Is Your Game Made for P2E?

I gave you a brief overview of the Play-to-Earn (P2E) GameFi business model in the previous article. While that was meant for both players and developers, this is more developer-centric.

I will be discussing a few essential factors or features that need to exist within the game to be eligible for the P2E model. However, blockchain or gaming enthusiasts who want to identify good play-to-earn games can also use this article as a guide.

So let’s dive in!

Internal Economy

Any P2E game needs to have an internal economy that is well-rounded, holistic, and has sorted its finances. In general, creating an economy, in simple terms, means building resources that are produced, consumed, and exchanged. These actions and the way they take place build an economy.

For P2E GameFi, developers first need to create various parts of the game to allow players to interact with the game. These parts could be characters, in-game assets, gaming modes, and more. Players will interact with all these aspects of the game, and since P2E deals with real money, the developers need to have a native cryptocurrency, which players will use to interact with the game.

For instance, in-game assets such as weapons, skins, etc., can be bought with the native cryptocurrency. While some gaming modes have free access, some may require the native crypto token. Furthermore, when people play games, they will be rewarded in the game’s currency.

Besides all this, the trade aspect of the economy is essential. So, developers must create a space to trade their assets, such as characters, for the game token.

A well-rounded internal economy is built when you implement the above features in the game, which is vital for the P2E model since it allows players to earn real money.

Dynamic Game Assets and Accessories

While I’ve already mentioned that a P2E game needs to have in-game assets, since those will be the commodities consumed and traded on the platform, it is also crucial for these assets to be robust.

This means the assets should have the ability to evolve and be upgraded. Furthermore, the evolution should be associated with the monetary value of the asset and how effective the asset is in a game. As the assets are upgraded, their monetary value and effectiveness should increase.

This way, people will focus on upgrading and advancing their assets alongside playing games to get a better shot at winning. Since they’ll be spending the native currency on upgrading these assets, they can, later on, decide to sell them to earn profits.

Overall, the equation should be such that the amount spent on acquiring an asset and upgrading it through various levels should be lesser than its final value, thus creating a profit margin for players.

Free-to-Play and Pay-to-Play Model

Different developers adopt different models and strategies that effectively run their games. While both free-to-play and pay-to-play models work, they still affect consumer psychology and behavior.

With free-to-play, the game doesn’t charge gamers any entry fee. However, how many game features it provides in this model for free and how many features are paid is a question that developers need to answer. With the pay-to-play model, the player has to pay an entry fee to access the game and play it.

The right balance would involve both the developers and gamers benefiting from the model. So an ideal solution would include choosing a slightly higher rate on in-game transactions if there is a free-to-play model or a slightly lower rate on in-game transactions if there’s a pay-to-play model.

Player vs. Player and Player vs. Environment

Player vs. Player (PVP) means different people will be facing off against each other in the game that will connect various people over the internet. On the other hand, Player vs. Environment (PVE) refers to players facing off against in-game characters and not real people.

Both these models work with the P2E GameFi. While some developers choose to adopt one over the other for monetary reasons, some offer both gaming modes to keep user engagement much higher since there are more avenues for them to earn money.

You might have heard of terms such as story modes which would indicate a PVE model, and tournaments or battle royale, which would follow the PVP model. Therefore both models work with P2E GameFi. The main question developers have to answer is how they’re going to distribute the rewards in both of the models since that would be one of the factors that indicate how strong the in-game economy is.

Loyalty and Community-Based Rewards

The previous article mentioned that the best P2E games are community-centric and community-driven. Thus having a loyalty-based reward system will help you build a strong community of people who actively interact with the platform.

According to this system, more invested people will receive higher rewards. Furthermore, people who have invested in the game longer will also be receiving higher rewards. This gives people an incentive to interact more with the platform since they know that the more they do, the more they can earn. Besides this, it also gives them a sense of long-term purpose where they know that the money they make can compound over a while. So they can set monetary goals accordingly and leverage the game to achieve them.

Conclusion

These are a few factors or features that need to be present in any good, sustainable P2E game. Furthermore, any game by itself needs to be engaging and exciting. Only then will there be an increase in its adoption since people will play not only for money but also for the entertainment value they gain.

If a game is intriguing by itself, then P2E GameFi can elevate it and bring in more people from different backgrounds. This helps a game in the long term since it would constantly expand its user base and keep growing.