships, and the games’ overall economic sustainability plummet if left unattended.

How Can We Bridge The Gaps That Hold P2E Back

P2E serves to fulfill a desire for progress that simply isn’t present in most modern economic structures. The gaps that P2E fills have been the niche that enabled companies like Twitch and Youtube to thrive. Gamers now expect that they will becompensated for their time, as consumers in a cyclically consumerist/creator-centric economy.

A few key gaps hold P2E back from successfully fulfilling the underlying needs of the market. Those gaps form the basis for achieving satisfaction, as part of something greater than oneself. This attractive force helps to bind communities together, like glue.

Without this sort of force, P2E will struggle to find support during bear markets, also known as “contraction cycles”, where the amount of money invested declines rather than increases.

This relationship is highlighted by the transition from creation to consumption of content. Twitch and other streaming services have helped lay the foundation for P2E by enabling an economy wherein gamers and enthusiasts are able to make a healthy living

Experience-as-a-Service--H2E

Help to Earn is growing. The H2E movement is empowering people to live the life they want to, full of rich experiences, while minimizing the time they need to spend researching, seeking information on social media, or being trapped in a daze by the phone that was “supposed” to set them free to explore the world.

H2E supports the P2E ecosystem by filling some of the voids between Work-to-Earn (Web2 “Jobs”) and P2E. Matthew Hairsnape, co-founder of the H2E movement discusses the concept briefly here:

Web3 has surfaced with a rare opportunity. We can, for the first time in generations, fully enable people to seek out their passions and support a lifestyle that they love in doing so, where they would have otherwise been drawn into the W2E trap, grinding their life away in a job they hate.

Prince Ea, a well-known creator and Forbes 30 Under 30 resident, developed a video that highlights this trend, and its impacts on people in modern society:

Community as a Currency (the currency of Web3)

The most successful; web3 projects are built atop communities. None of these projects just “had” a community to start, they’ve built them from the ground up. Communities enrich the project not just in terms of floor value, but in terms of livelihood and longevity. NFT communities have built opportunities for both businesses and individuals to take control of their lives and find the passions that will drive them forward.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Goblintown, Illuminati, Azuki, Doodles, Cryptopunks (CP), and any derivative projects are just a few of the communities that have arisen and come together as the crypto market has settled into a bear cycle, or crypto winter.

These communities aren’t for merch sales, they’re for companionship and unity. Apefest 2022 (featured at NFT NYC) was a massive event, to which hundreds or thousands of BAYC, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club  (MAYC) NFT holders travelled to meet up with each other. Yuga Labs, one of the most reputable NFT development firms in the space recently acquired LarvaLabs, the developer that created CP.

Others have sought to recreate their success. Few have succeeded. Help-to-Earn isn’t an attempt to recreate this success. It’s an attempt to empower creators, like those who have made the countless NFTs since CP, and the rest of the world’s population to create meaningful and pleasant experiences.

Whether that experience is a shared cruise for two, a solo hike to a local mountaintop, or a club full of people that celebrate together, H2E is designed to support it. Join the Help-to-Earn movement this summer and build on these experiences for the rest of your life.