Pay to Play? Play to Earn? Play and Earn?
Digital blockchain games being released in this new, more advanced wave… games like Pepper Attack, God’s Unchained, Legends of Venari, Solchicks, and Axie Infinity have come a long way. After all, we started with Atari’s “Pong”.
It would take a lot more than we have space for to cover them all, but I’m sure we can agree that the evolution would leave Darwin proud! The first computers that could handle digital games of the time were not cheap. Fun? Check! Expensive? Double Check!
I cut my teeth on a pirate game on my old Apple IIc, and also went to lan parties… gatherings where we boxed up full-blown desktops and monitors to head to someone’s house or garage to connect by the old sound of phone modems to compete in the games of the time. We played Warcraft2, Heretic, Duke Nukem, Age of Empires, and more. All the wires and gizmos were not unlike a garage band. Just without the band.
Any old-time PC gamer can lead you through the stages from this point on. Computers shrunk. (and got less expensive if you don’t need top of the line graphic cards)The games that hooked most of us graduated from the simple and pixely look of the past, to the better than life looking graphic powerhouses of the games of 2021.
It seems the $50 price tags of the games of 1997 haven’t changed much for single-player games. However, a new breed of game emerged, the “free-to-play” multi-player game. This iteration lets the player play for free, and in most cases with all the levels, bells and whistles. This leads to the question: “How does the game company make money?”
The answer is simple… pull out your credit card and buy weapons, armor, potions and other items… or buy “skins” for your character. These skins are limited edition visuals for your character, that change the look, feel, and appearance. While the game is still free, these skins are not only plentiful, but pretty incredible looking, getting the average 12 to 60 year old gamer to pull out that pocketbook! Fortnite and Apex Legends, as well as League of Legends and others earn their keep by selling so many skins and such, that they top yearly sales figures in the billions. (that’s “millions”, but with a “B”!)
The upside of course, is looking incredible while shooting the enemy. The downside? The skins are neither re-sellable nor tradeable. So when you want to take a break or move to the next game, it’s money down the drain.
The solution? Enter “play to earn” gaming!
The “play to earn” model of games is a natural progression. Now, players can still download and play the game for free, but as they progress in the game they earn them the designated token. So for the first time, instead of “paying to play”, gamers could “play to earn”.
Some of the earlier play to earn games required no purchase whatsoever, while others require a small fee to get started. Others require the purchase of some tokens, some provide “cards” for a card game, or maybe even the purchase of an NFT character to enter the game world.
With these first play to earn games, if you were ready to move on you can “cash in” your characters, equipment, weapons, or tokens for real money. The only issue with early “play to earn” games, was while you did put some coins in your pocket, they just were not all that fun to play. As competition became stiffer however, it became apparent that to keep players around, the games also need to also be “fun”!
The term “Play AND Earn” was born.
Yes, it IS fun to make money playing a game, but when the game begins to feel like work, something needs to change. This is where the difference arrives… “Play and earn” games are titles that you would play anyway, with or without the earnings. The profit… is just a bonus!
As developers like Pepper Attack realized, games should be fun. Pepper Attack will reward players not only with a fun strategy game, but a chance to earn real cash money on a daily basis. In fact, in the case of Pepper Attack, money can be made daily by sending your characters off to “mine” the token MYTE. Simple, eh?
In fact, as of Christmas Eve all Mystic Pepper NFTs can mine daily. There are still some available to mint at https://pepperattack.com . Or, join the Discord at https://discord.gg/pepperattack .
In defense of the early blockchain games that were/are less than entertaining, any real gamer knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was World of Warcraft. A quality “triple-A” (AAA) game can easily take 3 to 5 years to produce. Fortunately, plenty of games are on the horizon, many to be launched some time in 2022.
Not only are leading game companies like Pepper Attack realizing the future of gaming is on the blockchain, but they are in “play and earn” titles rather than “pay to play”. Millions of players not only are flocking to the genre but embracing it.