The year 2022, when the term blockchain gaming (BCG) spread rapidly, is said to be over, and 2023 is said to mark the beginning of new challenges for the BCG industry, as 2022 saw the release of a number of BCGs, but also revealed a number of challenges.
Currently, the majority of games classified as BCGs have a ‘Play to Earn’ mechanism, and the ability to play and earn money is the biggest and only attraction of BCGs.
However, Play to Earn has structural flaws. As the price of the unique tokens earned in the game is directly linked to earnings, it is talked about as a ‘BCG you can earn’ as long as the token price is rising, but loses its appeal as soon as the token price falls.
In fact, almost no BCG has been able to maintain (or even increase) its token price for more than a month, and most BCGs lose users as soon as they are released, due to a collapse in the token price. This is the current situation.
These problems are now widely recognised and the BCG industry is now focusing on building a ‘sustainable ecosystem’. Rapid token price increases and the distribution of more tokens than necessary are factors that shorten the lifespan of BCGs, and there is a need for mechanisms to prevent these.
In addition, as long as the BCG is a closed economy, players will only be competing with each other for money, so some titles are aiming to acquire funds from the external economy.
Furthermore, the reality is that many BCGs are not interesting as games: in 2022, the aim of most participants was to ‘earn’ money, so that was fine, but in order for them to explode in the future, they will need to have gameplay that engages people to the extent that existing smartphone and PC games can compete with them
The BCG industry is improving on these issues at an alarming rate. It is a constantly changing field, which is why the gaming guilds are indispensable for players to keep up-to-date.
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