So Play2Earn Is Dead? Well, Think Again!

Back in late 2021 Play2Earn had seen a crazy time. It was during the build up to BTCs second top that people put absurd amounts of money into blockchain games such as Axie or Splinterlands. The hype was very real for a few months and at the peak of that mania, I was earning like $10 for a single win that took me a minute to do. Obviously, this was only short lived and everything has crashed since then.

But while basically nobody involved with crypto doubts that there will be another bull run for Bitcoin just like we've seen before, a surprisingly large amount of people have called for the end of Play2Earn altogether. I keep hearing that it's not sustainable, that in the current macro economy nobody is going to spend any money on games, and that Play2Earn is never going to see the light of day again.

Well, by now, I'm pretty confident to say that these people have been pretty much wrong. Play2Earn is alive and well and personally, I'm convinced that we haven't seen anything yet. Yes, sure, a lot of the first generation of Play2Earn games were hardly worthy of that name and yes, their economies were just plain, unsustainable bullshit. But it doesn't have to stay that way. Builders are learning from their mistakes, analyzing what did and didn't work, adjusting their economies accordingly. On top of that, people just love to play games. No matter how bad the economy is around them, people are always looking for distractions and by now, video-gaming is ingrained in our society, it's here to stay. Because of that, there will be another bull run for Play2Earn.

But we don't have to wait for a distant future for that to happen. It's there, right here, right now. I've spend my morning playing my 2 favorite blockchain games Parallel and Splinterlands and here is what I've earned:

Playing (and winning) 5 games in Parallel this morning, I was able to make 0.54 Prime. At the current price of $8.1, that's $4.37 right there.

In Splinterlands, between playing ranked, working my land, and holding different other assets, I made a total of 1,065 SPS today. At $0.022 that's a nice $23.43. So between those two games, I've made a nice $28 in just a few hours, actually playing games I genuinely enjoy. How much have people made playing Hearthstone or League of Legends in the meantime (assuming they aren't among the few pro players)? Now of course $28 a day isn't super much, but it's not nothing either. Assuming I keep this up for a month, that's close to $900 a month already. In a lot of places, that's quite a good salary already!

On top of that, that's only looking at the value of the token I've gained. I'm actually building the same if not even more value within these games that is not visible in the main token. In Splinterlands, I'm earning soulbound reward cards that have a very real chance to be worth a nice sum eventually. I'm selling my grain for DEC, I'm harvesting research tokens, something completely new we don't even know how to value yet.

In Parallel, I'm also working towards minting new NFT cards. This month's battlepass has two new NFTs that only can be minted during this month. If NFTs minted before are any indication, the value of these NFTs could range from somewhere between $40 and $2000, depending on how desirable they are and what mint quality I will earn in the end. So by simply playing and investing my time, I'm actually build a portfolio of crypto assets that are worth very real money - all while enjoying myself doing so!

So what's different this time, why should Play2Earn make a comeback as strong as it does right now? Well, as indicated above, because they leveled up their tokenomics. Splinterlands has finally managed to get its flywheel going. It's still early, it's still fragile, but basically, any value coming to the ecosystem, any value being locked up in the ecosystem is always going to help SPS. So every time there are major market moves, every time there's new demand, some SPS will have to be burned, thus making the remaining tokens more and more valuable, as buying them is going to get harder and harder.

In a similar way, you can't acquire new NFTs in Parallel without spending Prime. Every time you mint a cosmetic item, every time you create an echo, some Prime has to be spend. And while there's always Prime being paid out for winning games, it simply isn't enough if you want to own everything. So naturally, as people acquire more Prime to mint what they want, the token appreciates accordingly.

In both cases, though, one thing is of the upmost importance. The game needs to be fun, people have to want to play it because they enjoy it first and foremost. They have to like these NFTs, they have to want to collect them. And I think that's something that distinguishes both of these projects from stuff like Axie or Alien Worlds. Both Splinterlands and Parallel are actually fun. They are actual games with actual art. They are actually pleasing to look at and don't feel like a 6 year old has drawn them...

That's not to say there won't be ups and downs of course. We are not in the next BTC bull run yet and I'm quite sure we'll see more downs before we see major ups again. Also, this next bull is going to end just like any other, and prices are going to follow. But the leading just as well as newly emerging Play2Earn games will learn, they will adapt, and they will be back for another round whenever there is another bull run.

Me personally, I just love being part of that ride and I'll be here no matter where we are in the cycle. I'll suffer through the lows as I will celebrate the highs. That said, though, I very much intend to take more money off the table than I did in the last bull. Overall, I think I've did pretty good back then, but obviously, I could have done even better. So this time around, I'm going to sell earlier, and I'm going to sell more aggressively. The goal is to never sell my core assets. This is everything that helps me to generate value and keep the money coming in. But the money coming in and/or any asset that is not generating income will be fair game and is very likely going to be sold eventually.

For that reason, I also intend to reinstate the Play2Earn Report, although I will make several changes to how I do it. Most prominently, I will only be doing it on a monthly basis. Also, I'm not only going to track the stuff I earn but also the stuff I sell - this should help to keep my more honest towards my goal of increasing my stack while also taking money off the table whenever I can. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again often - there are fun times ahead of us!

And that's all from me for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time!