Games exist for entertainment, don’t they? Many people nowadays don’t even know that there are video games where you can also earn real money. These games are called P2E games or play-to-earn games. It is the intersection between blockchain and gaming.
Timeline of play-to-earn games:
Let´s start at the beginning:
2013:
Bitcoin suffered a crash in 2013. The total price fell from $260 to just $50, a loss of 83%. This drop has also lengthened the processing time for transactions, resulting in a cyber threat that drove hackers to attack the platform with DDoS attacks to further drive the price crash. The hackers managed to slow down the trading system and block bitcoin orders. This caused many users to turn away from the cryptocurrency, believing it to be a scam.
2014:
Nevertheless, the first blockchain-based game was launched as an experiment in 2014. Xaya team launched the game Huntercoin.The game was about collecting coins on a global map. With this game, there was proof that blockchain and gaming could merge and coexist. First, the principles of Bitcoin were mirrored. In the beginning, it was a decentralised, serverless and censorship-resistant system. This further developed into a blockchain principle with many different game worlds that could be operated simultaneously.
2017:
2017 was a very significant year for Bitcoin and, therefore, for play-to-earn games. This year, the first P2E game went public: CryptoBots. It was a mix of a role-playing game, a collectable game and a great space adventure strategy. It used many unique Crypto-Bots NFTs, which allowed players to use their NFT characters in the game. At the end of December, there was another drastic drop in Bitcoin,, from $17,500 to $12,500, losing a significant amount of value and people in hours. Besides Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies were also affected by this collapse.
These days:
Currently, cryptocurrencies have been able to reach incredible value. One of the main reasons for this is the increasing global awareness of NFTs. The game development platform DEA (Digital Entertainment Asset) has built an entire ecosystem of games around blockchain tech. One of the most popular games is Job Tribes. In it, players can collect NFT artwork from illustrations and fight other players with it.
The future:
One aim is to make games more collaborative. A well-known example of this is the game Balthazar. In it, a guild system enables traditional clans to give each other their NFT upgrades in-game. This allows users to discuss, educate, trade and chat with each other.
The metaverse offers many more opportunities to develop play-to-earn games. For example, more developers are experimenting with systems where users can actively build, design and develop words within a metaverse sandbox. Blockchain, games and the metaverse are constantly evolving, making the whole system more complex each day. It is just a matter of time to see where this new technology is taking the gaming world.
Check out this article for more examples of P2E games.
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