Crypto VC Thoughts: GameFi Dilemma

The current play-to-earn model will never work the way it pretends to be 🤫.

Why bother to play a game to resemble a soul crashing job just to earn as little as you can 🤔?

The model emphasizes on earn rather than an experience to play 🙄.

The primary purpose of designing a game is to provide fun. A game without fun is a boring job.

Who wants another job to pay so little 😒?

And much worse, you paid to have a boring job in most of the play-to-earn games in Web3 😒😒.

Simply, the earn-to-play model creates a clicking mindless zombie workforce to earn game tokens that may not be sustainable for their price due to high volatility market conditions.

Rather than play-to-earn, we can shift the model to play and earn.

The intrinsic value in a game is fun. Therefore, the gaming model should focus on the fun part and create a way for the player would commit their time and money to exchange the job of playing but not to force them to spend to win the game.

Here are some ideas to save Web3 gaming.

1️⃣ Free game

The game with a free string attached is a game with fun. There are no requirements for users to gain any advantages through payments, and everyone starts with an equal and fair gaming environment.

2️⃣ Occasional earning opportunities

The game rewards users based on their skills without any potential advantages they can gain through payments.

3️⃣ Proof of work experiences

The game will have a way to require proof of work to verify gamers' experiences. That way, the gamer can have a fair way to earn their rewards.

4️⃣ Transparent rules

The game will have transparent rules for gamers to play and enjoy the gaming experience.

All the above requirements are very difficult to meet, and they will cost the gaming system a lot.

But even with the above four requirements, I am not sure if the game will still provide fun to users 🤔.

⚠️ GameFi Trilemma

Image credit: https://medium.com/@stepnofficial/blockchain-trilemma-2-0-the-game-fi-trilemma-c24f1621548c

Playability, profitability, and accessibility are three components of GameFi.

I would argue that you cannot trade off playability for profitability. Simply because if the game is not profitable anymore, no one will touch it anymore.

Instead of profitability, we would focus on enjoyability.

At the end of the game, the user's enjoyment of the game experience should be the priority of the game design.

What do you think?

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