Blockchain games do not utilize their full potential and do not manage to attract users and attention from the actual gaming industry.

A few projects managed to succeed in the previous two years, based mostly on a marketing plan of a play-to-earn gaming model. And this success was also temporary.

Some of these games had a good run for a while, based mostly on a dishonest marketing campaign presenting the case of gamers achieving wealth within Axies, and by the time it attracted a whole new level of newcomers, the early investors were exiting and dumping NFTs and tokens.

This model is based only on marketing, aiming to attract new users, not as gamers but as investors.

The play-to-earn model is only focused on the “earn” part and not on the gaming part, which should have been the main priority, to attract at least a part of the hundreds of millions of gamers.

The approach contains the payment of profit, backing the payments from new investors and previous investors re-investing in the project/game.

The End Of Axie Infinity and the Fake Promises of Play-to-earn

With this approach, Axie Infinity reached millions of users as it claims, but perhaps there is no more after that, as there is only a certain number of users that Axie will attract with this model.

The Axie (Ronin) hack arrived at a convenient time for Axie delivering what could be the final blow.

In total most users of Axie Infinity, today have lost most of their money.

And this is how this model works, like a Pyramid.

The only reason Axie Infinity hasn’t collapsed already is the funding rounds it keeps securing from VCs and wealthy investors.

I doubt these investors understand how exactly the Axie play-to-earn model works and why Axie is not a gaming platform but resembles a gamified Pyramid scheme as a structure instead.

The only way for Axie to change its course of self-imploding is to completely change its model and create an actual game with gameplay, entertainment, and action.

Axie could proceed with adding realistic gameplay and the production of a 3D world, changing the game into one that will be a game and could attract gamers.

With the hundreds of millions in funding, it is not reasonable to maintain the same design, graphics, and gameplay as when this game was announced four years ago.

There is minimum progress made and not on the correct approach either.

I’ve previously published my thoughts on this topic, and all contained a bleak image for the future of blockchain games in general.

There is no mass migration of gamers to blockchain games. Anyone playing Axie and Splinterlands does that only for “earning” purposes. Any gamer with enough self-respect would consider these games a waste of time since they offer limited excitement or sense of accomplishment.

I wrote this about a year ago when Axie Infinity was still breathing.

As expected, it imploded and now the funds that invested billions in something they didn’t examine, will have to invest more billions or allow this failed project to collapse.

In the long run, all of the current forms of play-to-earn blockchain games were never going to make it with this attitude.

And the decline begins as the deception upon which they are based become clear to those that test and get trapped in play-to-earn games.

SLP is the token the gamers are rewarded with in the Axie platform. It’s price dropped extensively (~95%), leading many Axie players to quit.

And how was anyone supposed to keep playing a game they didn’t enjoy when the main focus was to earn? The defining factor in a game is to present addictive gameplay. Axie is only based on making money, with minimum entertainment or gaming value.

The point of gaming is entertainment, and every blockchain game so far has missed this point.

The same for most blockchain games today, no matter the network, as they offer zero entertainment value, but only base their model on the promise of earning through playing.

There should be a sense of achievement in gaming, and a feeling of having fun.

Moreover, at this point, the play-to-earn model has created such a bad name in the gaming field that gamers despise even the positives it had to present (as the NFTs and self custody of virtual items).

In Conclusion

The actual gaming corporations are producing games with high-end graphics, extremely addicting gameplay, an incredible storyline, professional voice-actors, and real-time streaming cloud databases to process gameplay and analyze the entertainment value they produce.

The play-to-earn blockchain industry has to offer a bunch of card games, no innovation or entertainment, and limited gameplay.

But we have NFTs, and you can earn money from home!

Platforms like Axie are not games and not sustainable in the long run.

Certainly some made money from it, but the moment this platform attracted a large crowd it slowly started failing.

As newcomers were unable to earn, they discovered they also lost their money as price of tokens and NFTs started dropping.

The slow Pyramid models are collapsing faster than expected. It doesn’t have to be like that, but there is no willing to change. The developers are trapped in weak models that worked for a while until they didn’t.

This is the current approach to blockchain gaming, a way for developers to make money fast, advertise their platforms as games while not improving or adapting.

It’s an NGMI industry so far mostly because it generated poor entertainment value.