Gaming is twirled in our lives in one way or another. We grew up playing Mario, and now it’s the era of PUBG. With a worth of over $300 billion, the gaming industry has already proven its firm place in today’s economy. But consider a place where you can fill your pockets by playing your favorite video games. Imagine a time when gamers do not earn the phony money used in monopoly games. That’s what GameFi and play-to-earn games allow you to do. They allow you to earn real money that can be used to pay your bills or order your favorite jacket.
What is GameFi?
GameFi is an abbreviation for the words’ ‘game’ and ‘finance.’ Andre Cronje, the CEO of Yearn Finance, coined the term in a 2020 tweet. GameFi combines blockchain technology, such as NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and decentralization, with advanced gaming mechanics to create virtual environments where players can earn money simply by playing and having fun.
Unlike traditional video games, most blockchain games allow players to transfer gaming items out of the virtual world of the game. This enables players to trade their NFT items and crypto earnings on NFT marketplaces. The advantages of actually owning digital assets in a game are becoming recognized as more than just something cool, but as something that gives you power as a player.
How does GameFi Work?
Traditional pay-to-play requires gamers to make an initial investment before they can begin playing. Call of Duty, for example, requires players to purchase licenses or recurring subscriptions. These video games were stored on centralized servers owned by a gaming company with the implicit power to turn off the world whenever they pleased. Furthermore, players had no physical ownership of the items they obtained through their character — the clothes, weapons, and prizes. It all existed only within the confines of the game and had no real-world value.
We have play-to-earn (P2E) as a revolutionary gaming mode at the heart of GameFi projects. It differs significantly from the pay-to-play model used by traditional video games. For example, game items awarded in the form of NFT, or achievement tokens can be traded on NFT marketplaces and crypto exchanges. In a nutshell:
⦁ GameFi projects are built on a blockchain’s distributed ledger. This keeps track of player ownership while also ensuring that all transactions are transparent.
⦁ Many of the current play-to-earn games rely heavily on what game designers call a grinding mechanic, in which players must spend a significant amount of time performing repetitive tasks within a game in order to advance or earn crypto tokens.
⦁ Each game has its own game economy and model. However, for the most part, these digital assets offer some sort of monetary benefit to their users. Many GameFi projects may also include elements of decentralized finance (DeFi), such as yield farming, liquidity mining, and staking. These provide additional ways for players to accumulate token assets.
Best P2E Games
Axie Infinity
Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn online game. It allows players to collect, breed, and mint Pokémon-inspired Axies before pitting them against one another in battle. Sky Mavis, a gaming giant, created it. Axie Infinity fuels the development and use of ‘Axies,’ or digital creatures, in the game with its native Ethereum-based cryptocurrency. The digital creatures, or ‘Axies,’ are essentially NFTs that provide players with unique proof of ownership.
The game is a hybrid of card-based battle systems and turn-based combat, with each Axie having its own set of abilities. Axies, like Pokémon, can be classified into many different types, with 9 different types in the world of Axie Infinity. Smooth Love Potion, or SLP, is a prime example of how to use cryptocurrency in the play-to-earn game. Smooth Love Potions are grown for profit and traded on various cryptocurrency exchanges. Meanwhile, Axie Infinity Shards, or AXS, serve as a governance token of the Axie Infinity ecosystem. AXS can currently be used to pay breeding fees.
The Sandbox
The Sandbox is a play-to-earn metaverse game that combines blockchain technology, DeFi, and NFTs. It is built on the Ethereum blockchain. The Sandbox, developed by Pixowl, is intended to disrupt the traditional gaming market in which platforms own and control user-generated content, limiting the rights of creators and gamers. In addition, players can create, own, and profit from their gaming experiences. These experiences are created on LAND and traded for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
These NFTs can be exchanged for SAND tokens on the Sandbox Marketplace. While The Sandbox is far from the only metaverse offering, it is unique in its product portfolio breadth. It consists of three products that offer gamers a comprehensive gaming experience.
⦁ The Sandbox Marketplace: It is an NFT Marketplace. Users can buy or sell assets created with the Voxel Editor in exchange for SAND in the marketplace.
⦁ VoxEdit: VoxEdit allows artists and players to create, rig, and animate voxel based NFTs. Voxels are 3D square pixels. They resemble Lego blocks. Voxels can be quickly modified in VoxEdit to form various shapes.
⦁ Sandbox Game Maker: Anyone can use the Sandbox Game Maker to create amazing 3D games for free. Players can create stunning 3D games in minutes using visual scripting tools.
Notably, the Sandbox received $93 million in funding from investors in November 2021. It was led by Japanese mobile giant SoftBank. The game also drew over 50 partnerships. Atari, a well-known gaming company, CryptoKitties, the Walking Dead, and hip-hop star Snoop Dogg were among them. When combined with previous funding rounds, the sandbox crypto future appears bright, especially with a capable team working on platform expansion.
Decentraland
Decentraland is a play-to-earn game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Ariel Meilich and Esteban Ordano launched the project in 2020. The Decentraland team pitched the project as the first user-owned virtual world where anyone could create, experience, and monetize content and applications.
The three Decentraland native tokens are MANA, LAND, and Estate. Each serves a specific purpose in the Decentraland economy. The properties of MANA, LAND, and Estate are defined by three smart contracts. These are the MANAtoken contract, the LANDRegistry contract, and the EstateRegistry contract respectively. Decentraland’s virtual space is made up of individual LAND parcels. You can purchase them with MANA in Decentraland’s marketplace. You can also buy wearables for your avatars, such as clothing, shoes, and accessories, from the marketplace.
Decentraland’s virtual world is accessible via an avatar, with whom you can explore the metaverse’s ever-expanding network of digital destinations. To participate in activities such as purchasing digital art at the Crypto Valley Art Gallery, trading with other metaverse regulars in Bartertown, or learning at Decentraland University, digital tokens are required. Furthermore, buyers are free to construct whatever they want on their plots. According to a November 2021 report, Metaverse Group, an NFT-based metaverse real estate organization and a subsidiary of Tokens.com, paid $2.43 million for a plot of land on Decentraland.
Conclusion
We hope this article clears all your doubts related to GameFi and play-to-earn (P2E) games. The increase in the number of active players is the most important growth factor for the GameFi sector. According to statistics, the average daily number of GameFi users is 1.2 million, with a peak of growth in December 2021 exceeding the value of 1.3 million. GameFi is not completely risk-free. P2E games carry the usual risks associated with cryptocurrency and other digital assets. However, as web3 evolves, experts predict that GameFi will improve as well.
Interested in buying GameFi tokens in India? Do give WazirX website a visit today!
Disclaimer: Cryptos are unregulated virtual assets, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the author(s) and don’t represent any investment advice or WazirX’s official position.
Also Read | What is SocialFi?
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