It's Friday evening, and you have an hour to kill before you meet your friends for a night out. You sit back in your armchair and fire up your favorite mobile game. During your play session, you are interrupted by an ad for this new gaming platform which tells you that you can get paid while you play their games. Holy smokes! You jump up from your chair, do a couple of cartwheels, then download the app. Paid while you game? Sign me up you think to yourself. You load up the app, go through the usual formalities, add your payment processor of choice, and away you go head first into paid gaming nirvana; happy days!
After your first foray into the P2E gaming world, you discover that things may not be as they seem. In your first session, you annihilated the game, racked up a tonne of points, and even told your friends to bugger off because you found something better to do. You spent the best part of three whole hours without stopping for a food or bathroom break, only to rack up a total of (drumroll) seven cents.
Wait, hold on, where were the big bucks that were promised in the advertisement? They told you the more you play the more you earn. Must be a blip. Off you go once again playing even harder this time. You clock up almost double the amount of points in session two. Haha, got you now. Come to Papa. Time to reel in those big bucks! At the end of your session, your points morph into real currency once more. You earned four cents.
You eyeball the figure on screen like a Tiger staring down the thief who had just stolen his lunch! Enraged, you throw your phone across the room, slump into your chair, and grovel to your friends. You remember? the people you blew out hours earlier because you were about to make serious bank while playing games. Captain Reality appears, calls out your name, points, and laughs at your misfortune. Cue that facepalm moment.
What exactly are P2E games?
A P2E (Play-to-Earn) game is a category of video game that allows players to earn real-world value via their in-game activities and achievements. Unlike regular games where the main goal is entertainment, P2E games incorporate economic elements, providing players with the chance to monetize their playtime and effort invested in the game. Some of the most popular P2E games can be found on mobile, with the biggest, gaining a user base in the millions. Most of them are basic arcade and puzzle-type games, modeled on their non-P2E counterparts. Sometimes the games come as stand-alone applications but what is getting more popular are P2E gaming platforms that offer a compendium of games, all in one app.
How does the P2E business model work?
P2E games are monetized in several ways. How exactly do the game developers make money in the first place?
Partnerships and Sponsorships: Developers form partnerships with other companies or brands for in-game advertising, collaborations, or sponsorships. Adverts are incorporated into the gaming environment. Game developers can earn revenue through partnerships with advertisers who pay to display ads during gameplay.
Community-Based Events and Challenges: Game developers or platforms might arrange and oversee community events, tournaments, or competitions within the game. Such events have the potential to draw in sponsorship agreements and boost player involvement, thereby playing a role in the overall financial prosperity of the game.
Licensing and Franchising: Successful P2E games might investigate options to license their intellectual property or franchise their game concept. If the game gains widespread popularity, this could serve as an extra avenue for developers to generate revenue.
Sounds pretty darn good so far, one would probably think. The game developers eke out a revenue stream by building a strategic relationship with a third party and ultimately have funds available to pay users.
How exactly do the players earn?
There are a few main ways players can be rewarded for their in-game activities:
Time-Based Rewards: Certain P2E games provide incentives determined by the duration players dedicate to the game. This may include acquiring a specific quantity of in-game currency or resources over time and promoting a pattern of consistent and frequent gameplay.
Gameplay and Achievements: Gamers have the opportunity to receive rewards through active participation in the game and reaching specific milestones, such as accomplishing quests, completing levels, or honing in-game skills. The extent of rewards is directly correlated with the amount of effort and skill invested by the player.
Task Completion: Games might assign players various tasks or challenges, and upon successful completion, players receive rewards. These tasks may involve activities like exploration, crafting, combat, or other in-game pursuits.
Participating in Other Activities: Some P2E gaming platforms offer rewards for users participating in activities outside of the actual games they offer. These can include filling out surveys, completing offers from partner companies, watching ads, and installing other games in order to receive points, which are then converted into the player's reward currency.
When all is taken into account, the model sounds like it should work in favor of both developers and players and all associated partners and stakeholders. It would be all well and good if this were the case and everyone received their fair share of rewards, though the reality is quite different.
Dude, where's my money?
The truth is, that numerous users are not receiving satisfactory amounts of compensation for their efforts in various cash-based P2E games and platforms, leading to grievances such as:
Loss of progress tracking during gameplay
The high amount of achievements or play time that is needed to cash out
Lack of clarity on how rewards are earned
False Advertising
Account hacking and identity theft
Lack of verifiable player usage data/history
Some disgruntled P2E gamers experience a mix of issues during their play sessions. Source: Google Play.
Examining reviews has uncovered the P2E landscape not being the idyllic, Rose-covered garden as has been advertised and promoted to be. Disgruntled users maintain that despite investing significant time and effort, they find themselves earning insufficient cash, raising serious concerns about the overall integrity of the P2E industry. Many are opting to end their participation due to meagre payouts or a lack of clarity from developers on how rewards are actually calculated before distribution. Clearly, challenges persist in the cash-based P2E space.
Can DLT solutions help?
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based on the blockchain provides various features and decentralized mechanisms that can contribute significantly to establishing legitimacy and transparency in the play-to-earn gaming industry. It's crucial to recognize that not all blockchain platforms are created equal or are fit for purpose, but in general, the inherent attributes of DLT, offer tangible benefits that address some of the primary challenges currently affecting the industry. Some of the key features behind DLT infrastructure that could help bring a layer of transparency, anti-fraud, identity, and data protection to the P2E gaming industry are:
Decentralization: Operating on a decentralized network of nodes, blockchain diminishes the risk of a single point of failure or manipulation. This attribute makes it harder for malicious actors to undermine the integrity of the game.
Immutability: Blockchain provides an immutable ledger, meaning that once information is recorded on-chain, it cannot be altered or tampered with. This ensures transparency in the recording of in-game transactions, asset ownership, and rewards.
Smart Contracts: Smart contracts are automated contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. In P2E games, smart contracts can automate various processes, including the distribution of rewards, ownership transfers, and gameplay rules. This reduces the risk of fraud and ensures that the game operates according to predefined rules.
Tokenization of Assets: In P2E games, in-game assets and currencies can be tokenized on the blockchain. This tokenization ensures clear ownership and provenance of virtual assets, making it easier to trace and verify the legitimacy of items.
Transparent Auditing: The transparent and public nature of blockchain allows for easy auditing of in-game transactions. Players and developers can verify the history of asset ownership and transactions, reducing the likelihood of fraudulent activities going unnoticed.
Anti-Cheat Mechanisms: Blockchain can be used to implement anti-cheat mechanisms that are resistant to manipulation. By recording critical game events and actions on the blockchain, developers can create an immutable record that makes it more challenging for cheaters to manipulate or bypass anti-cheat measures.
Decentralized Identity Verification: Blockchain can be used to establish decentralized identity systems, allowing players to maintain control over their identities. This can reduce identity theft risk and provide a more secure environment for player interactions.
Community Governance: Some blockchain-based games incorporate decentralized governance models where key decisions about the game's development, rules, and updates are made through a consensus mechanism involving token holders. This can enhance community trust and reduce the risk of fraudulent activities by involving players in the decision-making processes.
Many voices from within the web 3.0 space are calling for DLT integration in games, as an essential component, which will bring much-needed transparency and integrity to the GameFI and P2E industry. The benefits that can be harnessed by merging DLT infrastructure into this category of games, will have a positive impact, allowing users to receive a fairer distribution of rewards, have the ability to verify payment consistency, and feel safer in the knowledge that the system is not rigged against them. There are also additional benefits that come from tokenization and democratization, allowing players to become stakeholders and play a part in the governance of the game or platform.
The Aleph Zero Layer-1 DLT for GameFI and P2E Gaming
Aleph Zero is an enterprise-grade layer-1 DLT committed to delivering scalability, security, and privacy for decentralized application development and deployment. The platform employs the AlephBFT consensus protocol, ensuring rapid transactions with near-instant finality and minimal fees. The hybrid technology behind Aleph Zero consists of a combination of DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) and Blockchain.
Play-to-earn games in the GameFi world are starting to gain traction among gamers, wherein players are compensated for their time and skill with cryptocurrency or non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These games typically demand high performance, low latency, and the ability to interact with other platforms and protocols seamlessly.
The Upcade Arcade gaming platform on Aleph Zero.
P2E games built on Aleph Zero would gain a whole new level of integrity, security, transparency, and performance. Some of the advantages offered over other DLT infrastructure solutions are:
Scalability: Aleph Zero can process 89,000 Transactions per second, which is much higher than most other Layer-1 platforms. This means that play-to-earn games can support many players and interactions without compromising on speed or quality.
Security: Aleph Zero employs a hybrid Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus algorithm, (AlephBFT) to safeguard the network, guaranteeing security even in the presence of malicious or faulty nodes. This instills trust in play-to-earn games, assuring the validity and consistency of transactions and rewards.
Privacy: Aleph Zero will soon facilitate the creation of private smart contracts, empowering users to execute intricate logic without disclosing the specifics to external parties thanks to their implementation of ZKSnark in their privacy layer, Liminal. This capability ensures that play-to-earn games can uphold the privacy and identity of players and their assets, while also enabling innovative features like concealed quests or covert alliances.
Interoperability: The Aleph Zero developer team has been working on making the network interoperable with multiple blockchains and protocols. This will soon mean that P2E games built on Aleph Zero can leverage the existing ecosystem and infrastructure of the decentralized web, as well as connect with other games and platforms for cross-chain collaboration and innovation. They have also recently partnered with Router Protocol, a project that helps integrate blockchain platforms into their cross-chain bridge technology, allowing for connected networks to understand each other and exchange value transactions.
Drkvrs is a dark Metaverse game set in a Dystopian future. A project created by some of the members behind The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.
The Final Word
Although Aleph Zero is a recently introduced Layer-1, it has already demonstrated its effectiveness as a decentralized gaming infrastructure platform by integrating into various projects. Some examples include Drkvrs, Explora Online, MotoDex, and Upcade
As developer teams eagerly await the completion of ongoing developments, which include refining features like cross-chain interoperability and the introduction of the Liminal privacy layer, early gaming projects are already showcasing performance advantages compared to games built on popular layer-1 platforms. Enhancing Aleph Zero's array of useful features and incentives is the support provided to ecosystem developers, who can leverage free or subsidized code audits offered by the security firm Kudelski Security. Project teams can also apply for financial, technical, and marketing assistance via the Ecosystem Funding Program (EFP). This strategic move fortifies trust and elevates the integrity of games developed on the Aleph Zero platform.
While capable DLT solutions exist and are being used as infrastructure for game developers, most tend to fall short when it comes to certain key aspects that could help fix many of the issues that exist. With all components seamlessly aligned, Aleph Zero stands poised to establish itself as a dominant force in the realms of GameFI and play-to-earn gaming.
References:
Comments