Web3 is revolutionizing the gaming industry. The concepts of playing to earn and owning your game assets changed players’ experiences. And it appeared to be just the beginning.
So, why isn’t anyone excited about play-to-earn anymore? Have traditional video games won the war?
On the contrary, they are silently rising in popularity amongst non-crypto crowds. Data tells us that blockchain games aren’t dead just yet.
So let’s dive in and analyze how the GameFi industry is evolving into mass adoption.
The new turns of the play-to-earn movement
First and foremost, gaming dApps continue to see strong growth. What’s at stake, however, is the play-to-earn mentality amongst players, developers, and investors.
You may have heard about popular games like Axie Infinity or StepN. With the promise of redistributing game profits among dedicated players, they quickly developed highly engaged communities and actually brought profit to thousands of people.
But once the games’ token value dropped, the players disappeared. This pattern repeated itself across different projects, and playing to earn wasn’t enough to conquer gamers.
Those Web3 games that remained popular, however, prioritized gameplay and ownership over financial rewards.
What was the crypto-gaming revolution doing wrong?
Rebranding blockchain gaming
Lately, terms like play-and-earn and free-to-own have taken over the web3 gaming space. Some projects don’t even mention the words NFTs or cryptocurrency but use “digital assets” or “coins” instead to appeal to a greater audience.
Tokenomics and GameFi aspects are not as obviously advertised as they were at the beginning of the movement, making the gaming experience much more fluid and inclusive.
Despite market conditions, investment in Web3 games kept strong, and developers shifted attention toward developing higher-quality titles.
This may be the start of a new age of success for blockchain-backed games, and, surprisingly, it may have less to do with earning crypto.
Monetary incentives have a big role to play in driving involvement, but it’s not always the answer to luring traditional gamers and bringing society closer to mass adoption.
What the future of gaming might look like
While this may be the end of play-to-earn, blockchain games are far from oblivion. They are the fastest growing area on Web3 and may drive people to really embrace decentralization.
Although only time will tell what the future of Web3 gaming will look like, the possibilities appear limitless.
It is exciting to imagine new kinds of gameplay structures, more transparency in Metaverse virtual world-building, as well as exponential development for network economics.
As more publishers make use of this model, it is possible that games will be defined more by ownership and connections than just earning rewards.
Whatever your crypto gaming journey is, make sure to DYOR.
Also published here.