2022: The Year That Gaming Broke.
2022: The Year That Gaming Broke
Play to Earn will be one of the big tech trends for this year.
If 2021 was the year that NFTs or Non Fungible Tokens went from obscurity to mainstream attention, then the hot trend for this year will be Play to Earn.
If you think that video games are child’s play, think again. Video gaming is a massive industry in fact nearly half the planet or 3.2 billion people regularly play video games. 1.48 billion alone in the Asia-Pacific region.
It is also within the gaming sphere, that we are seeing the green shoots for the next evolution of the internet: the metaverse. Far from being the virtual reality dystopia allegedly getting built by Meta (Facebook). Brush off all of the naysayers, because Web 3.0, the next evolution of the internet is one of the biggest collective technological endeavours our species is currently building.
So What is Play to Earn?
To put simply Play to Earn are metaverse games built with blockchain technology, that enables players to earn crypto tokens. These tokens then can be exchanged for traditional (FIAT) currencies. Giving players the opportunity to make a living, or a passive income playing video games.
How does this fit in with the Web 3.0 Ethos?
One of the many promises of Web 3.0 aka the metaverse is that it is decentralised, no one organisation or individual controls it and users have full control of where their data goes. Unlike web 2.0 where your personal data was sold as a commodity to advertisers, giving way to some of the largest corporations the world has ever seen. Part of taking back control of your data is the premise of getting paid for your efforts. It appears that blockchain gaming offers one distribution channel where you can be rewarded for your efforts.
Interesting to note that these new generations of blockchain games are run by DAOs or decentralised autonomous organisations. These are bottom-up democratic organisations, where any individual can buy a token and receive voting rights on how the organisation is run. There are no executives or boards that are figureheads. In fact, DAOs are the exact opposite of top-down corporations that you see in mid to large-sized businesses. Instead of people, the trust inside a DAO is left to the coding and blockchain to keep each individual accountable.
What this represents is a paradigm shift away from the traditional tech entrepreneur of the 2000s and 2010s (aka Unicorns) towards a more cooperative, collaborative approach (aka Zebras). Blockchain gaming is more “power to the people” and presents a definite green shoot of how the world we are entering into, will look like post-pandemic. As this takes traction then the Zebra mindset will rub off on other industries.
DAOs are also important from the player’s end as well. To play properly players need to purchase NFTs, which can be expensive to purchase. In so many cases in particular in the developing world players have banded together to form gaming guilds. These guilds then go on to purchase the NFT and the digital asset is shared amongst the community members. Also within the guilds, any prize money earned gets evenly distributed according to the smart contracts in place. Meaning people, no matter the financial background can play and the wealth gets distributed throughout.
Why Is Play to Earn About to Get Big?
Play to Earn is already huge in South East Asia and other parts of the developing world.
And it is for the same reason that in the 19th century people from all over the world joined gold rushes. It is the allure of making a fortune. Think about it, for the past two years people have been locked down, jobs disappeared, supply chains disrupted and industries ground to a halt. Play to Earn represents a way in which people can make a living, in particular in countries with no social safety net, like those in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Players in the Philippines, for example, have been able to draw out an equivalent to a weekly salary playing blockchain games like Axie Infinity. Players earn crypto tokens which then can be converted over to hard cash.
In many ways Play to Earn, has become de-facto safety nets in developing countries. As with traditional gaming, in blockchain gaming there are guilds. One such guild YGG, has raised $1.4 million to help communities in the Philippines to recover from a recent typhoon earlier this year.
According to a recent article published in the South China Morning Post. The decentralised nature of Web 3.0 encourages Asian tech entrepreneurs to become both creative and self-reliant. There is a low barrier to entry, and add in cultural relevance and access to 1 in 3 gamers in the world, are in that region and you start to see that the new big tech, fueled by Play to Earn is slowly moving away from Silicon Valley and Europe.
There are a plethora of exciting projects in the Indo-Pacific region out there, from there from the Aussie based RPG (Role Playing Game) Illuvium, where players can earn actual Ethereum tokens to Vietnam based Red Fox Labs which aims to create a whole South-East Asian metaverse ecosystem, which not only accommodates games but social enterprises, and e-commerce as well.
If I play devil’s advocate for one paragraph. A lot of Play to Earn is based upon altruistic intentions. However, there is a fine line between this and some forms of gambling. Particularly here in the developed world where some individuals will play for greed, not need. This is the adult discussion we need to have as the year progresses.
What can Marketers and Small Business Owners Take Away From Gaming?
If you entertain, you engage. This is the zeitgeist of this post-modern period if you are having fun and are being authentic, then your consumers will become your biggest fans. Some big brands are already in the action. For example during this year’s Superbowl, Miller Lite has created a pop-up bar and fan zone inside the Metaverse. According to a recent article in Adweek.
Gaming also represents mastery in long-form storytelling. As a podcaster, I know too well how much building upon the narrative can bring a level of trust to the end-user. We need to pay attention to how video game creators engage with their players. Because towards the back half of this decade and into the 2030s we all need to recreate, one way or another how video games do it so well, for all of our digital marketing strategies.
Viva la revolution!
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2022: The Year That Gaming Broke. was originally published in CryptoStars on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.