TrendsVC PRO 0077 – Play-and-Earn

Description

TrendsVC PRO 0077 – Play-and-Earn

Why It Matters
Play-and-earn games are onboarding millions (and soon billions) of people into web3.

 Problem
Gamers spend billions of hours and dollars on games.
Without ownership, alignment or governance rights.

 Solution
Play-and-earn games give players:

Transferable assets
Strong property rights
The ability to participate in governance
The ability to exit and remix games via forks
The ability to build and monetize assets and experiences
Play-and-earn games give developers:

New business models
Deep alignment with players
New ways to acquire and retain players
Faster development times with user-generated content
Players
Play-and-Earn Games

Axie Infinity • A card-based, battle-game.
Decentraland • Virtual world owned by its users.
The Sandbox • Community-driven platform that lets creators monetize assets.
PoolTogether • A no-loss lottery.
Zed Run • Virtual horse racing.
Worldwide Webb • A pixel art metaverse with NFTs.
Illuvium • A AAA game where players battle and earn ETH.

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 Predictions
Play-and-earn games will build increasingly complex economies. Axie Infinity has $AXS, $SLP, $RON, Axies, land and other items. Players can breed, battle, trade, lease, flip and govern virtual worlds.
Learn-to-earn models will become more common. Coinbase pays users to learn about DeFi concepts and cryptocurrencies.
Engage-to-earn models will become more common. Brave Browser gives BAT tokens to users that opt into ads.
The play-and-earn movement will birth new game studios. Incumbents like Ubisoft face backlash from trad gamers. The same applies to Discord. New companies will attract aligned users and work from first-principles.
There will be crossover between in-game and non-game economies. $SLP is used to pay for everyday products and services. Like home internet.
Opportunities

• Explore new monetization models as a gamer or developer.
• Collect in-game assets
• Earn from in-game battles
• Breed in-game characters
• Fractionalize in-game assets
• Buy and sell land in virtual worlds
• Stake in-game assets for a return
• Lease in-game assets to other players
• Provide liquidity (loans) to NFT owners
• Receive royalties from secondary sales
• Represent players as a protocol politician
• Create content and onboard players to play-and-earn games.
• Striker streams Loot Relics
• Brycent streams Axie Infinity
• Titokliber streams Thetan Arena
• Build a game for an existing community. Realms (for Adventurers) built on Loot (for Adventurers) by offering mint passes to Loot owners.
• Port traditional games to play-and-earn models. PoolTogether and MimirQuiz put a spin on lotteries and traditional quizzes, respectively.

 Risks
Complexity • Play-and-earn economies are becoming more complex. Game designers may not grasp the second-order effects of design decisions. Your assets may suffer.
Misinformation • Do your own research. Play games and engage with communities before investing.
Key Lessons
Earning from games is not new. Traditional games have unofficial secondary markets. HQ Trivia paid players directly. The difference is that play-and-earn games have strong, irrevocable property rights, open-source code and governance tokens.
Play-and-earn is a gateway drug to DeFi. In-game assets can be traded, leveraged, staked and sold. Players will come to play. Then learn what crypto has to offer.
Play-and-earn will hush NFT skeptics. In-game NFTs have utility. You can’t right-click-and-save a community. Or utility.

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