Why Play-to-Earn Gaming Is The Answer Needed For An Already Underserved Community

Right now, the gaming ecosystem is booming with excitement and innovation, where we are witnessing individuals and entities start to shift their attention to a world that they never before would have blinked at - and we have Web3 and NFTs to thank for that.

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs went from just a $55 million total market cap in 2021 to over $7 billion, thanks to platforms like OpenSea and Rarible, and the communities that use them. Since the inception of the industry’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea has become a major player in the gaming economy, reporting around $10 billion in total all-time sales, with the majority of that coming from 2021 alone. For those who argue against its viability and value, you’re missing the mark completely.

By allowing Web3 and NFTs into the gaming industry, it will remove the risk of decreasing revenue to companies, while also incentivizing users to come into newer communities, ultimately bringing visibility and “word-of-mouth” marketing to every product currently on the market and those that could come into existence now or in the future.

1. Web3 Will Empower Gamers, Communities, and Companies

By 2023, the estimated number of gamers is expected to reach just over 3 billion people. Undoubtedly, guilds play an extremely important role in shedding light on play-to-earn games because of the ability to empower users and simultaneously, the community to not only find interactive games, but educate more players and onboard them into the space.

What needs to happen is a shift in the way publishers and developers think about how they’ve chosen to exert control over the gamer economy. It worked for a while - but now, it’s in its transformation phase where it needs to evolve, and any efforts to hinder its growth will lead to the holder’s demise - in this case, the powers that be.

Gamers need to be appreciated and compensated for their passion, time, and commitment in building, exploring, and testing these magical, infinite worlds - because, who else? It’s for this reason that Web3 and NFTs should encourage and incentivize developers to begin building out the infrastructure necessary to handle what looks to be a massive secondary market that will not only entice new types of consumers and players but educate different communities from around the world on the value these types of technologies can bring to our world, bridging the barriers between culture and tradition.

At the end of the day, game developers and publishers need to come to the table with an open mind and understand that by operating in a “gamer-first” mindset, by showcasing different types of games that will eventually incorporate crypto and NFTs - then the doors to unlimited forms of marketing and onboarding will bring individuals who may have never picked up a game controller in their life right to your doorstep.

2. Converting Underserved Markets Into Interactive and Transcendent Communities

Currently, community gaming infrastructures are massively underserved, requiring moderators and administrators to tirelessly manage and create the necessary infrastructure(s) and systems to ensure that the gaming leagues operate smoothly.

There’s one major problem, however - these systems are not integrated nor are they easily accessible to everyone involved, making it difficult to properly have everything organized in one place. These communities, which are self-driven and self-managed need to be a bit more automated, but without removing the human element from the equation, which would ideally, make these communities and the game(s) itself more attractive to engineers, developers, and publishers.

“With the massive number of gamers that engage in community gaming, it’s ironic that nobody is really building for these communities, let alone providing any opportunities to advertise or reach these communities,” says Chase J. Thompson, founder and CEO of the play-to-earn platform Arena.

Arena aims to provide the necessary infrastructure to allow gaming moderators and administrators to continue effectively managing their communities by providing the tools and resources that would otherwise need to be organically created from scratch and managed through tedious Google Sheets and other word processing software, by bringing it all together in one platform.

Under Arena’s already implemented model, the shortcomings in today’s creator economy are quickly reduced, if not eliminated entirely, because of an infrastructure that enables creators to have an ownership stake in their community.

“This model also affords opportunities for gamers to be compensated for their time and attention by measuring scores, records, achievements, and in-game metrics that are almost always left out of conversations,

3. The (Un) Perfect Dichotomy of Gaming

Over the past few months, at least half a dozen game studios have revealed plans to add NFTs into their games and/or said they were considering doing so.

Back in January, GameStop GME announced its partnership with ImmutableX to develop and launch its NFT Marketplace, with the gaming conglomerate having hired well over 20 people to run the new division.

GameStop is currently asking select game developers and publishers to list its NFTs on its marketplace when it launches later in 2022 - with the company cashing out $47 million worth of its newly acquired Immutable X IMX/USD tokens. Yet, with game publishers beginning to offer NFTs, why are we seeing such pushback from gamers?

It’s very simple - neglect and marketing schemes.

The notion of tokenized economies and non-fungible tokens aren’t really anything new, despite how it continues to be perceived in our transformation into Web3. Gamers have been creating and utilizing tokenized in-game items for decades - the problem was they were never recognized nor compensated for the time, effort, and utility of using them.

To many, publishers bringing NFTs into these gaming communities is nothing more than a marketing scheme. Christian Lantz is one such gamer, who in an interview with The New York Times, expressed his frustration towards these “[gaming] studios abusing its popularity”

“...it’s so obviously being done for profit instead of just creating a beautiful game,” he says.

Concurring, Blackstock added that by providing the necessary tools and infrastructure to gamers, they will be “enabled to be something more than just consumers.”

“Gamers don’t like being treated like piggy banks,” he noted. “What we are doing with Arena is providing a core component in the macro play-to-earn stack. What we see in the market now are games that already have existing economies within them. We see a much bigger opportunity if the earn component spans all of a gamer’s experiences and interactions.”

At the end of the day, Web3 will bring more than just profits to the gaming economy - it will drive innovation faster than we have seen in a very long time.