TL;DR
There are two perspectives when making P2E(Play-to-Earn) ecosystem.
First perspective is to put priority in game itself’s quality.
Second perspective is to put priority in ecosystem like culture, incentive structure and community.
Glossary of Terms
P2E ecosystem
P2E ecosystem refers to a system that encompasses the P2E game project which contains, game itself, token, story, community, governance, etc.
trad-game
trad-game refers to traditional games, existed before concept of P2E.
Introduction
P2E Boom
P2E game trend started with the rise of Axie Infinity. Hype and expectation for P2E game can be seen by looking at the recent trends of VC’s. Following events have occurred in one day; 11/4.
a16z invested $150M in NFT gaming platform Mythical Games
Mythical Games is gaming studio focusing on player owned economies with tools to create mainstream AAA games.
Enjin announced $100M metaverse gaming fund
Enjin started journey of NFT, Metaverse, Gaming section with building Efinity, which is blockchain specialized to NFT transactions. Furthermore, Enjin started to aggressively invest in games, like Splinterlands.
FTX, Lightspeed invested $21M in Faraway Games
Faraway is the studio behind game Mini Royale, which is PUBG-like battle royal game based on Solana blockchain.
Ripple effect of P2E game can be measured by retention rate, which is one of the most important factor to evaluate game. According to statistic, while the 30-day retention rate of tradition mobile games is 3%, the 90-day retention rate of Axie Infinity is 40%. It means that users do enjoy playing P2E games compare to trad-games.
P2E vs trad-game
First, P2E leverages NFT for users to actually “own” in-game assets.
In trad-game, my in-game asset, my characters and items are all vested to the game platform. For example, although I own very precious sword in WoW, if WoW shuts down or decides to take this sword from me, I have no choice; just loosing the ownership. However, in P2E game, every digital assets are represented as NFT and my ownership about NFTs are permanently recorded in blockchain.
Second, I can make real profit from playing game.
In-game currency of trad-game has restricted utility of buying items or unlocking new contents. Same as in-game assets, it’s vested to the platform. However, P2E, in case of ethereum network, can launch in-game currency in ERC-20 standard, which can be traded outside the game for real money.
Last but not least, governance is most unique part of P2E games.
Trad-game such as FIFA, League of Legends, WoW have full power over the direction of the game by the companies that created the game(EA, Riot, Blizzard). Since traditional companies are decide by small number of shareholders or the board of directors, it doesn’t aim at the experience of user, but put company’s profit as a top priority. However, in the case of P2E games, since everyone with the token is a shareholder (member) of the project, they directly propose and vote for the direction of the project.
There are two perspective in making P2E ecosystem.
Game quality is priority
First perspective is about focusing on game itself first.
According to this stance...
Profits are good, ownership is good, governance is good, but if the game isn't attractive, then what's the use? Making a game that appeals to the user is the most important. If the quality of game is guaranteed, more users will participate in ecosystem then it’s not late to make incentive or governance structure after.
I would like to call these kind of P2E games as Web 2.5; which means that quite Web3-ish, but still has traits of traditional gaming studio,
Projects that has this perspective tends to get talent from traditional gaming studio to make game that can compete with trad-games. Also, they tend to use game play screenshot or demo for promoting.
Example: Mythical Games
Mythical Games, as I mentioned above, is one of the hottest P2E specialized gaming studio. Their strongest part is the team which really knows how to make appealing game. People behind Mythical Games formerly worked in Electronic Arts, Oculus, Activision, and Zynga. Mythical Games integrated NFT into their first product, Blankos Block Party which is MMOG & Platform type game like Roblox or Sandbox.
Ecosystem is the priority
This part of article is strongly influenced from Play to earn economies as base layer protocols for games by @pet3rpan.
Second perspective is looking P2E not as a sole game or application, but as a self-sufficient virtual nation where members can operate, own and do business together.
According to this stance...
In P2E ecosystem, players do enjoy the game itself, but also do a lot of things like making profit, get a job, interact with other people. So, we can think as a independent nation itself. As this nation would be grow with the people, it’s important to build and govern this nation or ecosystem not by a small number of centralized team, but with the community.
Minimum Viable Game
Culture and incentive structure that retains the users to project are important than game quality. Therefore, projects that have this perspective tend to make minimum viable game which is sufficient to complete the incentive loop rather than giving a lot of time and budget until releasing the game.
Open Source
Projects like Loot, TreasureDAO are taking this perspective to extreme. These projects makes the minimum contents and allows anyone who are interested to it can make games by leveraging it.
Example: TreasureDAO
TreasureDAO started as a derivative project from Loot, but now it became as a separate unique project. It’s not that simple to call TreasureDAO as just P2E game project. There’s more than that. I want to say there’s two big components in TreasureDAO; Story and economic ecosystem.
Story
there are 3 main components in Bridgeworld, where it all started. MAGIC is the scare resource that used to upgrade Treasures. Treasures are the tool for Legions to earn MAGIC. Legions craft, quest, battle and eventually build Bridgeworld together.
Economic ecosystem
TreasureDAO didn’t focused on making gaming in early stages. Instead, they made economic ecosystem like stake/mine, LP, Trade. Users can lock their $MAGIC for additional profit, provide liquidity for $MAGIC & ETH pool in sushiswap, and trade Treasures and Legions in marketplace on Arbitrum network.
Community First
If I have to choose one between two perspectives, I would choose the latter.
If we think of not only P2E projects, but also DeFi or NFT projects, most of them turned into form of DAO, which integrate community members to build the project together. This is because building with community outperforms the traditional project structure.
I think there’s no exception in P2E sector, too. When users directly engage with direction of project and participate in decision-making, users feel the ‘real’ ownership of the project.