The blockchain gaming era is here! It is no more curiosity or an interesting blockchain use case that might be adopted sometime in the future. It might as well become a leading real-world use case of blockchain. Or did that happen already?
Blockchain games are special decentralized platforms as they utilize true in-game item ownership in form of NFTs that can actually be sold on secondary NFT marketplaces. They are also powered by native blockchain or game tokens which are used for spending in-game, powering the game mechanics or to receive the rewards as well the connectivity and expansion to DeFi protocols.
One of the most interesting mechanics in games is play-to-earn which allows players to earn in-game digital currency for high in-game activity. But hey, blockchain games are decentralized and allow earning in cryptocurrency, in-game NFTs or increased value of in-game items. Players actually get rewarded for playing the game and earn money they can spend on whatever they want, not just in-game. Each game’s playing and earning mechanics differ but all have the same goal — to reward and encourage players for spending their time on playing the game.
Some games demand initial investment to acquire NFTs (e.g. games characters, items, cards etc.) to play with. Such investment can become costly while starting with new and not powerful enough game characters or items can even be a barrier or a disadvantage for a new player or a team or players. This is the reason some players seek sponsors and investors to fund or borrow the NFTs needed to play. Play and earn.
Such decentralized gaming platforms are very accessible to anyone and the gaming experience level needed is not that steep to start playing. Depending on the NFTs and in-game activity, play-to-earn can become a very nice opportunity to earn some extra revenues on the side. Blockchain games with play-to-earn economics can actually involve more people in the community who need to make a living the most to earn some extra money and help their families, fund their schooling or buy their own NFTs and start playing on their own. This is the case with Pokémon-inspired Axie Infinity (by Sky Mavis) which is played by teams operating Axies — fierce creatures that love to battle, build and hunt for treasure. Players can battle, collect, raise, and build a land-based kingdom for their pets, but most importantly play-to earn. Axie has attracted thousands of players from developing countries in the pursuit of a new income stream during the Covid pandemic. Players, investors and guilds are buying Axie in-game items and lend them to the players from the community in a form of a scholarship program. Players or scholars who use borrowed NFTs earn in-game rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies and actually earn part of the yield divided between NFT owners and players.
One of the biggest and most notable play-to-earn movement supporters are Yield Guild Games (YGG), a decentralized player guild founded in the Philippines in 2020, report that many of their members come from their country and even almost half of the game downloads come from there. The movement is starting in Indonesia and Brazil lately as well. That’s not surprising as the underdeveloped countries with a high rate of unemployed population, the rate only grew at the time COVID-19, seek additional streams of revenues needed to survive or make a better living. Play-to-earn mechanics allow just that. (source)
It is also important to say that with play-to-earn games popularity growth, the game itself becomes expensive and harder to access. Some of the NFTs are even 100x more expensive than they were before the play-to-earn movement started to expand and the mechanics got adopted. With Axie Infinity player needs at least 3 NFT characters called Axies to be able to start playing. While about a year ago, the price of those was below $10, it is now $1000.
Based on DappRadar, Axie Marketplace has faced impressive growth since October 2020 with sales of more than $15 million in under 6 months. Similar to other collections, rarity and aesthetics play an important role when considering valuable Axies. The rarest ones were sold for around $50,000 in 2021 and $100,000 in 2020. These rare Axies might be purchased with the goal to resell them in the future for a profit. This can be seen also with the significant increase in interest in Axie Infinity according to Google Trends data.
So where does Cryp2Gem fit in? Well, the first thing we all have our GameBoys still in our drawers! We refuse to grow up!
Everyone who knows us and our team know we are passionate about blockchain games, NFTs and metaverse but we are also picky investors searching for future trends. On the one hand, we are passionate about being part of the blockchain gaming future, endless NFT standards use cases, on the other hand, we just can’t resist being part of the concept of play-to-earn mechanics and movement where we can actually invest in a platform that helps people all over the world to have a chance to overcome daily struggles, battle with underemployment or even faces the hardship. To overcome those struggles with getting a chance to earn something extra, to get additional or even main source of potentially significant income by playing the game and borrowing the expensive in-game items he couldn’t afford to buy on his own. Play-to-earn mechanics actually allow investing in people directly as well in the platform while sharing the earned yield amongst players and investors. Together with the growth of decentralized games, NFT in-game items and land with the vast potential of already ongoing mainstream adoption and future expansion we see a continuation of play-to-earn movement and broader communities involvement. Those are the main reasons we chose to build a new vertical — C2G Play2Earn.
Yeah, you can press the buttons now! And start playing to earn! Join the movement, have fun, help people and make some money on top of that.
As mentioned on our newly created C2G P2E Twitter — we started our journey with Axie Infinity, but this is just the beginning! We can hardly wait for more fun games to launch in the near future — thinking about Star Atlas, Illuvium and so many others.
If you want to join our C2G Play2Earn team as an Axie scholar or just want to check out what we do please follow the below links.
You can also find us in our regular Cryp2Gem Community chat and Twitter!
