Blockchain Gaming - Play to Earn: Make Money While Gaming?

Salahuddin Khawaja

Published: November 26, 2022

The online gaming industry is worth $180 billion and rapidly growing. Covid has accelerated this growth with people staying at home and spending more time playing online.

“Video gamers in the United States reported that they spent 45 percent more time playing video games amid the quarantine than in the previous week.”

Now blockchain gaming is the talk of the town, blockchain has introduced us to a new dimension in gaming – making money while playing. This is all happening in the metaverse.

Play-to-Earn (P2E) is a gaming model that allows players to earn through gameplay.
Blockchain based gaming is growing even faster than traditional gaming. P2E started 2 years ago and is already gaining substantial market share. The top 3 P2E gamestokens of platforms such as Axie Infinity Decentraland and , The Sandbox have a collective market cap of $28 Billion.

Number of 'Active' Blockchain Games Doubled in Past Year to Almost 400

This drastic increase in the blockchain based games is redefining the gaming industry. Hypermode offer services to help gaming projects: from Development to Community Management, and Tokenomics to Blockchain Project Management to creating a Gaming Guild.
This post is all about P2E gaming

1) What is the P2E Model?
2) Case Study: Axie Infinity – a $14 Billion Game
3) Benefits of the P2E Model
4) Important Tools and Processes
5) Taking Advantage

1) What is the Play-To-Earn(P2E) Model?

The integration of blockchain to gaming has been revolutionary, by creating an “economy” dimension that was never there. These games operate different digital currencies known as tokens that enable the gaming economy via a concept called tokenomics (read all about tokenomics here). One way to understand how big these games are, is through the lens of trading: daily trading of NFTs in gaming is happening at the tune of $2.5 billion.

How do P2E models operate?
  •  NFT technology; non-fungible tokens are present on blockchain and allow for digital asset ownership that works with their own unique digital identity, making them rare and this ownership can be traced on the blockchain as a token 
  • it can also be understood as characters and accessories within a game. Non-Fungible refers to the uniqueness, no duplicates!
  •  Building an in-game economy (tokenomics) allows people to earn rewards in the form of coins and enables the trading of assets (via NFTs)
  •  Community Management brings in the real essence – Establishing a community of players who are loyal thus creating a strong user base. A model that operates on players interacting with each other through competitive gaming; leads to a motivated community that provides a sense of ownership thus creating an ecosystem where community not only nurtures but also spreads the word about their products, services and advantages.
  • Governance Token allows to build and regulate this ecosystem. Through these special tokens, community enjoys the real democracy with voting rights and governs the rules of the game.
Turning gaming into a source of income is now a reality! The top blockchain games in the market right now are:

  • Axie Infinity
  •  The Sandbox
  • Crypto Blades
  • Pegaxy
  • Illuvium


Lets deep dive the top one!


Deciding what goes up and when? Graphics or text posts? What accounts to engage with? These are some of the questions to be answered when preparing content calendar. Planning ahead will ensure successful execution of the posting schedule and it also helps to not run out of content to post!

Continuous Engagement

Nothing better than organic marketing, here you have pointers to just keep it real, keep it relevant, have your community join in on insightful discussions and conversations, make use of Discords voice channels and host events, make sure to give back to community with giveaways, nothing gains loyalty more than giving valuable insights/rewards. All of this helps crypto community gain a sense of ownership and feel like a part of something bigger.

Following our Growth Loop

Server Advertisement

Boost your server- but how?

Cross advertise on different servers, incentivize the community, utilize server listings and advertise on relevant platforms. Go crazy with Twitter, Telegram and Reddit! Tell people what’s so great about your product, spark their curiosity and have them join! Make sure to spend on ads that matter, ads that will help get returns. Make certain that target audience realizes the value of being a part of community and they spread the word, nothing more reliable than what you’ve heard from a friend, Right?

All of this comes down to how you reap the benefits of different platforms, specifically about Discord – it’s super quick and easy to join, it’s fast paced so it automatically increases efficiency within server, it’s super community oriented so you get to hear their feedback instantly. Makes it great for customer service and of course, last but definitely not the least, it improves the brand credibility and helps you gain awareness within the crypto community!

Conclusion

Successful crypto projects need state-of-the-art tech – that is for sure. But, without a vibrant community, the web3 is like a super car without fuel a battery. Crypto community management is not an easy thing, each step needs a well curated strategy. From choosing the required platforms to building the right incentivization model or tokenomics and delivering a community driven eco system.

Are you sold?

With all the 101 things you need to consider when community building, we live and breathe all things crypto and growth.

2) Case Study: Axie Infinity – a $14 Billion Game

Axie Infinity is the biggest P2E blockchain game with a market cap of $14 billion and 2.7 million monthly users.

Players can start playing by purchasing three NFTs, called Axie, from the Axie marketplace. These NFTs are characters that are like Pokémon, that can be different, and their rarity varies from one Axie to another with a diverse set of unique characteristics.
NFTs are used in-game as cosmetics or in-game characters. These NFTs are then used in-game to fight NFTs of other players in Player vs Player matches where the winner of the game gets rewarded with a coin called SLP which can be traded to earn money. You can also buy a cosmetic skin, a tool, or even a real estate.

Earning through playing games becomes a reality through blockchain technology where these NFTs play a huge role.

When players play with these NFTs/character – valuation of these NFT assets change depending on distinct factors e.g., importance of a specific NFT, a certain power that NFT possess, a unique art form etc. Therefore, when the valuation of these NFTS increase, they are then traded on a marketplace thus creates the demand and supply factor, that allows people to make money. Another way of earning is through in-game coins, you win or spend time on a specific game, and you get tokens as rewards.

There are so many other ways to interact with these Axies, a player can breed two Axies together to hatch eggs that turns into new Axies. One can sell these new Axies or just start their own personal Axie Farm!

Similarly, they have lands and adventure mode. The land gameplay has not been launched yet, but it will lead to a whole metaverse within the game, metaverse is basically a whole digital world where people can interact with each other just like in the real world along using their Axies.
Interesting fact: people in the developing world hard hit by covid took up playing Axie Infinity to get income.

3) Benefits of P2E

3.1) Income

There are numerous benefits of P2E model, the most obvious: it is a great source for income. The tokens earned as rewards can be converted into US Dollars and other real-world currencies.

People with capital can purchase NFTs and rent them out to players by working out a revenue sharing agreement. Investors and players’ benefit.

3.2) Players Have Control

The biggest benefit of blockchain gaming (vs. traditional games) is that asset ownership lies with the players. The players own the assets in the game Unlike Fortnite or other similar games, where one spends tons of money on cosmetics that are limited to games and cannot be sold or traded.

Another benefit is around of governance. Players have a say in the how the games evolve through “governance token”.

3.3) Investments

Investment channels, while highly volatile and risky, these game NFTs, Lands and other tokens can be great for investment purposes where one can invest in diverse set of projects from their lands, NFTs to their tokens and coins that can be staked to earn interest in their tokens as well.

In the physical world, real estate is valued based on foot traffic (think 5th Avenue in NY). Why wouldn’t the same apply in virtual worlds? The value of virtual land where more people are hanging out will surely be more!

4) What are different tools and processes in this ecosystem?

There are many different blockchain gaming projects coming out every day. While most of them are different in many aspects, they all share some basic processes and tools as listed below. Let’s zoom into each one!
  1. Wallets
  2. Trading
  3. Mining
  4. Staking
  5. Gaming Guilds
  6. Scholarships

4.1) Wallets

The first and most important part is creating your own wallet. Wallets are an online tool that contains all your coins, assets, and payment data. This is used to trade coins and make all the online payments. To play blockchain games and to be on a metaverse requires a digital wallet. Most common one is Metamask while games like Axie Infinity requires Ronin Wallet. These are all software web-based wallets that come with their own set of risks and security issues.

To add an extra layer of security, one can use hardware wallets like Trezor and Ledger to protect their assets. These wallets are required to connect to the marketplace before you can purchase and store the NFTs.

4.2) Trading

Each game has its own marketplace, this is where all the monetization happens. This is where you can buy and sell your NFTs and make passive income. These marketplaces also allow for many different features like breeding your NFTs to mint new NFTs, trade NFTs and even in certain cases upgrade. These features vary game to game.

4.3) Mining

Mining is a process of collecting coins through the game or any application by participating or playing the game. The more you play the game, the more coins can be mined. Each P2E game has their own model that cater to the ‘to-earn’ part. Most of the games have their own utility tokens like SLP in Axie Infinity that is minted by playing the game. These coins once mined can be traded into other tokens or currency like USD to withdraw from your wallets.

4.4) Staking

Staking is a process that helps you use your crypto currency to earn more coins. This is done by locking your coins in a fund of the respective organization, they then hold your coins for you and pay you a percentage of total amount in return while your existing coins are safe and stored. Done

The tokens and the money you earn through mining and trading can be converted into a governance token, like AXS, MANA and SAND. Most of these games offer staking options or will have staking in their roadmap which can be used to stake and mine more tokens to earn some extra income.

4.5) Gaming Guilds

The blockchain has not just revolutionized the gaming industry for just players, but also the e-sports organizations that support the players. They have allowed guilds to flourish by developing a pool of scholars where they can invest in different games on behalf of players and allow them earning opportunities along with training. Hypermode can help you get started with your own guild as well.

4.6) Scholarships

Every blockchain game has its own respective communities, these communities have scholars as their backbones that allows for the economy to flourish and exist. Since most of the games requires an initial capital to purchase NFTs to start earning, scholarships allow people who are passionate about playing games to earn and support themselves financially, connect with Gaming Guilds like ours “Giving Guild” to rent out their NFTs so the scholars can pay and earn to increase utility of the NFTs.

5) Taking advantage

These are exciting times we are living in, with the introduction of Web3.0, the gaming industry is going through a revolution and would be even more important because of its P2E model coming to the mainstream. This also inculcates the number of industries it will bring together with development of so many new gaming guilds providing opportunities for so many people across the developing countries. And what a great opportunity for the gamers! Something that we the web2.0 people only fantasized about. Just imagine playing with a character, winning and getting rich. You are getting rewards for sure but what about the tremendous amount of capital appreciation you may get from your NFT(character).

There are numerous opportunities available in the Blockchain ecosystem and one of the pillars of this would remain the P2E model. Hypermode has taken a deep dive into it, if you need any help – connect with the world class team.

Sounds exciting? We can get you started!

We at, Hypermode, can help you get started in the blockchain gaming ecosystem. We are running funded guilds that are being scaled to accommodate more scholars. We are always on the lookout for scholars who want to get an opportunity to earn by playing these games as well as early investors who want an investment opportunity in this space for either a passive income or a long-term gain. Just reach out to us for Blockchain consulting and we will take care of the rest

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