Play-to-Own: Is This Game Mode the Future of Web3?

In the past few years, gaming and crypto tokens started to forge a unique relationship. The first play-to-earn games arrived to change both the crypto space and the world of gamers.

The growth of NFT games and play-to-earn coincided with an unprecedented expansion of the gaming industry as a whole, which reached a valuation of $300B.

The main appeal of play-to-earn games was the potential for a decent income from simply playing a game daily. This feature quickly brought together millions of players and hundreds of projects, to build a market with an estimated value ofnearly $800M in 2021.

Play-to-earn games also shared a feature - the non-fungible tokens (NFT). Those digital items also had their own marketplace and, just like crypto tokens, could go through stunning boom and bust cycles.

The usage of NFT varied between games, from pure novelty and speculation to some expected utility. Games sold items, avatars, playable characters, or even digital land also as a source of funding.

Some games tried to use the NFT as an incentive for achievement or experience. This model is still alive and well, with many games staging regular giveaways, mystery box events, or other gifting campaigns to retain players.

Play-to-earn games, however, reached their limitation on rewarding players, as not all in-game tokens and items could retain value. The reason for this was that players aggressively fought for rewards and rushed to monetize them, thus tanking the market prices.

The selling pressure, combined with a crypto token bear market, quickly wiped out the income potential of almost all play-to-earn games.

But the idea of in-game ownership was not something to be thrown away lightly. Traditional gamers are well-used to microtransactions and pay-to-play games. The global market for microtransactions to acquire game items or passes will grow to 67.6B, up 13.6% against 2021.

Play-to-own may tap this trend and use blockchain assets to grab a part of the market while promising much more secure ownership compared to regular in-game items or tokens.

What Is Play-to-Own?

There is a fundamental difference between play-to-own versus other play-to-earn games. Usually, game projects will restrict the type of NFT to be owned - for instance, only playable avatars, vehicles, a couple of runes, potions, or other types of shortlisted items.

Play-to-own may become the future of NFT, by allowing any in-game item to be minted, instead of restricting players to a short list of predetermined assets.

Play-to-own may also be suitable for complex games with expanding lore and universes, as well as multiple valuable items. Some of the existing play-to-earn and metaverse games are already using a similar approach, hinting at the possibility of a full play-to-own.

Cryptopolis achieves this with an urban building metaverse, where apartments, furniture, and fashionable decorations can all be owned as NFT. The original play-to-own model was The Sandbox, one of the first well-developed sandbox games.

Upland, one of the most visited metaverse games, is also switching to a play-to-own model, where players have resale rights and can trade any of the urban properties or items.

A game set within a rich fantasy world also has many potentially usable items. Swords of Blood is already building toward a full play-to-own, with the belief this will be the future of blockchain games.

Any item from the game can be minted as NFT and held in the Stardust wallet, which is fully controlled by the player. Once the item is minted, it can gain economic value as long as it’s attractive to other players.

The intention of Swords of Blood is to let players build an economy based on the momentary demand for the game’s items.

“Ownership in Swords of Blood will be fully accounted on the blockchain. Players will use the Stardust wallet, which is integrated in the game, but they fully control the private keys. After the FTX exchange crash, it is even more important to ensure each user is a full owner of all assets, protected by cryptography and not accessible to the game team or any third party,” said James Seaman, CEO of Swords of Blood.

Unlike an NFT collection, the game team will not assign a rarity factor to the items, thus leaving players to generate their own value. Swords of Blood believes it is up to players to determine value, instead of assigning a price to the items beforehand.

The future of Web3 will take off once traditional gamers can start with quality projects, while also having a play-to-own option. This will expand the reach of games beyond the blockchain community.

How Games Use Play-to-Own

Play-to-own also emerged organically in a simpler game, Sunflower Land. This game started as a grass-roots project. Players tended to avoid cashing out, and instead, started trading resources, collectibles, and cosmetic items between themselves.

Sunflower Land allows players to withdraw almost any game item and store it in a wallet as NFT, for safekeeping or resale. There is no central tool to set how valuable each item is - the game community simply decides that this or that item is hot and worth paying for.

Swords of Blood, awaiting its launch in Q1 2023,  will have a similar organic marketplace built into the game. Using the in-game token, SWDTKN, players can have a fully liquid internal game economy.

Play-to-own will also be able to use the already existing infrastructure of external markets like OpenSea.

Mirandus, another blockchain game awaiting release soon, also relies on a long list of items that can be minted and traded. Having an open game economy, with multiple types of NFT, will also create a more complex and liquid market.

Mirandus offers items ranging from tools and resources to armor, boats, or even buildings and whole industries.

In play-to-own, the game itself sets no predetermined weight or rarity to items. The supply is also entirely dependent on players. The future of gaming and Web3 lies in an open economy where players are not pushed by a predetermined value or urged to over-invest based on rarity.

Play-to-own also encourages an organic approach, avoiding the flaw where players strip-mine the game for resources, which they immediately aim to monetize.

With play-to-own, games can hope to retain players longer, due to their time investment into the game and secure ownership of items and assets.

The other goal of play-to-own is to give back to the gaming community for their time investment. A dedicated player can spend dozens of hours on a game, grinding toward a goal.

Owning an NFT with some value in the game economy may be a way for the game team to reach out and give back to the most dedicated players.

In Swords of Blood, for instance, the items unlocked and received will closely track the game's progress. Thus, the most advanced players will be able to unlock and mint even more rare items, with full ownership.

Players can choose to gift or sell the items or use them in the game at a future date. But each item they choose to mint is unique, with no pressure to sell from all other players.

There is still no foolproof recipe for integrating NFT in a way that will be adopted by mainstream gamers. But play-to-own is the most liberal model, where players have the option to own NFT, but the opportunity to try out a fun game and only invest their time.