Let me start with the conclusion of my blog: if you plan to launch a game with tokens and you intend to pegg your tokens to external crypto exchanges from the start, then in fact, you may have failed from the start .
Commitment to "play and earn" ( we use the term "play and earn" rather than "play to earn" because "play and earn" sounds more or less like a job, the job Linked to the game itself, and the time when you can make your own money ) is a new age way of video gaming, a new type of economy in the web3/metaverse realm. It allows players to choose whether to earn money from their games while enjoying their games in the virtual world, whether through individual effort, being part of a guild or company, or building or creating new ones in the game. Projects, even shallow participation, can be rewarded.
The CEO of CCP (developer of EvE Online) was recently quoted as saying:
"Gamers want the value created in online games to be used in the real world. The content of online games should have real value in the real world. The gaming industry should evolve to allow gamers to earn money from games by using them money to make a retirement plan." – CEO of Hilmar Veigar Pétursson CCP
This is indeed a quest to find the Holy Grail (the original holy grail quest is usually used to express the realization of an elusive object or goal, which has important meaning and will be sought after by the public), and currently gamers of all kinds are looking for struggle. But the main point where the various gaming communities are currently wrestling with this idea is that the examples of this type they are seeing are immature, and that these immature examples are inherently linked to cryptocurrencies that they are not interested in.
The essence of gaming's existence is the entertainment it provides to the masses , and today's "play to earn" approach to gaming feels more like a bad job. Even more troubling is that games designed around tokens or NFT-based systems are completely under the control of external market forces, players have nothing to do about it, and this design mechanism is built in from the beginning of game development. entered. Speculators who are not interested in the game will jump into the game in order to accumulate tokens early to boost their value, and then leave behind inflation-corrupted remnants when they leave. Suddenly, "play to earn" has become "pay now, play later", and the worse effect is that if you can't pay, you'll even get a loan from another player, in other words, before you have a chance Make yourself part of the debt empire they built before enjoying the game.
Developers of play-to-earn games were then forced to introduce finer balancing design rules aimed at keeping the token-based economy going, rather than building a more engaging system for players. A catastrophic implosion can be expected over the next 12 months as token-based games start to fail as players continue to leave or find it impossible to generate sustainable income from their games .
Do we want to be like this? no, because it would be boring
We looked at this problem from multiple perspectives and found that the best and only way to solve it is from the player's perspective, focusing on the game itself. By establishing an in-game economy independent of crypto exchanges or tokens, and protecting the in-game economy in a way based on real economic theories and algorithms, rather than the current pseudo-economy that still uses spreadsheets in game design, We can see an opportunity in the future to create a stronger, more balanced economic infrastructure that developers can use to build the foundation of both offline and online game economies, and that's the true "play and earn" category of games .
Focus on the gameplay itself first, then let the player choose to participate, and let the player decide what market they need to sell and exchange the items they make in the game.
Protecting both types of economies from external manipulation provides not only stability and security for the game, but also consistency for players and developers. For example, as a player seeing your time and value will not disappear due to token fluctuations, or as a game developer, your income will not be affected by the fluctuations of tokens that affect your interest in the game content itself. development.
"If the synthetic world were fully commercialized, then golden goose: an Italian luxury fashion brand from Venice, Italy. Its product line includes handmade leather sneakers, footwear, ready-to-wear and accessories, all featuring a vintage feel and the Star logo. ) is long dead".
–Edward Castronova (Edward Castronova: is a professor of media at Indiana University Bloomington. He is especially known for his work on the synthetic world economy.)
The right to participate and the duty to participate in the system are two completely different things. Confusing the two turns the dynamic fun of a win-win into a miserable zero-sum game.
Essentially, that's what we're trying to solve at Metanomic; how to empower gamers to share in the value they bring to the gaming community, rather than forcing them to pay for the game or for non-game "jobs" ". In other words, how can the gaming industry move from "playing" to "earning" (which is just another term for "time-based work") to "playing" and "earning", like moving to shared value rather than casual work culture?
In our view, the difference between "play to earn" and "play to earn" is like the difference between a rent-seeking dead-loss market and productive open trade, which shifts value from a person's Transfer to another person who adds net value to all participating players.
Also, it's key to understand that "value" isn't just currency, in its truest sense, value can also be (in fact, it must be in a gaming context!) intrinsic. Intrinsic value in the game environment comes from the fun that players get from the game itself. In fact, players will happily pay value for their time and "real" money. Players don't want to constantly feel compelled to spend money to win, but that they can spontaneously invest resources purely for the fun of the game.
Any effort by game developers to increase player economic utility at the cost of reducing the intrinsic utility of the game itself is inherently unsustainable. This is the Faustian deal that developers are caught in in the current game money-making environment. Having introduced the lure of get-rich-quick tokenomics into their gaming environment by opening their games and their players to speculative open market forces, they find themselves dealing with incompatible incentive structures. These speculators and token holders who expect the token price to be maximized in the short term have no incentive to protect the long-term utility of the game, nor the subjective desire to invest or improve the inherent fun of the game. This means that players are gradually replaced by workers until the tragedy of the commons occurs, and all remaining intrinsic utility is removed from the game. In stripping, speculators and their new working class are forced to find new pastures, repeating the same zero-sum game.
This somewhat cynical slash-and-burn business model is indeed a strategy, but it is a cynical strategy that destroys untold long-term surpluses in pursuit of short-term profits. Over time, as players and the new class of working game grinders realize they can have more fun and more money elsewhere (online or offline), making money will become more difficult. That's why we're betting on another model, based on the idea of mutually beneficial trade among peers, that can only come from designing a self-sustaining system with consistent incentives for all involved players.
As such, the Metanomic platform suite of tools is designed to maintain and grow the value of the game economy network. In order to do this, we have embraced the original ethos of the decentralized web, emphasizing that participants in games and networks should share the ongoing value of these networks they help build.
This is subtly similar in spirit to the more cynical projects in the space, but the biggest difference is that these projects focus on extracting value from the community rather than being with and creating value for the community.
There are many factors that make up our unique solution
- It's a runtime infrastructure - other tools offer the ability to simulate balancing before you implement the economy, which means if the economy takes a hit from the system, you still have to manually adjust and rebalance and then patch, while All communities will be affected. This goes well with the introduction of gaming and earning mechanics, as players suffer financially not just through their in-game currency.
- Metanomic is a real-time platform - running using a proprietary, patent-pending algorithm designed by a Ph.D. in Economics that adjusts itself, allowing game economies to rebalance in real-time to provide stability.
- It's token and chain agnostic - neither the engine nor the hub we've built needs to rely on a token, chain or wallet as a solution, which means that as a developer you are free to choose what works best for your game. Where other tools force you to choose a specific chain or token model, by using our platform and API, we take care of the economy, give you the freedom to develop your game, and build bridges in the ecosystem of games and revenue.
- It connects the in-game marketplace with the player-driven marketplace - whether you're a developer with a heavily used game economy, or you want a solution that allows your players to connect with the economies and marketplaces of other games, we Metanomic was built to do just that. If your game is developed using our tools and APIs, the more games that use our infrastructure, the larger the network of games, players and tradable game items will be.
- This is a community-driven platform - we want to empower the community to design new economies using our engine platform and provide developers with their templated solutions. This is a long-term vision that we believe in and are currently working to achieve.
- It's modular and the choice is yours - whether you want to have a completely offline economy, an economy with an online player marketplace, a full game economy, or if you need to fix and rebalance an existing game, we Modular platforms are available to meet your needs.
It's time to move away from the idea that "play and earn" needs to be designed entirely around tokens, which is hurting the gaming industry and dividing the player base.
The only constant core design idea for all new game reward systems.
As the original intention, game-oriented.